Colo. suspect offers to plead guilty

Colo. suspect offers to plead guilty

DENVER

Colorado theater shooting suspect James Holmes has offered to plead guilty and serve the rest of his life in prison to avoid the death penalty — a deal that would bring a swift end to the sometimes wrenching courtroom battle and circumvent a prolonged debate over his sanity.

Prosecutors haven’t said whether they would accept the offer, and victims and survivors of last summer’s massacre were divided on what should be done.

Ex-Fla. GOP head sentenced for theft

ORLANDO, Fla.

The former chairman of the Republican Party of Florida was sentenced Wednesday to 11/2 years in prison for stealing $125,000 in party funds, marking the fall of a man who once was one of the most powerful political figures in the state.

Jim Greer, 50, was sentenced in an Orlando courtroom, more than a month after he pleaded guilty to four counts of theft and a single count of money laundering. The guilty pleas in February ended Greer’s trial before it started.

Part of Berlin Wall removed pre-dawn

BERLIN

For nearly 30 years, the Berlin Wall was the hated symbol of the division of Europe, a gray, concrete mass that snaked through neighborhoods, separating families and friends. On Wednesday, it took hundreds of police to guarantee the safe removal of 15 feet of what’s left of the wall.

Construction crews, protected by about 250 police, hauled down part of the three-quarter of a mile strip of the wall before dawn to provide access to a planned luxury apartment complex overlooking the Spree River.

Even though most of the strip remains intact, the move angered many Berliners, who believe that developers are sacrificing history for profit.

The site, known as the East Side Gallery, has become a major tourist attraction, painted by 120 artists with colorful scenes along the gray concrete tiles.

Study: Longhorn line dates to 1493

AUSTIN, Texas

University of Texas mascot Bevo’s ties to Texas are older than the state itself, new research shows.

According to a study by University of Texas researchers, longhorns are direct descendants of cattle that Christopher Columbus brought to the New World on his second voyage in 1493.

Those cattle were the first in the New World, and their descendants arrived in what would become Texas near the end of the 17th century, according to the study, which was published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Fugitive on FBI list turns himself in

DENVER

One of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives has voluntarily returned from El Salvador to Colorado to face a first-degree murder charge in a 2011 slaying, the FBI said Wednesday.

Edwin Ernesto Rivera Gracias landed in Centennial, Colo., with FBI agents Wednesday afternoon, less than two weeks after being added to the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.

The surrender of Rivera Gracias, a citizen of El Salvador, came after the FBI announced a $100,000 reward for information leading to his arrest. The FBI isn’t releasing further details related to the reward.

Rivera Gracias was wanted in Jefferson County in the slaying of Richard Limon, 69, whose body was found near a guardrail on Lookout Mountain in 2011. He had been stabbed multiple times.

Combined dispatches