Lauren Bacall, Roger Corman to get early Oscars
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Academy Awards won't be presented until March, but the first Oscar statuettes of the season were being handed out Saturday night at a private, black-tie dinner in Hollywood. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is breaking with tradition and presenting its honorary Oscars away from the televised ceremony. Actress Lauren Bacall, producer-director Roger Corman and cinematographer Gordon Willis were to each receive Oscar statuettes at the inaugural Governors Awards event.
Mother of missing 5-year-old NC girl charged
FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. (AP) — The mother of a 5-year-old girl who disappeared in North Carolina was charged Saturday with human trafficking and other offenses, though authorities said they still did not know the girl's whereabouts. Antoinette Nicole Davis, the mother of Shaniya (shuh-'NY-uh) Davis, faces a child abuse charge involving prostitution as well as filing a false police report, according to a news release from the Fayetteville Police Department. The release did not say whether the charges were related to her daughter's disappearance. Telephone messages and an e-mail left for police were not immediately returned.
Mourners grieve for soldiers killed at Fort Hood
KIEL, Wis. (AP) — Hundreds of people lining the main street of an Indiana town on Saturday fell solemnly silent as the white hearse passed. Mourners waited for hours outside a Wisconsin gymnasium to say goodbye to a soldier who once promised to take down Osama bin Laden. And in Oklahoma, a newlywed grieved for her husband of nearly three months.
Gates blocks release of detainee abuse photos
WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Robert Gates has blocked the public release of any more pictures of foreign detainees abused by their U.S. captors, saying their release would endanger American soldiers. The Obama administration filed a brief with the Supreme Court late Friday saying that Gates has invoked new powers blocking the release of the photos.
Bernard Madoff's jacket, watch auctioned in NYC
NEW YORK (AP) — It was about fascination with big money — and the life of a couple at the center of the biggest financial fraud case in U.S. history. Bernard and Ruth Madoff's belongings fetched several times their estimated values at auction Saturday for a total of about $1 million, twice as much as the auctioneers had hoped for.
Source: Illinois prison eyed for Gitmo inmates
CHICAGO (AP) — The Obama administration may buy a near-empty prison in rural northwestern Illinois to house detainees from Guantanamo Bay along with federal inmates, a White House official said Saturday. The maximum-security Thomson Correctional Facility, about 150 miles west of Chicago, was one of several evaluated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and emerged as a leading option to house the detainees, the official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because a decision has not been made.
Pa. swim club accused of bias to file bankruptcy
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A suburban swim club accused of discrimination last summer after revoking the memberships of mostly black and Hispanic children plans to declare bankruptcy, a newspaper reported Saturday. Valley Swim Club president John Duesler sent an e-mail to club "friends and families" Friday saying the board of directors had voted to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy this week, The Philadelphia Daily News reported.
Crusading Calif. D.A. retires, leaves painful wake
BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (AP) — The molesters drank blood, the children said, and hung them from hooks after forcing them to have sex with their parents. They murdered babies, prosecutors told jurors, and snapped photographs as the horror unfolded. Ed Jagels, renowned as one of California's toughest district attorneys, built his career on the Kern County child molestation cases of the 1980s, putting more than two dozen men and women behind bars to serve decades-long sentences for abusing children.
Ohio: 1 lethal injection drug should end lawsuit
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The state's decision to replace a three-drug lethal injection with a powerful dose of one anesthetic is raising the possibility of what may have seemed unthinkable not so long ago: a truce in the long-running legal challenges to death penalty injection across the country. Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray put it bluntly: A one-drug method would "render moot" his state's current injection lawsuit, which raises some issues found in other states regarding the potential for pain and suffering.
Hawaii's famed white sandy beaches are shrinking
KAILUA, Hawaii (AP) — Jenn Boneza remembers when the white sandy beach near the boat ramp in her hometown was wide enough for people to build sand castles. "It really used to be a beautiful beach," said the 35-year-old mother of two. "And now when you look at it, it's gone."
