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Briefs

Frist denies wrongdoing in stock sale

By wire services
Published September 27, 2005

WASHINGTON - Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said Monday that he had done nothing wrong when he sold his shares of the nation's largest hospital chain, HCA Inc., from a blind trust and that he had no information about the company's finances that was not available to the public.

The sale was made in advance of a warning that the earnings had weakened at HCA, which was founded in 1968 by Frist's father and brother. "My only objective in selling the stock was to eliminate the appearance of a conflict of interest," Frist told reporters late Monday afternoon.

Meanwhile, SEC Chairman Christopher Cox, a former member of the House Republican leadership, recused himself Monday from the agency's investigation to avert what he called "any appearance of impropriety."

Public broadcasting gets new Republican chief

WASHINGTON - Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, who led a charge against what he called the liberal slant in public broadcasting, ended his tumultuous two-year term as chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting on Monday, yielding the gavel to another Republican appointee with similar views if not a similar style.

But it's unclear if the controversy from Tomlinson's term will diminish. The board elected two Republicans to fill the posts of chairwoman and vice chairwoman - Cheryl F. Halpern and Gay Hart Gaines, respectively - despite a plea for bipartisanship by Ernest J. Wilson III, one of the two Democrats on the eight-member board.

Halpern vowed to continue to encourage "objectivity and balance" in public television and radio, raising concerns among some broadcasting executives who said Tomlinson used "balance" to justify providing the financing for at least one conservative program and for monitoring programs that had been critical of the Bush administration.

Country's rate of violent crime holds at 72-year low

WASHINGTON - The nation's crime rate was unchanged last year, holding at the lowest levels since the government began surveying crime victims in 1973, the Justice Department reported Sunday.

Since 1993, violent crime as measured by victim surveys has fallen by 57 percent and property crime by 50 percent. That has included a 9 percent drop in violent crime from 2001-2002 to 2003-2004.

The 2004 violent crime rate - assault, sexual assault and armed robbery - was 21.4 victims for every 1,000 people age 12 and older. That amounts to about one violent crime victim for every 47 U.S. residents.

[Last modified September 27, 2005, 02:45:31]