News

By TOM BARNES
Monday, November 20, 2006
Thousands of lights flashed and blinked on slot machines, while the deafening sound of bells, bongs and sirens went off. Pneumatic "confetti cannons" showered the Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs with paper chips and streamers, while loudspeakers boomed out Gretchen Wilson singing "Here For The Party."

And were they ever! Several thousand slots gamblers poured into the first casino ever to open in Pennsylvania, where history was made Tuesday.

After 18 months of planning and construction, the Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority, which for 10 years has operated a huge casino in Connecticut, opened its $72.6 million "temporary" casino in a two-story steel-and-glass building holding 1,096 slot machines at a 40-year-old harness racing track five miles east of Wilkes-Barre.

"We've been waiting for this a long time," said Rose Zemantauski of Moosic, 10 miles away.

By LOLA ALAPO
Monday, November 20, 2006
A group of students in Knox County, Tenn., are giving their plastics a purpose. Or, as Carly Greene says, trying to "help save the world from disgusting trash."

Pounds of plastic milk containers from the Inskip Elementary third-grader's cafeteria and from 34 other schools will end up not at a landfill, but recycled into reusable materials.

Benches. Fleece jackets. Carpet backing.

"It's awesome," Greene, 8, said after dumping her plastic milk container into a recycle bin placed at Inskip earlier this week.

The National Dairy Council has launched a pilot plastic recycling program, "Drink It Then Sink It," at selected schools, mostly elementary.

By MARC SANDALOW
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
House Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi now knows that every move she makes will be scrutinized, analyzed and ripped apart for meaning.

Her Democratic colleagues' rejection of her choice for majority leader made news around the globe, reinforcing the notion that what had been fodder for Capitol Hill newspapers when Democrats were in the minority has become international news now that they are becoming the majority.

"She's learning exactly what Newt Gingrich learned 12 years ago," said Jack Pitney, a professor of political science at Claremont McKenna College outside Los Angeles and the author of several books on Congress.

By JIM McKINNON
Monday, November 20, 2006
A Pennsylvania mother and father pleaded guilty to driving under the influence, after their 10-year-old son refused to ride with them and ran away on a highway.

Kenneth and Paula Sutton, both 40, of Monaca, Pa., entered their pleas Tuesday.

By JOHN HILL
Sunday, November 19, 2006
The state's retirement system won't take "no" for an answer.

A committee of the California Public Employees Retirement System voted Tuesday to urge the Legislature to once again consider bills that would make it easier to crack down on fraud in disability pensions.

CalPERS sponsored the same legislation in 2004.

By DAN BROWNING
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Retired senior military officers have rallied behind an effort to block a high-level award for an outgoing Minnesota Air National Guard general, citing an investigation that substantiated several findings of misconduct.

The National Guard Bureau in Virginia notified Minnesota last week that it would not approve a Legion of Merit award for Brig.

By PETER HECHT
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
California state authorities have searched the San Francisco apartment of a legal defense investigator accused of falsifying juror statements to help legal efforts to spare death row inmates from execution.

The state Attorney General's office announced Friday that agents executed a warrant Thursday to search the apartment of Kathleen Marie Culhane, 39, a former investigator for the state-funded Habeas Corpus Resource Center in San Francisco.

State prosecutors initiated a probe of Culhane in February after she submitted five signed declarations from jurors disavowing votes they made in sentencing convicted murderer Michael A.

By MARK MARTIN
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Confined in a van without air conditioning, a quadriplegic inmate died this summer after guards transporting him to a state prison in a remote desert area of Southern California became lost and spent hours finding their way.

By PETER FIMRITE
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Earl Hensel rushed to the Crescent City Harbor just in time to see water gushing in from the sea, sweeping away everything in its path. The most devastating tidal wave to hit the California coast in four decades washed away docks, damaged boats and spread debris all over the harbor.

By MARK HANSEL
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Motorists traveling along Interstate 15 might want to give that tractor-trailer in the next lane a little extra room. Especially if they notice it sporting a diamond-shaped placard saying "Radioactive 7."

There's a good chance it's hauling one of the roughly 1,200 annual shipments of low-level radioactive waste that travels near, and occasionally through, the Las Vegas metropolitan area.