Bomb-trial jurors to be quizzed on news
NEW YORK -- Defense attorneys for the man charged in the failed pipe bombing of the New York subway last year have asked a federal judge to quiz prospective jurors about their exposure to recent media coverage of pipe bombs mailed around the country.
Akayed Ullah, a Bangladeshi immigrant, is scheduled to stand trial Monday in Manhattan on terrorism-related charges and using a weapon of mass destruction. He has pleaded innocent.
Ullah was the only person seriously hurt when the bomb went off Dec. 11 in a corridor linking subways under Manhattan's Port Authority bus terminal. The bomb never fully exploded.
Ullah's defense attorneys asked in a letter to U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan that he ensure jurors were not influenced by the widespread media coverage of more than a dozen pipe bombs sent to prominent Democrats around the country.
None of the crude devices exploded.
The U.S. attorney's office joined Ullah's attorneys in the request.
Library to drop eugenics backer's name
BURLINGTON, Vt. -- The name of a former University of Vermont president is being removed from the school library because of his support of research into the eugenics movement in the 1920s and 1930s that helped lead to sterilizations.
The board of trustees voted unanimously on Saturday to drop Guy Bailey's name from the Bailey/Howe Library.
The move comes in response to concerns raised by some faculty and students. An advisory panel recommended dropping the name because Bailey supported the Eugenics Survey of Vermont and its leader, Henry Perkins, a professor of zoology. Bailey raised substantial private funding for the survey and served on its advisory committee.
"We reached our recommendation based primarily on the fact that Bailey's active involvement as president of the University in supporting and promoting the Eugenics Survey of Vermont is fundamentally at odds with the University's mission," wrote trustee Ron Lumbra, who served as chairman of the renaming committee.
In the 1930s, some Vermonters were placed on a state-sanctioned list of "mental defectives" and degenerates and sent to state institutions. Some had surgery after Vermont in 1931 became one of more than two dozen states to pass a law that allowed for voluntary sterilizations for "human betterment" as part of the eugenics movement, which supported the selective reproduction of humans.
Perry says nuke-waste plan has support
Energy Secretary Rick Perry said the White House still supports construction of a planned repository for nuclear waste in Nevada, despite President Donald Trump's suggestion last weekend that he was reconsidering.
When asked if the Trump administration still supports Yucca Mountain, Perry swiftly said "Yes."
"I'm making this presumption by looking at a budgeting process and there was money in the president's budget to manage Yucca," Perry said, after giving remarks at the department's Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y. Trump requested $120 million in his budget proposal for the geologic repository 90 miles north of Las Vegas.
"I'm going to follow the law. And the law says, 'here are the things you're going to do.' Those have to be funded. And so, we're following the law," Perry said. "If Yucca is to be closed, then I'm sure that Congress will deal with it and I'll follow their instructions."
Trump told a Nevada television station he was reconsidering his support after campaigning last weekend with U.S. Sen. Dean Heller, a Republican who opposes the project and is in a tight re-election battle.
Migrant retaken into custody at age 18
A teenager released from adult detention after mistakenly being determined to be an adult was put into custody again, on his 18th birthday.
The teenager's case highlighted the controversial use of dental forensics to determine age. Last year, after Jose illegally crossed the border into California, a dental exam showed an 85 percent probability that he was 18. Jose's lawyers asked that he not be identified fully because of safety concerns.
The Office of Refugee Resettlement removed him from a youth shelter and turned him over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which held him in Orange County, Calif., jails with adult migrant detainees for nearly a year. During that time, a judge ordered him removed from the country.
When Jose's birth certificate arrived from Guatemala last month, it showed that Jose had been 17 all along. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is required to take custody of and provide care for unaccompanied children, defined as those who have not yet turned 18.
Jose was taken back into the refugee office's custody and had been held at a youth shelter.
On Friday, he was taken back into custody on his 18th birthday. His lawyers fear he could be deported based on the prior removal order.
Jose is among an unknown number of minors in the past decade who appear to have been placed in adult detention centers based on forensic testing.
A Section on 10/28/2018