USA
Abu Zubaydah, a captured Al Qaeda leader, divulged important information to US interrogators within 35 seconds of being subjected to controversial waterboarding techniques, former CIA agent John Kiriakou told NBC's "Today" show Tuesday. The interview occurred before the agency's director, Gen. Michael Hayden, was to face questions by congressional panels about the destruction of videotapes of terror suspect interrogations.
New Jersey moved to the brink of abolishing the death sentence Monday when the state Senate passed a measure that would replace capital punishment with life without parole. Final approval would make New Jersey the first state since 1965 to abolish executions.
The "most likely" suspect in deadly shootings Sunday at a Colorado megachurch and a missionary training school 65 miles apart is the same person, police said Monday. They believe the gunman who shot and killed two people in each location was Matthew Murray, who'd been expelled from the school. Murray was shot by a security guard at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs but may have died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
A third of all Oklahomans are without power because of icy weather gripping the Midlands, a spokesman for state's largest utility said Monday. Eighteen deaths, mostly in car crashes, have been blamed on the conditions in Oklahoma and Missouri, and more storm warnings were issued across the Plains Tuesday.
Conrad Black (above), a millionaire member of the British House of Lords, was sentenced Monday in Chicago to 6-1/2 years in jail for defrauding shareholders of his Hollinger media empire, which once owned the Chicago Sun-Times and many US community newspapers.
The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration put 20 companies on notice Monday that they must make significant improvements in their operations within 90 days or face a temporary shutdown.
Harvard University said Monday that any student whose family makes less than $180,000 annually will, on average, pay 10 percent of its income for tuition. The current cost of attendance is $45,620. Harvard wants to make the university more affordable even to upper-middle-class students.
New York schoolchildren unveiled 100 million pennies they collected for charity at Rockefeller Center on Monday. The culmination of an annual event organized by Common Cents, a nonprofit group, the "Penny Harvest Field" exhibit (above) measures 30 by 165 feet. Students, who collected the $1 million, will help determine where it's distributed.
