Insider-trading bill

Insider-trading bill

WASHINGTON

Congress is rushing to make it absolutely clear to everyone that its members are banned from insider stock trading, hoping to improve their sagging image that has approval ratings at historic lows.

Senators made the first move Monday. Their 93-2 procedural vote cleared the way for Senate passage — possibly later this week — of a bill that would require disclosure of stock transactions within 30 days and explicitly prohibit members of Congress from initiating trades based on nonpublic information they acquired in their official capacity.

Man plans appeal

TORONTO

At least one of the three members of an Afghan family found guilty of killing three teenage sisters and another woman intends to appeal the conviction, the man’s lawyer said Monday.

Prosecutors said the defendants killed the four women because they dishonored the family by defying its strict rules on dress, dating, socializing and using the Internet.

Hamed Shafia’s lawyer, Patrick McCann, said his client will appeal and he believes the other two will as well.

Python threat

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.

A burgeoning population of huge pythons — many of them pets that were turned loose by their owners when they got too big — appears to be wiping out large numbers of raccoons, opossums, bobcats and other mammals in the Everglades, a study says.

The study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that sightings of medium-size mammals are down dramatically in areas where pythons and other large, non-native constrictor snakes are known to be lurking.

Associated Press