U.S. & WORLD NEWS DIGEST | Obama to CEOs: Help America

Obama to CEOs: Help America

WASHINGTON

Echoing John F. Kennedy, President Barack Obama prodded business leaders Monday to “ask yourselves what you can do for America,” not just for company bottom lines, even as he sought to smooth his uneasy relations with the nation’s corporate executives. Speaking to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the president urged the business community to help accelerate the slow economic recovery by increasing hiring and unleashing some of the $2 trillion piling up on their balance sheets.

Website: Chechen leader claims blast

MOSCOW

A website affiliated with Chechen rebels has released a video in which insurgent leader Doku Umarov claims responsibility for last month’s deadly suicide bombing at Russia’s largest airport and threatens more bloodshed if Russia does not leave the region. The Kavkaz Center website says it received the video late Monday. It was not clear when or where the video was recorded.

US recognizes Southern Sudan

WASHINGTON

The U.S. said Monday it would recognize an independent Southern Sudan and review its designation of Sudan’s government in Khartoum as a state sponsor of terrorism after that African nation accepted the south’s vote to secede.

Election officials said Monday that more than 98 percent of ballots in the Jan. 9 vote were in favor of independence, meaning Southern Sudan will become the world’s newest country in July.

J. Paul Getty III dies

LOS ANGELES

J. Paul Getty III, a scion of the Getty oil dynasty whose tragedies — mutilation by kidnappers in the early 1970s and an incapacitating, drug-induced stroke in the 1980s — brought into high relief the dysfunctional relations that beset his famously wealthy family, has died in Buckinghamshire, England. He was 54.

Getty, who had homes in the Los Angeles area for some years after his ordeals, died Saturday after a long illness, according to a statement from his actor-son, Balthazar.

Left nearly blind and a quadriplegic after the stroke, Getty was known to the public largely for his misfortunes.

The most sensational event in the family’s history was the young Getty’s 1973 kidnapping from a Rome piazza when he was 16. Several days after his disappearance, his kidnappers notified a local newspaper that he was being held by the Mafia. His grandfather and father at first believed the kidnapping to be a hoax and refused to pay any ransom until incontrovertible evidence was provided: young Getty’s severed right ear and photos showing him shorn of the body part.

NY TV exec guilty of beheading wife

BUFFALO, N.Y.

The founder of a Muslim-oriented New York television station was convicted Monday of beheading his wife in 2009 in the studio the couple had opened to counter negative stereotypes of Muslims after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Muzzammil “Mo” Hassan never denied that he killed Aasiya Hassan inside the suburban Buffalo station the couple established to promote cultural understanding. A jury deliberated for one hour before rejecting his claim that the killing was justified because he was long abused by and afraid of his wife.

Hassan, who’s stocky and more than 6 feet tall, acted as his own lawyer during the trial. He said nothing when the verdict was read.

Combined dispatches