Grand jury indicts Perry in abuse-of-power case
AUSTIN, Texas – Texas Gov. Rick Perry has been indicted for abuse of power after carrying out a threat to veto funding for state public corruption prosecutors.
The Republican governor is accused of abusing his official powers by publicly promising to veto $7.5 million for the state public integrity unit at the Travis County District Attorney’s office. He was indicted by an Austin grand jury Friday on felony counts of abuse of official capacity and coercion of a public servant. Maximum punishment on the first charge is five to 99 years in prison. The second is two to 10 years.
Perry said he’d veto the funding if the district attorney, Rosemary Lehmberg, didn’t resign. Lehmberg had recently been convicted of drunken driving. When Lehmberg refused, Perry carried out his veto.
Another problem with CDC security reported
NEW YORK – An investigation into a potentially dangerous blunder at a government lab found that a scientist kept silent about the accident and revealed it only after other employees noticed something fishy.
Officials on Friday released the results of an internal probe into the accident, which happened in January at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
A deadly strain of bird flu was accidentally mixed with a tamer strain. The mix was sent to another CDC lab in Atlanta and to an outside lab in Athens, Georgia.
No one was sickened by bird flu. But unsuspecting scientists worked with the viral mix for months before it was discovered.
Real toll from Ebola not known, group says
MONROVIA, Liberia – The Ebola outbreak that has killed more than 1,100 people in West Africa could last another six months, the Doctors Without Borders charity group said Friday. One aid worker acknowledged the true death toll is still unknown.
New figures released by the World Health Organization showed that Liberia has recorded more Ebola deaths 413 than any of the other affected countries.
Tarnue Karbbar, who works for the aid group Plan International in northern Liberia, said response teams simply aren’t able to document all the erupting Ebola cases. Many of the sick are still being hidden at home by their relatives, who are too fearful of going to an Ebola treatment center.
Others are being buried before the teams can get to remote areas, he said. In the last several days, about 75 cases have emerged in Voinjama, a single Liberian district.
Associated Press
