Balloon-boy parents sentenced to jail

Balloon-boy parents sentenced to jail

FORT COLLINS, Colo. — The parents who pulled the balloon-boy hoax in hopes of landing a reality TV show were sentenced to jail Wednesday — 90 days for him, 20 days for her — and barred from profiting from their newfound celebrity status for the next four years.

Choking back tears, Richard Heene, 48, apologized in court for the frenzy he caused when he claimed his 6-year-old son, Falcon, had floated away in a giant helium balloon shaped like a flying saucer.

The sentencing was the culmination of a saga that transfixed the nation in October with the sight of the silvery balloon hurtling through the sky on live television. In the end, it was all a publicity stunt by a family broke and desperate for attention and money after networks kept rejecting their reality-TV-show pitches.

Former President Carter apologizes for comments

ATLANTA — Former President Jimmy Carter apologized for any words or deeds that may have upset the Jewish community in an open letter meant to improve an often-tense relationship.

He said he was offering an Al Het, a prayer said on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. It signifies a plea for forgiveness.

“We must not permit criticisms for improvement to stigmatize Israel,” Carter said in the letter, which was first sent to JTA, a wire service for Jewish newspapers, and provided Wednesday to The Associated Press. “As I would have noted at Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but which is appropriate at any time of the year, I offer an Al Het for any words or deeds of mine that may have done so.”

Carter, who during his presidency brokered the first Israeli-Arab peace treaty, outraged many Jews with his 2006 book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” Critics contend he unfairly compared Israeli treatment of Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza to the legalized racial oppression that once existed in South Africa.

Teresa Heinz undergoing breast-cancer treatment

BOSTON — Teresa Heinz says she is being treated for breast cancer discovered through mammography and argues that younger women should continue undergoing the tests despite a federal panel’s recent recommendation to reduce their frequency.

The 71-year-old wife of the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, told The Associated Press that the cost of mammography is far lower than the physical and personal tolls women age 40 to 60 face if their cancer goes undetected early and they later have to be treated with aggressive chemotherapy.

Charge dropped in triplets’ injuries

PITTSBURGH — Prosecutors have dropped an aggravated- assault charge against a Pittsburgh man accused of injuring his girlfriend’s 2-year-old triplets, one of whom died.

Allegheny County district attorney’s office spokesman Mike Manko says 20-year-old Anthony George is still charged with endangering the welfare of a child. But the aggravated-assault charge was dropped Wednesday for lack of evidence.

George was baby-sitting his girlfriend’s triplets at their home Nov. 29 when they suffered the injuries.

George told police that the girls were injured in a “domino effect” when all three toddlers fell down the stairs. Doctors say Kaiyah Beck, who died at a hospital, suffered a head injury that isn’t consistent with a fall down the stairs.

Ethiopia sentences Pa. professor to death

PHILADELPHIA — A Bucknell University professor was sentenced Tuesday to death in absentia by an Ethiopian court that convicted him of plotting to assassinate government officials.

Berhanu Nega, of Lewisburg, Pa., an associate professor of economics at the Union County, Pa., school, was one of five people to receive death sentences and accused of planning an attack in 2005 when nearly 200 people were killed in postelection violence. Nega, 51, denied the charges and called the sentence an expected move of a terrorist government.

Nega, an exiled opposition leader, was elected mayor of Addis Ababa in 2005.

He was the first elected mayor in Ethiopia’s history, but the ruling party declared victory, and Nega was among 100 opposition leaders arrested and jailed. Nega was held in prison for 21 months.

Nega and others eventually were pardoned and freed. Nega and his family returned to Pennsylvania in August 2007, and the professor resumed teaching at Bucknell. Last week, the Ethiopian government revoked his pardon.

Combined dispatches