Texas executes man

Texas executes man

HUNTSVILLE, TEXAS

Texas executed on Tuesday a man convicted of the 1987 killings of a father and his infant son and who three years later at his capital murder trial grabbed a loaded gun from a drawer in the courtroom and tried to attack the judge.

James Bigby, 61, became the fourth inmate in Texas and the sixth nationally to be executed by injection this year.

Strapped to the death chamber gurney, Bigby looked at six relatives of his victims and repeatedly apologized.

Texas lawmaker mocks abortion law

austin, texas

A Texas lawmaker is making a point about legislation that restricts women’s access to health care and abortions by proposing to fine men $100 when they masturbate.

Alongside the penalty for wasting semen not resulting in a pregnancy, Democratic Rep. Jessica Farrar’s bill would require a “medically unnecessary digital rectal exam” before any man undergoes a vasectomy or can be prescribed Viagra.

The 11th-term Democrat said that her bill mimics how a woman seeking an abortion is forced by Texas law to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound, which “has nothing to do with her health care.”

While the proposal was meant to mock Republicans, she said it also highlights the obstacles women face “that were placed there by legislatures making it very difficult for them to access health care.”

Official: More than 250 skulls are found

MEXICO CITY

More than 250 skulls have been found over the last several months in what appears to be a drug cartel mass burial ground on the outskirts of the city of Veracruz, prosecutors said Tuesday.

Veracruz state’s top prosecutor, Jorge Winckler, said the clandestine pits appeared to contain remains of cartel victims killed years ago.

The news came as no surprise to Lucia Diaz, one of the mothers of people who have disappeared whose group is known as Colectivo Solecito.

The mothers pushed authorities to investigate the fields where the skulls were found because they suspected more than a year ago that the wooded area known as Colinas de Santa Fe was a secret burial ground.

US: Colombia’s coca production surges

PUERTO BELLO, Colombia

Coca production in Colombia has surged to levels unseen in two decades of U.S. eradication efforts, according to a White House report released Tuesday.

Cultivation of the plant used to make cocaine rose 18 percent last year from 2015, with coca crops planted on an estimated 465,000 acres of the Andean nation.

When the U.S.-backed anti-narcotics initiative Plan Colombia began in 1999, Colombia had 304,000 acres of coca – about one-third less than it did last year. Those figures rose to a high of 420,000 acres in 2001 and then began to decline. The biggest percentage increase over the last two decades took place in 2015, when coca production rose nearly 42 percent.

Retired admiral indicted in bribery

san diego

A retired Navy admiral and eight other current and former military officers were bribed with sex, trips and other lavish perks, according to an indictment unsealed Tuesday in a burgeoning scandal involving a Malaysian defense contractor nicknamed “Fat Leonard.”

Retired Adm. Bruce Loveless, 53, and the others were accused of accepting the services of prostitutes and other bribes from Leonard Francis in exchange for classified information that helped his company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia.

The indictment says Francis once rented the MacArthur Suite at the Manila Hotel, where memorabilia of Gen. Douglas MacArthur was used for sex acts with prostitutes.

Associated Press