Court: Widow can’t use husband’s frozen sperm

Court: Widow can’t use husband’s frozen sperm

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A state appellate court has decided that frozen sperm left behind by a deceased Sacramento County deputy sheriff cannot be used by his widow to become pregnant.

Justices in the 3rd District Court of Appeal were asked to decide whether the widow, Iris Kievernagel, had the right to conceive a child from her late husband’s frozen sperm.

Deputies Joseph Kievernagel, 36, and Kevin Blount, 29, died in a crash July 13, 2005. The helicopter they were in was responding to a burglary call when it went down near Lake Natoma, slamming into a hillside and rolling down a ravine.

According to the court’s opinion, issued Thursday, the Kievernagels were happily married for 10 years before the helicopter crash. The court noted, however, that Joseph Kievernagel “was opposed to having children, but agreed to the fertility procedures due to Iris’s strong desire for children.”

The Superior Court verdict was that Joseph Kievernagel’s intent was to have his frozen sperm discarded.

Lehman outlook dims although talks continue

NEW YORK — The outlook for Lehman Brothers’ future seemed dim Sunday after Barclays PLC withdrew its bid to buy the beleaguered investment bank and government officials and Wall Street bankers remained at an impasse about a rescue plan.

The withdrawal of Barclays, which, along with Bank of America Corp., was considered a front-runner to buy Lehman, demonstrated how complicated negotiations over Lehman’s fate had become. And, Sunday afternoon, The Wall Street Journal reported that Bank of America and Merrill Lynch & Co. were involved in merger talks — which would knock Bank of America out of contention as well.

The Lehman talks were aimed at selling the investment bank in whole or in part. The sticking point was the potential buyers’ insistence that the Bush administration offer the kind of help it did in brokering the buyout of Bear Stearns Cos. last March, when the government agreed to a $29 billion loan to buyer JPMorgan Chase & Co. from the Federal Reserve. But Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said the government will not help close a Lehman deal.

Lehman declined to comment.

Investigating train wreck

LOS ANGELES — Federal investigators on Sunday combed railroad tracks and crushed wreckage looking for evidence to explain the nation’s deadliest rail disaster in 15 years and made plans to interview dispatchers.

At the same time, a National Transportation Safety Board spokesman downplayed a report that the engineer of the Metrolink commuter train had sent a text message shortly before Friday’s accident, in which 25 people were killed and 135 were injured when the Metrolink train slammed into an oncoming Union Pacific freight engine on the same track at 40 mph.

Metrolink spokeswoman Denise Tyrrell had already said the commuter train’s engineer was at fault because he failed to stop at a red light on the tracks — but NTSB board members cautioned that they had not completed their investigation.

Petraeus: Progress needed with troops in Afghanistan

BAGHDAD — U.S. Gen. David Petraeus said Sunday that experience in Iraq shows it will take political and economic progress as well as military action to tackle increased violence in Afghanistan.

“You don’t kill or capture your way out of an industrial strength insurgency,” he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

His comments come as a debate over the need to redeploy troops from Iraq to Afghanistan has become a central issue in the U.S. presidential campaign.

Petraeus, who is widely credited with pulling Iraq back from the brink of civil war, is taking over as chief of U.S. Central Command, the headquarters overseeing U.S. military involvement throughout the Middle East, as well as Afghanistan and the rest of Central Asia.

Forces attack rebel areas

KHARTOUM, Sudan — Sudanese government forces waging an offensive in northern Darfur have attacked rebel-held areas farther south, including a base belonging to a group that signed a peace deal with the government, rebels said Sunday.

At least three fighters were killed and nine injured in an attack on the base Saturday, said Mohamed Bashir, chief of staff of former rebel leader Minni Minawi, the only one to sign a peace deal with the government. The assault came just before sunset as the fighters in Kolge, in the east Jebel Marra area, were preparing for the Muslim meal to break the fast during the month of Ramadan.

Combined dispatches