Judge gives press access

Judge gives press access

JENA, La. — A judge ruled Wednesday that the public and the news media should have full access to all legal proceedings involving Mychal Bell, one of the teenage defendants in the racially-charged Jena 6 case in Louisiana, whose prosecution had been shrouded in secrecy on orders of the trial judge.

Ruling in a lawsuit brought by the Chicago Tribune and joined by a coalition of major U.S. media companies, Rapides Parish District Judge Thomas Yeager ordered that Bell’s upcoming criminal trial, as well as any pretrial hearings, must be open to the press and the public. Yeager also ordered that the court record and transcripts of any closed proceedings held so far be made available to the press, and that attorneys for Bell be released from the trial judge’s gag order directing them not to speak about the case.

Gulping down a feast

NEW YORK — It was a Thanksgiving meal for 10, but Tim Janus devoured it alone in just 15 minutes as part of a public relations stunt to draw attention to New York City’s hungry.

“What’s so important about today is that it begins to fill my stomach up and I can now leave a little more for everybody else,” Janus said after consuming a 10-pound turkey, 4 pounds of mashed potatoes, 3 pounds of cranberry sauce and 21⁄2 pounds of beans.

And he still had room for dessert: an entire pumpkin pie.

Janus — a Major League Eater champion who holds world titles in cannolis, marshmallow Peeps and tiramisu — said the league was donating $6,000 to the Food Bank for New York City — a sum that will provide 30,000 meals. Last week, the league gave $4,000 to Second Harvest food bank.

Jellyfish attack salmon

DUBLIN, Ireland — The only salmon farm in Northern Ireland has lost its entire population of more than 100,000 fish, worth some $2 million, to a spectacular jellyfish attack, its owners said Wednesday.

The Northern Salmon Co. Ltd. said billions of jellyfish — in a dense pack of about 10 square miles and 35 feet deep — overwhelmed the fish last week in two net pens about a mile off the coast of the Glens of Antrim, north of Belfast.

Managing director John Russell said the company’s dozen workers tried to rescue the salmon, but their three boats struggled for hours to push their way through the mass of jellyfish. All the fish were dead or dying from stings and stress by the time the boats reached the pens, he said.

Russell, who previously worked at Scottish salmon farms and took the Northern Ireland job just three days before the attack, said he had never seen anything like it in 30 years in the business.

“It was unprecedented, absolutely amazing. The sea was red with these jellyfish and there was nothing we could do about it, absolutely nothing,” he said.

The species of jellyfish responsible, Pelagia nocticula — popularly known as the mauve stinger — is noted for its purplish night-time glow and its propensity for terrorizing bathers in the warmer Mediterranean Sea.

Naked, drunk, arrested

BRANDYWINE HUNDRED, Del. — A naked, drunk man was arrested after he caused three accidents by running into highway traffic, police said.

Two people stopped to try to help 26-year-old Ardonas Gilbert, who was running naked along the southbound lanes of Interstate 95 on Monday night, but he reportedly cursed at them and punched them, Delaware State Police said.

Gilbert then ran into traffic, causing three accidents as motorists tried to avoid him, police said. No one was seriously injured.

Gilbert, of Chester, Pa., was charged with two counts of assault and a single count of being drunk on a highway.

Jilted lover is jailed

MADRID, Spain — A Spaniard who defied a restraining order and went on a television show to beg his estranged girlfriend to marry him, only to be snubbed, was ordered jailed Wednesday on suspicion of stabbing her to death, officials said.

Ricardo Navarro, 30, had been convicted three weeks ago of abusing the woman, a Russian identified only as Svetlana, and a court issued an order barring him from coming within 500 yards of her, a court said.

Still, Navarro and the woman took part in a popular daytime TV talk show on Nov. 14, during which he fell to his knees, cried and offered her an engagement ring.

The woman, also 30, said she did not want to marry him or reconcile in any way. Four days later, she was found with her throat cut in the elevator of her apartment building in the eastern city of Alicante. She died Monday, and police arrested Navarro.

Combined dispatches