More than 100 million people living in 46 metropolitan areas are breathing air that has become fouled with too much soot on some days, and now those cities have to clean up their air by 2014, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said on Monday. The EPA added 15 cities to the sooty air list, mostly in states not usually thought of as pollution-prone, such as Alaska, Utah, Idaho and Wisconsin. The EPA notified elected officials in 211 counties in 25 states that their air violated newly tightened daily standards for fine particles of pollution. Regions that have air that is too sooty must develop plans by 2012 to show they plan to clean it, and then do so by 2014.
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‘Mockingbird’ director dies
Robert Mulligan, the director of the movie classic To Kill a Mockingbird, which brought the issue of entrenched racism in the US South to the screen, has died aged 83. Mulligan died Friday of heart disease at his Connecticut home, his family said on Monday. Though he never won an Oscar himself, he directed five actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Gregory Peck and Mary Badham in Mockingbird, Natalie Wood in Love with the Proper Stranger, Ruth Gordon in Inside Daisy Clover and Ellen Burstyn in Same Time, Next Year. His 1962 adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird was named the No. 25 film of all time by the American Film Institute.
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Couple share surgery
An Indiana couple who together topped the scales at more than 320kg have undergone weight-loss surgery together. Lorie and Todd Richmond both had surgery last week at the University of Chicago Medical Center. They made the decision after years of failed diets and 10 months of preparation. Dr Vivek Prachand performed operations on both the 138kg husband and 182kg wife. Prachand says it was the first time he has performed surgeries on a husband and wife in the same day.
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Texas police hunt gunman
Police in Texas are looking for a gunman who killed at least two people in a shooting spree on highways in and around Dallas. Four separate shootings in less than an hour paralyzed traffic during the evening rush hour on Monday, police said. A motorist was killed in Garland as his car was stopped at a traffic light. The gunman, reported to have been in a pick-up truck, then sped away. Minutes later, there were three shootings on a major freeway leading into Dallas, leaving a truck driver dead.
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Woman pleads guilty
A suburban Kansas City, Missouri, woman pleaded guilty on Monday to killing a woman whose sexual torture and suffocation were videotaped. In a deal with prosecutors that allowed her to avoid the death penalty, Dena Riley, 42, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the May 2006 death of Marsha Spicer, 41. Riley also pleaded guilty to the kidnapping and assault of Michelle Huff-Ricci, 36, of Kansas City, whose remains were found in nearby Clay County, where Riley and her boyfriend, Richard Davis, are charged with capital murder. Riley was sentenced to life without parole for the murder charge and to eight additional life sentences and 239 years in prison for 25 other counts. Davis was convicted and sentenced to death earlier this year for Spicer’s slaying.
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