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Senate approves new leader of FDA

By TIMES WIRES
Published December 8, 2006

The Senate on Thursday confirmed cancer surgeon Andrew von Eschenbach to head the Food and Drug Administration, but only after breaking a filibuster in which he was accused of impeding congressional investigations. The vote was 80-11.

Von Eschenbach, a former head of the National Cancer Institute, has been acting head of the FDA for more than year. He was approved in September by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Education Committee, but members of both parties had stalled a final vote on his nomination.

Previously, he had served as chief academic officer at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and had led the National Cancer Institute.

PHOENIX

Police say gunman in 9 slayings is in jail

Police said Thursday they have caught the Baseline Killer, the gunman responsible for nine slayings that spread terror across the Phoenix area for nearly a year.

Police Chief Jack Harris said investigators are recommending that Mark Goudeau, a 42-year-old construction worker who has been in jail since September, be charged with 71 counts, including nine murders - most of them random shootings committed on the street at night.

Goudeau was arrested three months ago in two sexual assaults that were attributed to the Baseline Killer. But at the time, police stopped short of pronouncing him the Baseline Killer while they built a case. Goudeau served 13 1/2 years in prison for three aggravated assaults, armed robbery and kidnapping before being paroled in 2004.

The name Baseline Killer came from the Phoenix street where some of the earliest crimes were committed.

MIAMI

Son of ex-president of Liberia sentenced

The son of former Liberian President Charles Taylor was sentenced Thursday to 11 months in prison for passport fraud, a day after being indicted on separate torture charges.

Charles Emmanuel, 29, pleaded not guilty to the charges stemming from his years as chief of a paramilitary unit in his father's government. A 1994 law makes it a crime for a U.S. citizen to commit torture or war crimes abroad.

Elsewhere

WASHINGTON: In traditional fashion, President Bush presided over the lighting of the national Christmas tree Thursday by asking the country to remember and honor its troops.

BOSTON: An audit found drugs missing from the Police Department's main drug evidence storage facility, prompting the department to transfer 12 officers from there.

[Last modified December 8, 2006, 01:25:57]