Texas prisoner executed

Texas prisoner executed

HUNTSVILLE, Texas — A man who raped and murdered a 93-year-old woman in her Dallas-area home was executed Wednesday after he apologized to his victim’s relatives.

“I’m sorry for what I did,” William Murray told two nephews of Rena Ratcliff who watched him through a window in the death chamber. “I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me. The Lord has forgiven me.”

Murray then looked through an adjacent window where his mother and two brothers were among the witnesses and said: “I’ll be there waiting for y’all, all right? God bless.”

Eight minutes later at 6:20 p.m., he was pronounced dead.

Murray, a former auto mechanic and laborer from Kaufman, was the ninth prisoner put to death this year in the nation’s most active death-penalty state.

Writer of Motown hits dies

LOS ANGELES — Norman Whitfield, the Grammy-winning songwriter and forward-thinking producer who helped shape the direction of R&B and soul music at Motown Records in the 1960s and ’70s, died Tuesday. He was 67.

Whitfield, the co-writer of dozens of Motown hits, including Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” and producer of most of the Temptations’ recordings, died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, reportedly of complications from his long struggle with diabetes. He also had a history of heart and kidney ailments.

Whitfield wrote, usually with Barrett Strong, and produced such era-defining hits as “Grapevine,” “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg,” “Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)” and “Papa Was a Rolling Stone.” The latter earned Whitfield one of his two Grammy Awards as a songwriter and composer.

5 Americans die in Iraq

BAGHDAD — The U.S. military said today that five American soldiers were killed when a helicopter went down in southern Iraq.

A U.S. statement says the CH-47 Chinook helicopter made a “hard landing” very early this morning about 60 miles west of Basrra.

The Chinook was a part of an aerial convoy flying from Kuwait to the U.S. military base at Balad just north of Iraq.

The military says the cause of the mishap is under investigation.

Rethinking Oktoberfest

BERLIN — Bavaria’s governor on Wednesday backed off an assertion that some people can drive safely after downing 2 liters (4.2 pints) of beer, a comment that drew anger and derision.

Police and political opponents had criticized Guenther Beckstein’s remark Tuesday that “if one drinks the 2 liters over six or seven hours at the Oktoberfest, it is still possible” to drive. The Oktoberfest, Munich’s annual celebration of beer-swilling, opens Saturday.

Beckstein acknowledged that he had made a “rather unsuccessful contribution” to public debate.

“Anyone who drives is better off drinking nothing at all,” he said in Nuremberg.

Colon-cancer screening

ATLANTA — A long-awaited federal study of an X-ray alternative to the dreaded colonoscopy confirms its effectiveness at spotting most cancers, although it was far from perfect.

Medicare is already considering paying for this cheaper, less-intrusive option that could persuade more people to get screened for colon cancer. And some experts believe the new method may boost the 50-percent screening rate for a cancer that is the country’s second-biggest killer.

In the new study, the largest of its kind, the so-called “virtual colonoscopy” identified nine out of 10 people who had cancers and large growths seen by regular colonoscopies.

But there were flaws, too. Among them: The radiologists sometimes misread the X-ray, leading them to spot polyps that weren’t there. That led to unnecessary follow-up testing.

Report: Engineer ran light

LOS ANGELES — The engineer of a commuter train ran through a red light and never hit his brakes in the final moments before last week’s fatal collision with an oncoming freight train, authorities said.

As they sort through the many possible reasons why, investigators also said Tuesday that engineer Robert Sanchez was working an 111‚Ñ2-hour split shift at the time of the crash.

The National Transportation Safety Board said Wednesday night that an examination of Sanchez’s cell phone records showed that he sent text messages while on duty the day of the collision — a violation of Metrolink policy but not illegal. However, the board did not say when Sanchez sent the messages or whether it thinks text messaging played a role in the collision.

Combined dispatches