Texas executes 18th person
A man convicted of murdering three people in a drug deal gone wrong became the 18th person to be executed in Texas this year, prison officials said. Christopher Coleman, 37, was pronounced dead at 6:22pm on Tuesday evening after being administered a lethal injection. He was convicted in 1995 of having shot and killed three people — two men and a sleeping child — during a drug deal. A woman, the mother of the child, was injured in the attack, but survived to identify Coleman as the shooter. Lawyers for Coleman said the woman lied in her testimony. They raised questions about her involvement in the drug deal and her relationship with one of the men killed in the shooting.
■UNITED STATES
Police caught playing Wii
It’s game over for some police officers who played video games while raiding a convicted drug dealer’s home in central Florida. Surveillance video caught the officers playing a Nintendo Wii bowling game in the Tampa, Florida, home, with one furiously jumping up and down in celebration. Some of the officers may be disciplined. Officers with the anti-drug task force had just stormed into the home of the drug dealer, who was already in custody. One sheriff’s detective can be seen taking breaks from cataloging evidence to bowl frames. The officers did not know a video camera had been set up in the house.
■UNITED STATES
Imam tip-off sparks concern
The role that a New York City imam and one of his police contacts played in a terrorism probe that touched off a national threat warning has raised questions about investigators’ handling of the case. Authorities say Queens imam Ahmad Afzali tipped off terror suspect Najibullah Zazi on Sept. 11 that New York Police Department detectives were asking questions about him. The detectives considered the imam a reliable ally. That’s fueled questions about whether police ruined the surveillance of Zazi by reaching out to the former informant without the FBI’s knowledge. Zazi, his father and Afzali were arrested over the weekend on charges that they lied to the FBI.
■UNITED STATES
Workers fired over death
Sixteen corrections employees in Phoenix, Arizona, have been fired, suspended or otherwise disciplined for their roles in the death of an inmate. Authorities say 48-year-old Marcia Powell collapsed in heat of more than 40ºC after spending four hours in an outdoor holding cell on May 20, and died of a heat-related illness. Powell had first and second-degree burns on her face and body and a core body temperature of 42ºC. She was serving a 27-month sentence for prostitution.
■MEXICO
Kahlo works may be fake
Federal prosecutors said on Tuesday they are investigating a claim that more than 1,000 items attributed to artist Frida Kahlo were forged. The Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Trust filed a complaint saying signed paintings, notes and drawings featured in two recent art history books are fake, the Attorney General’s Office said. “We must stop the commercialization of false works,” said Hilda Trujillo, director of the Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Museums. The works in question come from a private collection and appear in two books, Finding Frida Kahlo and The Labyrinth of Frida Kahlo: Death, Pain and Ambivalence.
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