■ANTIGUA
Cargo ship hijacked
An Antigua and Barbuda-flagged cargo ship has been hijacked by a band of pirates in the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Somalia, the government of the Caribbean state said on Tuesday. The Antigua and Barbuda government said in a statement that the 58 gross tonne, 146m MV Victoria had a crew of 10 and it was believed that the vessel, which was hijacked by eight pirates, was being taken to the Somalian port of Eyl, a known pirate lair. The statement gave no more details about the fate of the ship’s crew. It added that the vessel, which is managed by a company in Germany, had been registered with the EU anti-piracy flotilla operating in the region and was navigating in the recommended East-West corridor of the Gulf at the time of the hijacking.
■UNITED STATES
Drug convict gets four years
A Dominican immigrant who was held hostage and beaten after being lured to suburban Atlanta to settle a drug debt was sentenced on Tuesday to nearly four years in prison for his involvement with a cocaine distribution cell. US District Judge Jack Camp sentenced Oscar Reynoso, 31, to 46 months in federal prison, with five years supervised release to follow. Reynoso is a legal resident who lived in Rhode Island but will face deportation once he is released, US attorney David Nahmias said.
■UNITED STATES
Governor welcomes debate
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday said he would welcome a debate on taxing marijuana sales but said he remained opposed to legalizing the drug in the state. Schwarzenegger was speaking just a few days after a recent Field Poll indicated a majority of Californians supported legalizing the drug, a move that would help raise valuable tax revenues for the cash-strapped state. Asked if it was time to legalize marijuana, Schwarzenegger told reporters on the sidelines of a wildfire awareness briefing: “No. I think that it’s not time for that, but I think it’s time for a debate.” He added: “I think that we ought to study very carefully what other countries are doing that have legalized marijuana and other drugs, what effect it had on those countries, and are they happy with that decision?”
■UNITED STATES
‘Iron lung’ woman dies
A woman who spent 61 years in an iron lung yet graduated from college and wrote a book about her life died at her home in North Carolina. A close friend said Tuesday that 71-year-old Martha Mason died early on Monday in Lattimore. She was 71. Mary Dalton, an associate communications professor at Wake Forest University, produced a documentary about Mason’s life in 2006. Dalton said polio left Mason paralyzed from the neck down in 1948, yet she graduated first in her class from Wake Forest in 1960. With the aid of a voice-recognition computer, she wrote about her life in the book Breath: Life in the Rhythm of an Iron Lung, which was published in 2003.
■MEXICO
Gunmen kill journalist
At least four gunmen confronted and killed columnist Carlos Ortega on Sunday when he got out of his car in front of his home in the small town of Santa Maria del Oro, the Durango state prosecutor’s office said in statement. A motive hadn’t been determined. Ortega was shot in the head after struggling with the attackers, it said. There was no evidence that Ortega, 52, was targeted for his newspaper work, said Victor Garza, director of the newspaper Tiempo. He said Ortega was also a lawyer who defended criminal suspects.
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