Inmate is executed for killing policeman

Inmate is executed for killing policeman

HUNTSVILLE, TEXAS

Texas inmate Daniel Lee Lopez got his wish Wednesday when he was executed for striking and killing a police lieutenant with an SUV during a chase more than six years ago.

The lethal injection was carried out after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected appeals from his attorneys, who disregarded Lopez’s desire to die and disagreed with lower court rulings that found Lopez was competent to make that decision.

Attorney David Dow, who represented Lopez, also argued the March 2009 crime was not a capital murder because Lopez didn’t intend to kill Corpus Christi Lt. Stuart Alexander.

Schools in Hawaii consider ‘heat days’

HONOLULU

Teachers in Hawaii say their classrooms are so hot they are sending students to the nurse with symptoms of heat exhaustion.

Unbearably hot classrooms have prompted school officials to consider having “heat days” — like snow days — to cancel school when it’s too hot to learn.

More than 90 percent of Hawaii’s schools don’t have air conditioning.

The lack of air conditioning comes during a particularly scorching year for the state. The National Weather Service says Honolulu temperatures reached record highs at least 25 times in the last year.

Experts: Long-term health risks likely from mine waste

DURANGO, COLO.

Toxic waste that gushed from a Colorado mine and threatened downstream water supplies in at least three states will continue to be dangerous when contaminated sediment gets stirred up from the river bottom, authorities said Wednesday, suggesting there is no easy fix to what could be a long-term public health risk.

The immediate impact of the 3 million gallon spill Aug. 5 eased as the plume of contamination dissipated on its way to Lake Powell along the Utah-Arizona border. But the strong dose of arsenic, cadmium, lead and other heavy metals settled out as the wastewater traveled downstream, layering river bottoms with contaminants sure to pose risks.

US F-16 fighters fly 1st missions from Turkey

WASHINGTON

The U.S. on Wednesday launched its first airstrikes by Turkey-based F-16 fighter jets against Islamic State targets in Syria, marking a limited escalation of a yearlong air campaign that critics have called excessively cautious.

In a brief statement the Pentagon announced the F-16 strikes were launched from Incirlik air base in southern Turkey but provided no details on the number or types of targets struck.

A U.S. defense official said later that two of the six F-16s based at Incirlik flew the mission over Syria to hit one or more targets that had been selected in advance.

Appeal won over federal mug shots

DETROIT

The government must release mug shots of federal criminal defendants in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee, an appeals panel said Wednesday in a clash over privacy and public records.

A three-judge panel at a federal appeals court said it must follow a 1996 decision that released photos to the Detroit Free Press in a similar dispute. Nonetheless, it also encouraged the U.S. Justice Department to keep fighting. The panel suggested the government should ask the full 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to take a new look at the 1996 precedent.

The Free Press sued in 2013 after the U.S. Marshals Service declined to release photos of police officers charged with corruption.

Associated Press