LITTLE ROCK — Pia Beathe Pedersen, a Norwegian radio journalist, quit on the air after complaining about her job at a regional radio station of public broadcaster NRK and saying she wouldn’t read the day’s news because “nothing important has happened” anyway.
James Steinberg, the U.S. deputy secretary of state, said at an international security conference in Geneva that Washington would prefer to keep its military base on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa despite local opposition.
Kevin Rudd, 53, the former Australian prime minister who was toppled by Julia Gillard in an internal Labor Party dispute, was named the new foreign minister as part of several changes to Gillard’s Cabinet.
Abbas Jafari Dowlatabadi, Tehran’s chief prosecutor, said a day after Iranian officials postponed the release of Sarah Shourd, who was detained along with two companions last year along the Iraqi border, that none of three detained Americans will be released “until the end of the legal procedure.”
Marc Emery, 52, who is known as Canada’s “Prince of Pot” and sold millions of marijuana seeds to U.S. customers before his 2005 arrest, was sentenced in Seattle to five years in prison after earlier pleading guilty to a drug charge.
Richard M. Daley, who decided last week not to seek a seventh term as Chicago’s mayor, opened up about his reasons for leaving the job that he was first elected to in 1989, saying, “It’s just about where I am in my life, and I just said, you know, everybody’s replaceable.”
Kenneth I. Starr, a New York investment adviser who once had Hollywood celebrities such as Al Pacino, Martin Scorsese and Sylvester Stallone as clients, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Manhattan to charges that he diverted tens of millions of dollars of his clients’ money to pay for his lavish lifestyle.
Michael Francis Mara, 53, the Baton Rouge man accused of being the “Granddad Bandit” suspected in 25 bank heists in 13 states, including ones in Little Rock and Fort Smith last year, pleaded innocent to two of the robberies in federal court in Virginia.
Djalma Costa Ferreira, 73, was convicted in Brazil of killing his wife, Benvinda Matos Costa, with a sledgehammer on Christmas Day five years ago because he believed she had cheated on him and wanted to spend all his money.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 09/12/2010