Friday, February 15, 2008

Flames Finally Put Out At Ga. Sugar Refinery

PORT WENTWORTH, Ga. -- Firefighters finally doused the last flames Thursday of a deadly sugar refinery blast, a week after the refinery ignited.

An eighth victim badly burned in the explosion died in a hospital. Sixteen others remain hospitalized, 14 of them in critical condition. At least one worker remains missing, and firefighters hope to get inside the building to search.

"We anticipate the search and recovery efforts to be completed, hopefully by dark today," said Greg Long, Port Wentworth fire chief.

Sugar dust is thought to have caused the Feb. 7 blast.

The firefighting team extinguished the blazes using foam and water that lowered the temperatures inside the silos from as high as 4,000 degrees to below 70 degrees, Long said.

Student Is Sentenced to 5 Days

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. -- A graduate student charged in the car crash that killed Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Halberstam was sentenced to five days in jail, but a judge recommended that he serve the time on a supervised work program. Kevin Jones, 27, pleaded no contest last fall to a charge of misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter stemming from the April 23 crash. The University of California at Berkeley journalism student was driving Halberstam to an interview with football legend Y.A. Tittle when the crash happened in Menlo Park.

Man Is Freed in N.Y. Slaying

NEW YORK -- NYPD detectives questioned a Pennsylvania man about the of a New York psychologist who was hacked to death in her office with a meat cleaver, but authorities later released him and said he is not a suspect. William Kunsman met victim Kathryn Faughey at a guitar camp six years ago with her husband and were friends but not romantically linked. Police found Kunsman through Faughey's e-mail records.

Teen Is Charged in Shooting

OXNARD, Calif. -- Prosecutors charged a 14-year-old boy with attempted murder and said he committed a hate crime in the classroom shooting of an eighth-grader who was declared brain-dead. Prosecutors would not say why they filed a hate-crime enhancement with the attempted murder count, but several classmates said the 15-year-old victim, Lawrence King, sometimes wore makeup, high heels and other feminine attire.

Spacewalk Is Set for Today

CAPE CANAVERAL -- The astronauts aboard the orbiting shuttle-station complex face one last spacewalk Friday to wrap up exterior work on the newly installed Columbus lab, which flight controllers expect to begin science operations before Atlantis leaves next week.

-- From News Services