Nation in brief

Mad cow incident leads to inquiry

WASHINGTON - The government has begun a criminal investigation into whether records may have been falsified in the nation's first and only case of mad cow disease, the Agriculture Department's inspector general said Wednesday.

The criminal investigation is moving alongside a noncriminal review of the Agriculture Department's response to the mad cow case, the department's inspector general, Phyllis Fong, told a House subcommittee.

Fong said the criminal investigation focuses on whether the infected Holstein cow truly was a "downer" cattle unable to stand or walk when it was slaughtered Dec. 9 in Moses Lake, Wash.

The department initially said the cow was a downer, and that was why it was tested for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE. Downers have a higher risk of the brain-wasting disease.

But men who saw the cow at Vern's Moses Lake Meat Co. recall it being on its feet.

The issue is significant because agriculture officials that monitor meat plants say they target only downer cattle for testing. Critics say that evidence suggests the need to test healthy animals as well.

CHARLESTON, S.C. - Jose Padilla, the American arrested in an alleged al-Qaida plot to set off a radioactive "dirty bomb," was allowed to meet with lawyers Wednesday for the first time in nearly two years.

The U.S. government has designated Padilla an "enemy combatant," meaning he can be held indefinitely without access to lawyers. But the government relented last month, just days before the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear his case.

Donna R. Newman, one of the attorneys for Padilla, said there was a videocamera present and military personnel looked on from an adjoining room during the three-hour meeting.

"I'm not saying we were not thrilled to see him, but it was not by any stretch of the imagination" a typical lawyer-client meeting, Newman said.

ATLANTA - Southern heritage groups called for an economic boycott of Atlanta on Wednesday, a day after Georgia voters overwhelmingly approved a state flag without the divisive Confederate rebel "X."

About 50 people rallied outside the Capitol, saying tepid turnout for the flag referendum meant people thought it was phony. The ballot didn't allow voters to choose the 1956 version dominated by the Confederate cross.

Only about one in five registered voters participated in Tuesday's nonbinding referendum. But political leaders of both parties were confident that the referendum will end the flag flap.

NEW YORK - A man who paid $5 for a 19th century painting he bought at a garage sale has sold it for $1-million, an art publication reported.

The unidentified 29-year-old actor found Joseph Decker's Ripening Pears wrapped in a blanket at a Los Angeles garage sale three years ago, the report in ARTnewsletter said.

The woman who sold him the painting said it had been sitting in her garage for more than 60 years, the publication said. Decker painted it around 1884 or 1885.

The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., bought the painting in February. The painting hung on the man's kitchen wall for two years before he did an Internet search on Decker.

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