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Nation in brief
Compiled from Times wires American Airlines wants to cancel raisesDALLAS -- American Airlines, the world's largest carrier, is asking employees to forgo pay raises they are due next year to help the company stem massive losses. American, whose parent company lost nearly $3-billion in the first nine months of this year, said canceling pay raises would save $130-million. Chairman and chief executive Donald Carty has said the company needs to cut $4-billion in annual costs and has found about half of that by laying off workers, mothballing planes, canceling orders for new jets, reducing food service and other changes. UNITED, UNIONS MEET: The United Airlines board of directors held a special meeting Saturday as union leaders acknowledged that a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by the world's No. 2 carrier appeared imminent. Airline spokesman Joe Hopkins said the meeting in Chicago had recessed late Saturday afternoon and said there would be no more announcements. He did not comment further. Captor sentenced to 25 years in hamburgers-for-hostages stuntCROWN POINT, Ind. -- A man who held nine female bank employees hostage with a shotgun, demanding only hamburgers and cigarettes before releasing them, has been sentenced to 25 years in prison. David Potchen, 39, had pleaded guilty to nine counts of criminal confinement. His attorney asked for leniency, noting that the women were released uninjured. Sam Cappas said his client was depressed, unemployed, about to lose his home and had not eaten for a week leading up to the standoff. But Judge Clarence Murray on Friday sentenced Potchen to 25 years in prison; with good-time credit, he could be released in less than 12 years. "These people were hostages," Murray said. "They were afraid for their lives. It could have gotten out of control." On Sept. 4, 2001, Potchen walked into Centier Bank in Lowell with a shotgun, demanding only cigarettes and two McDonald's Big Macs. He released the hostages four hours later after his demands were met. Mayor apologizes for dumping papers that endorsed opponentBERKELEY, Calif. -- Newly elected Mayor Tom Bates has apologized for an incident in which about 1,000 copies of a university newspaper endorsing his opponent were trashed the day before the election. "I deeply regret my involvement in the activity. I was tired on the last day of a difficult campaign and I made a mistake. There's no excuse for it," Bates said Friday. Bates, a former state assemblyman, won the Nov. 5 election with nearly 56 percent of the vote to incumbent Shirley Dean's 42 percent. The copies of the Daily Californian were taken Nov. 4, the day the paper endorsed Dean. The student newspaper reported about 90 percent of the papers were recovered from trash cans in Berkeley's Sproul Plaza, known as the birthplace of the 1964 Free Speech Movement. Campus police have forwarded the case to the district attorney's office, said UC Berkeley police Capt. Bill Cooper. Prosecutor John Adams said he will decide what to do with it sometime this week. Colo. arsonist agrees to sentenceDENVER -- A former U.S. Forest Service employee has admitted starting the biggest wildfire in Colorado history and has agreed to spend six years in prison, a term victims called too short. Terry Barton, 38, pleaded guilty Friday to setting fire to federal land and making false statements to investigators after a blaze that destroyed 133 homes and cost more than $29-million to contain in the mountains southwest of Denver. Sentencing was set for Feb. 21. The range for the two counts is 70 months to 87 months. The U.S. Attorney's Office said in a statement that Barton will be prosecuted separately in state court.
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From the Times wire desk
From the AP |
