Washington

EEOC collects record $420M for workers

The federal agency that enforces laws against employment discrimination collected a record $420 million for aggrieved workers last year, when the number of complaints filed with the government was down slightly from the previous 12 months.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission received 79,432 discrimination complaints against private employers and state and local governments in the year ending Sept. 30.

Last year, the commission resolved 85,259 discrimination cases, down slightly from the 81,293 complaints in 2003, including some cases pending from previous years, according to a report obtained by The Associated Press.

It collected more than $251 million by settling cases before trial and $168 million through EEOC lawsuits filed in federal courts, for a total of nearly $420 million. It was the largest sum ever collected in a single year, the agency said.

DETROIT

Investigators: Blood didn’t come from Hoffa

Blood found on the floor of a Detroit home is not that of Jimmy Hoffa, investigators said Monday, ruling out what had looked like one of the most promising recent leads in the disappearance of the Teamsters boss 30 years ago.

Authorities had ripped up floorboards last May at a house where Delaware Teamsters official Frank Sheeran said he shot Hoffa to death.

Police in the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Township received a report from the FBI crime lab Monday concluding that human blood from a male was on the floorboards but that the blood was not Hoffa’s.

Oakland County Prosecutor David Gorcyca said that it was not known whose blood it was, but that the DNA would be entered into a national database.

Police Chief Jeffrey Werner said investigators and prosecutors were skeptical of the lead from the beginning.

Hoffa was last seen on July 30, 1975, at a restaurant in Bloomfield Township.

New Jersey

Four states lose their Miss America franchises

Already scrambling to find a new TV network, the Miss America pageant is engaged in an intramural squabble after pulling the franchises of four state pageant operators, one of whom is fighting back in court.

The Miss Illinois Scholarship Pageant persuaded a judge last week to bar the Miss America Organization from letting a new group take over the Miss Illinois pageant, pending resolution of a federal lawsuit challenging the legality of it.

The operators of state pageants in Colorado, Indiana and Montana also were ousted by the Atlantic City-based national organization, which refused to renew their franchises after they expired Nov. 15.

Miss America Organization CEO Arthur McMaster would not say Monday why the franchises were pulled.

After hearing arguments Thursday, U.S. District Judge Milton Shadur in Chicago issued a temporary restraining order barring the national pageant from letting a new group take over. Shadur ordered the two sides to submit to arbitration to settle the dispute.