■ United states
Beatle forced to sign guitar
The doctor accused of forcing Beatle George Harrison to autograph his guitar as he lay dying is leaving his top post at a New York hospital, a spokesman said on Friday. The move to replace Dr. Gilbert Lederman as head of the radiation oncology department at Staten Island University Hospital had been planned for two years and is not directly related to the controversy involving the late Harrison, a hospital spokeswoman said. Harrison's family filed a US$10 million lawsuit last week claiming Lederman, who treated the musician, coerced a failing Harrison to autograph his son's guitar and sign autographs for his two daughters.
■ United states
Killer to carry victim's photo
A judge ordered a woman to carry a photo of the man she killed in a head-on collision, and the man's parents complied by sending a picture of him in his casket. Now, her lawyer is crying foul and the family is refusing to provide another picture. Prosecutors said Jennifer Langston was drunk and talking on a cell phone in June 2002 when she crossed the center line and hit a pickup truck carrying teacher Glenn Clark and his pregnant wife, Annette. He died, his wife remains in a coma and their son, born by Caesarean section five months after the crash, is being raised by relatives.
■ United states
Terror suspect goes to court
The US Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear a case of a US-born terrorist suspect captured abroad and labelled an enemy combatant by the US government. Yaser Esam Hamdi appealed a decision by the US to hold him indefinitely without filing charges. He was captured in Afghanistan in 2001 and has been held incommunicado. It is the second terrorism-related case the Supreme Court has agreed to hear that seeks to clarify the uncertain legal status of detainees. The cases challenge the efforts of the administration of US President George W. Bush to indefinitely detain dozens of terrorist suspects without filing charges -- a violation of civil rights under the US constitution.
■ United states
Female circumcisers caught
A couple was charged with agreeing to circumcise two young girls in what is believed to be among the first cases filed under a federal law banning female genital mutilation. Todd Cameron Bertrang, 41, and Robin Faulkinbury, 24, were arrested Friday at their Los Angeles home after an FBI agent posing as a father of an 8-year-old and a 12-year-old contacted Bertrang via e-mail. Bertrang boasted that he had performed more female circumcisions than ``anyone else in the Western Hemisphere,'' according to the affidavit. Faulkinbury was identified to the agent as Bertrang's "slave" who assisted him in the procedures.
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