Bedingfield to perform at Dec. 11 Nobel concert

Bedingfield to perform at Dec. 11 Nobel concert

OSLO — British pop star Natasha Bedingfield will perform at the Dec. 11 Nobel Peace Prize Concert honoring this year’s winner, U.S. President Barack Obama, organizers said Wednesday.

Bedingfield, a chart- topper in the U.S. and Europe, will join Wyclef Jean, Toby Keith and Chinese pianist Lang Lang, organizers said.

The concert will also include performances by Donna Summer, American jazz singer Esperanza Spading, Irish pop quartet Westlife, Puerto Rican singer Luis Fonsi, Norwegian fiddler Alexander Rybak and Amadou & Mariam, a blues and jazz duet from Mali.

American actor and rap artist Will Smith and his wife, actress Jada Pinkett Smith, will host the concert, which is held in Oslo the day after the presentation of the Nobel Peace Prize, also in the Norwegian capital. The show will be broadcast to “a global television audience,” organizers said.

Couple killed in small town

WEBSTER PLANTATION, Maine — A man who lent money to friends despite his own financial troubles was killed along with his wife in their trailer home over the weekend, jolting this community that is home to about 70 people and only a couple of paved roads.

On Tuesday, residents were left wondering what happened to Michael and Valerie Miller.

Investigators released scant details as they searched for a middle-aged woman believed to have been the last person to have seen the Millers alive, an hour or so before they were found on the kitchen floor Saturday afternoon.

Cleric’s file under review

DENVER — Federal authorities in Colorado are reviewing a 2002 file on a Muslim cleric who communicated with the shooting suspect at the Fort Hood Army base in Texas.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Denver confirmed Tuesday that it has some record of Anwar al-Awlaki.

An official won’t confirm a report by ABC News that the file is about a felony warrant issued on a passport fraud charge but then revoked by the Colorado U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Al-Awlaki is a New Mexico native who attended Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colo., before moving in 2002 to Yemen, where he is at large.

The imam was reportedly corresponding by e-mail with Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who is charged with killing 13 people at Fort Hood last month.

3 killed while hunting deer

SOLEBURY, Pa. — Three hunters, including one apparently killed by his own shotgun, died on the first day of Pennsylvania’s two-week firearm deer season, authorities said Tuesday.

Kenneth Hoagland, 49, of Solebury was found dead near his home shortly after midnight Tuesday, said Solebury Township Police Chief Dominick Bellizzie. Hoagland had a gunshot wound. Autopsy results were expected today, according to the Bucks County Coroner’s Office.

Another hunter in Bedford County was found dead. State police did not immediately release the hunter’s identity but said the death was not suspicious.

A third hunter, Dustin Manning, 30, of Pleasant Gap died of head injuries when he fell from a makeshift ladder he was using as a tree stand in Plumcreek Township, according to Armstrong County Coroner Robert Bower.

Gunmen slay witness

MEXICO CITY — Gunmen burst in to a Starbucks coffee shop Tuesday and killed a former policeman who was a protected witness in a drug corruption case, the second death of a high-profile witness in Mexico in less than two weeks.

Edgar Bayardo was gunned down in the upper middle-class Del Valle neighborhood of the capital, and a man with him was severely wounded, city prosecutor Jaime Slomianski Aguilar said. Another customer who apparently had nothing to do with Bayardo also was wounded.

Breast-feeding mother smothers 4-week-old

LONDON — A breast- feeding mother accidentally smothered her 4-week old daughter aboard a United Airlines flight from Washington, D.C., to Kuwait, a British tabloid reported Tuesday.

The Sun newspaper said that the mother, who it said was a 29-year-old Egyptian-born woman, fell asleep as she breast-fed on the jet and awoke to find that the child had been smothered. The paper said the plane was diverted to London’s Heathrow in an attempt to save the baby’s life.

The police said in a statement that results of an autopsy were still pending.

Associated Press