Washington, D.C.

Judge delays ordering reporters to jail

Time magazine is considering turning over to federal prosecutors notes from a reporter who says he’ll go to jail rather than divulge sources about the leak of an undercover CIA officer’s name.

The possibility emerged Wednesday as reporters Matthew Cooper of Time and Judith Miller of The New York Times defied a judge who found them in contempt last October for refusing to disclose their sources in the leak of the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame.

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear the reporters’ appeal. U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan reluctantly agreed to have a hearing Wednesday to consider last-ditch arguments from lawyers for the reporters on why they should not be sent to jail.

New York

Results mixed on interval training perks

A new study suggests that doing intense interval training for 20 minutes three times a week is just as effective at boosting strength and endurance as five to six hours of jogging or moderate cycling.

It’s a technique that’s been used for years by sports teams and athletes. But is it useful to the average overweight American? Probably not. It doesn’t burn many calories.

And it requires so much suffering that you’re almost destined to quit, one expert said.

The study, published this month in the Journal of Applied Physiology, was done by researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.

Washington, D.C.

Panel: Any radiation levels pose cancer risk

Even very low doses of radiation pose a risk of cancer over a person’s lifetime, a National Academy of Sciences panel concluded Wednesday. It rejected some scientists’ arguments that tiny doses are harmless or may in fact be beneficial.

The findings could influence the maximum radiation levels that are allowed at abandoned reactors and other nuclear sites. The conclusions also raise warnings about excessive exposure to radiation for medical purposes such as repeated whole-body CT scans.

“It is unlikely that there is a threshold (of radiation exposure) below which cancers are not induced,” scientists said in the report.

While at low doses “the number of radiation-induced cancers will be small … as the overall lifetime exposure increases, so does the risk,” the experts said.

California

Murdering patriarch to be executed

A jury decided Wednesday that Marcus Wesson, the domineering patriarch of a large clan he bred through incest, should get the death penalty for the murders of nine of his children.

Wesson, 58, was convicted earlier this month, more than a year after the bodies were found in a bloody pile at his home at the end of a police standoff.

All the victims – ages 1 to 25 – had been shot once in the eye. Wesson had fathered some of them with his own daughters and nieces.

Prosecutors said he had the children killed for fear authorities were about to break the clan up and take the youngsters away.

New York

Black men attacked in white neighborhood

Three black men who ventured into a historically white neighborhood early Wednesday to steal a car were chased by a man with a baseball bat, police said. One man was beaten and suffered a fractured skull.

The attack happened several hours before dawn in the same section of the borough of Queens as an infamous 1986 beating of three black men whose car had broken down.

In Wednesday’s attack, Nicholas Minucci, 21, was being charged with first-degree assault as a hate crime, menacing and criminal possession of a weapon, police Commissioner Ray Kelly said at a news conference.

The three men told investigators they had been looking for a car to steal when they entered the Howard Beach neighborhood. They told police a white man in an SUV passed them in the street, exchanged stares with them and then returned with two friends and a baseball bat before chasing them on foot.

Washington, D.C.

Report: Data gaps make passports easy to steal

Governmental failures to share terrorist and criminal data could have allowed fugitives to obtain U.S. passports by slipping through holes in security screening systems, congressional investigators have found.

In a review of 67 state and federal fugitives identified by the Government Accountability Office, 37 were not included on a State Department database that would have prevented them from successfully applying for passports. One of the fugitives was on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list for murdering a Pennsylvania police chief, according to report Wednesday.

Investigators concluded many of the names were omitted from the passport database because the State Department did not have information from the FBI and the Terrorist Screening Center that would have alerted it to the fugitives’ applications.

Miami

Tropical Storm Bret to hit Mexican coast

The second tropical storm to develop in the Gulf of Mexico this month approached the Mexican coast Wednesday.

Tropical Storm Bret was just off Tuxpan about 250 miles south of the Texas border. Forecasters said it was expected to weaken quickly while crossing inland over rugged terrain.

The Mexican government issued a tropical storm warning for the Gulf coast area from Veracruz to Tampico. The storm was moving to the west-northwest at about 10 mph.

Bret had winds of about 40 mph, just over the 39 mph threshold for a tropical storm.

Forecasters said winds and rain extended up to 35 miles from Bret’s center. Between 3 to 6 inches of rain was forecast, with higher amounts over mountainous regions.