Providence mayor faces racketeering charges

Providence mayor facesracketeering charges
PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Mayor Vincent Cianci Jr., the city's longest-serving mayor, faces his toughest public challenge yet after being indicted on federal racketeering charges.
Cianci, 59, was charged Monday with soliciting bribes in exchange for city contracts and government promotions during a career that has spanned more than 20 years.
"I will defend these charges until the day I die," a defiant Cianci told reporters at a news conference.
The 97-page indictment alleges that Cianci, his former top aide Frank Corrente and a third defendant ran the city like a criminal enterprise, in one case extorting $250,000 in campaign contributions from members of a towing association that has police contracts.
The mayor also attempted to extort $10,000 from businessman Anthony Freitas, who secretly recorded hundreds of conversations with city officials, collecting key evidence for the FBI's case, prosecutors said.
Coast Guard searchesfor lost fishing boat
ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- A fishing vessel with 15 people on board apparently sank in the Bering Sea in what may be one of the worst fishing disasters in Alaskan waters in nearly two decades.
The body of one crew member from the Arctic Rose was recovered Monday. Officials did not identify the victim.
The Coast Guard planned to continue its search today but warned rescue efforts could be hampered by forecasts of 20- to 25-foot waves and 40 knot winds.
"Anytime you get a system like that it hampers the search efforts. The winds make it harder to find people in the water," said Coast Guard spokesman Keith Alholm.
The icebreaker Polar Star, carrying two helicopters, was due to arrive overnight, and a C-130 plane was to start searching the area at first light today.
The Arctic Rose went down early Monday morning. The Coast Guard picked up an emergency locator beacon signal from the 92-foot vessel at 3:30 a.m. There was no distress call from the crew before the signal, Coast Guard spokeswoman Marshalena Delaney said.
FBI officials investigateNew Jersey senator
WASHINGTON -- A political donor is pushing the federal investigation of Sen. Robert Torricelli's 1996 campaign into personal finance issues with an account of how he tried to subsidize the lawmaker's purchase of a luxury car.
Torricelli, D-N.J., scuttled the deal and bought the Mercedes Benz with his own money after businessman David Chang put several thousand dollars down at a New Jersey dealership, according to lawyers and law enforcement officials familiar with the evidence.
FBI officials are investigating whether Torricelli improperly solicited the car and other gifts from Chang, and agents gathered documents from two dealerships where the senator bought cars in the 1990s, lawyers and officials told The Associated Press.
The issue of gifts -- largely prohibited under congressional ethics rules -- has emerged as one of several disputes between Torricelli and Chang in an investigation that began with allegations of improper donations.
Torricelli's office said Monday that Chang never provided any money to the senator in connection with a purchase of a car, and when the lawmaker learned of Chang's effort to put money down at the car dealership, he "put a stop to it immediately." Torricelli's lawyers repeatedly have attacked Chang as a "pathological liar."
Mad cow risk list
BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Mad cow disease likely exists in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and five other countries because of imports of possibly infected live cattle and byproducts, according to a European Union report released Monday.
The report by the EU's scientific committee also added Albania, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia and Lithuania to countries whose cattle herds could be harboring bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease.
The disease has been confirmed in Britain, Germany, France, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland.
Most Eastern and Central European countries were placed on "at risk" list because of their "significant amounts" of imported live cattle and meat-and-bone meal from EU countries that suffer from mad cow disease, the report said.
Associated Press