■ United States
Beer vendor fined US$60m
A jury awarded US$60 million to the family of a girl paralyzed in a car wreck caused by a drunken football fan. Ronald and Fazila Verni were headed home from a pumpkin-picking trip in 1999 with their 2-year-old daughter, Antonia, when their car was hit by a truck driven by Daniel Lanzaro, 34. Antonia was paralyzed from the neck down. Lanzaro, whose blood-alcohol level was more than twice the legal limit, is serving a five-year prison term for vehicular assault. The family sued Aramark, the Giants Stadium concessionaire, claiming vendors sold beers to Lanzaro even though he was clearly drunk and that Aramark fostered an atmosphere in which intoxicated patrons were served.
■ United States
Cop busted for perjury
An undercover agent, Tom Coleman, whose testimony sent dozens of black people to prison on bogus drug charges was ordered to serve 10 years of probation for a single perjury charge. The jury in Lubbock on Friday acquitted Coleman of testifying falsely in a 2003 hearing that as a sheriff's deputy he never stole gasoline from county pumps. Coleman arrested 46 people, most of them black, in a small, mostly white farming community. He worked alone and no drugs were ever found, but 38 defendants were convicted or reached plea deals. Governor Rick Perry pardoned 35 of the defendants in 2003, after an investigation into the drug cases was launched amid charges they were racially motivated.
■ United States
`Survivor' faces tax reality
Richard Hatch, the first winner of the US TV series Survivor, is facing his toughest challenge yet. Hatch failed to report the US$1 million he won on Survivor, federal prosecutors said as they charged him with filing false tax returns. The 43-year-old Hatch, whose brash strategizing propelled him to victory in 2000's Survivor series on CBS, is charged on two counts in a lawsuit filed in US District Court. Prosecutors said Hatch not only failed to report his US$1 million winnings in federal tax returns but also left off more than US$300,000 that a Boston radio station paid him to co-host a program in 2001.
■ United States
Evolution at issue
A school district in Pennsylvania and another in Georgia have pressed ahead with challenges to teaching evolution in their public schools, offering a different approach called Intelligent Design. Intelligent Design posits that life is so complex, a creator had to be behind it, a position that critics say has no basis in science. The American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State are suing the school board on behalf of 11 parents to force it to rescind its decision.
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