Nation & World Digest

Regulators shut down Ohio’s AmTrust Bank

WASHINGTON — Regulators on Friday shut down Ohio’s AmTrust Bank, the fourth-largest bank to fail this year. They also closed five others, bringing to 130 the number of U.S. banks to be brought down so far in 2009 by recession and mountains of bad debt.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took over AmTrust Bank, based in Cleveland, with about $12 billion in assets and $8 billion in deposits. Its failure is expected to cost the federal deposit insurance fund an estimated $2 billion.

In addition to its branches in Ohio, AmTrust — formerly Ohio Savings — had branches in Florida and the Phoenix area.

New York Community Bank, based in Westbury, N.Y., agreed to assume the deposits of AmTrust Bank and about $9 billion of its assets. The FDIC will retain the rest for eventual sale. AmTrust’s 66 branches will reopen starting today as offices of New York Community Bank, the FDIC said.

101 die in explosion, fire in Russian nightclub

MOSCOW — An explosion and fire apparently caused by pyrotechnics tore through a nightclub in the Russian city of Perm early Saturday, killing 101 people, according to news reports.

Regional security minister Igor Orlov said the club had a suspended plastic ceiling that caught fire quickly when ignited by so-called “cold fireworks,” which generally are fountain-type displays with lower temperatures than conventional fireworks, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

State television showed charred bodies lying in rows outside the club amid a light snowfall.

Markin said most of the victims were young people and that there was no suspicion of a terrorist attack.

Taliban attack on mosque kills Pakistani officers

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan — A Taliban suicide squad targeted Pakistani military officers and their families praying at a mosque Friday close to army headquarters in a gruesome display of the militants’ ability to strike at the center of power in this U.S.-allied, nuclear-armed nation.

The barrage of bombs and bullets left 37 people dead, including seven senior officers and 17 children.

The deaths of so many top brass inside a heavily fortified area a few miles from the capital was a major coup for the Pakistani insurgents, who are under pressure as the army pushes an offensive against their stronghold of South Waziristan along the Afghan border.

Customer complained of gas pedal before accident

SAN DIEGO — A San Diego County sheriff’s report says a customer complained of gas-pedal problems with a dealer’s loaner Lexus three days before the same car accelerated out of control and killed a California Highway Patrol officer and three family members.

The report obtained Friday by the San Diego Union-Tribune says the man told a receptionist at the El Cajon dealership that the gas pedal on the Lexus was sticking, the same problem that led to the deadly crash three days later on Aug. 28.

The man told investigators he was worried and emphasized the problem.

The crash killed 45-year-old Officer Mark Saylor, his wife, daughter and brother-in-law and led to a massive recall of several Lexus and Toyota models.

Store owner admits he stole winning lottery ticket

TORONTO — A store owner pleaded guilty Friday to fraud and theft for keeping a winning multimillion-dollar lottery ticket for himself when the real winners brought it in to be validated.

Hafiz Malik stole the ticket, worth $5.4 million, while he ran a convenience store in Toronto in June 2004 and cashed it in about six months later. He admitted his guilt in an agreed statement of facts read into court Friday.

Police seized Malik’s assets, including his home, bank account, investment account and three vehicles. Malik, 62, faces up to 10 years in jail.

The four real winners, co-workers at a school board, realized something was amiss after checking the lottery Web site a year after the draw.

They eventually got their check, in addition to $741,000 in interest they would have earned had the ticket not been stolen.

Last of Clancy Brothers musical group dies at 74

DUBLIN — Irish balladeer Liam Clancy, last of the Clancy Brothers troupe whose feisty, boozy songs of old Ireland struck a sentimental chord worldwide, died Friday in a Cork hospital. He was 74.

Clancy died in his hospital bed flanked by his wife Kim and daughters Siobhan and Fiona, his manager and family said. He suffered for years with incurable pulmonary fibrosis, the same lung-destroying disease that claimed one of his older singing brothers, Bobby, in 2002.

Ireland’s arts minister, Martin Cullen, led nationwide tributes to Clancy, praising his “superb singing, warm voice and gift for communicating in a unique storytelling style.”

Brokaw, wife unhurt in accident that killed 1

NEW YORK — Former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw and his wife said they escaped injury in a three-car accident on a New York City highway that killed one woman and injured a mail-truck driver Friday afternoon.

The accident happened about 1 p.m. as Brokaw was driving in the left lane of the northbound Bruckner Expressway in the Bronx.

The Brokaws said they noticed a spool of cable bouncing in the far-right lane, which caused the driver of the green SUV to lose control as she tried to avoid it.

The Brokaws said the SUV slid into the middle lane, forcing a mail truck into the couple’s lane. The truck collided with Brokaw’s vehicle.

The unidentified woman was thrown from the car and killed.

Associated Press