■ United States
Long-lost wallet returned
An antiques dealer is being reacquainted with his past after a Utah family returned a wallet he lost at a gas station nearly 40 years ago. The beige wallet still held US$5 in cash, a traffic ticket, some stamps and Doug Schmitt's freshman ID card from Utah State. Schmitt apparently lost the wallet at a gas station in Logan, Utah, in the spring of 1967, when he stopped to fill up his car. The station's owner stashed it in a drawer, presumably hoping the person would come back. Ted Nyman found it decades later while cleaning out his father-in-law's estate. He tracked Schmitt down through the Internet, and last week mailed the wallet to him.
■ United States
Cruel mother jailed
A woman convicted of beating her seven-year-old daughter with a dog chain, burning her wrists on a stove, pouring bleach on her, and forcing her to eat cat food and salt was sentenced on Wednesday to 25 to 70 years in prison. Debra Liberman, 52, had been convicted of four counts of aggravated assault and one count of arson for setting a furnace filter on fire in a coal cellar where she had locked the naked and wet girl. Haley Liberman was not hurt in the fire but was "terrorized physically and emotionally and psychologically battered," prosecutors said. Police investigated after reports of screams coming from Liberman's home in February 2004 and said they found the girl in a closet.
■ United States
Alito halts execution
New Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito split with the court's conservatives on Wednesday night, refusing to let Missouri execute a death-row inmate contesting lethal injection. Alito, handling his first case, sided with inmate Michael Taylor, who had won a stay from an appeals court earlier in the evening. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas supported lifting the stay, but Alito joined the remaining five members in turning down Missouri's last-minute request to allow a midnight execution.
■ China
Veteran journalist dies
Feng Xiliang (馮錫良), a US-trained journalist who in 1978 helped to launch the China Daily, the communist government's main English-language newspaper, died this week at 86, the newspaper reported yesterday. Feng, also known as C.L. Feng, died on Monday, the China Daily said. It didn't give a cause of death. Feng graduated in 1943 from St. John's University in Shanghai and received a master's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri in 1948. Following the 1949 communist revolution, Feng returned to China and worked for English-language government magazines. He was part of the four-member committee that launched the China Daily and later served as managing editor and was editor-in-chief from 1984-87.
■ United States
State requests mine checks
West Virginian Governor Joe Manchin called for coal companies in the state to shut down for safety checks after two more mine workers were killed in separate accidents. While his call on Wednesday was voluntary, an industry group representing most of the state's coal producers said its members would comply. Manchin also ordered mine inspections be expedited so that all of the state's surface and underground mines could be examined by regulators as soon as possible.
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