NEWS OF THE DAY
_1 Witness recants: The key witness in a murder that sent a teenage boy to prison in Maine for 27 years recanted Thursday and accused authorities of coercing her testimony. The stunning declaration led a judge in Portland to set bail in the case, drawing a gasp from the packed courtroom and sending the defendant’s wife to her knees. Tony Sanborn, who was convicted of killing his girlfriend, 16-year-old Jessica Briggs, dropped his head into his hands in apparent disbelief after Hope Cady testified that as a 13-year-old she was pressured by police and prosecutors into identifying Sanborn as the killer. Justice Joyce Wheeler set bail at $25,000, which Sanborn’s family and friends posted later Thursday to get him released.
_2 Babies infected: Over the course of eight months, the lethal bacteria MRSA infected 10 already critically ill infants in the UC Irvine Medical Center’s neonatal intensive care unit — an outbreak that the public is only finding out about now. None of the infants died, hospital officials said. Yet university doctors have not found the source of the infections — which continued even after 220 employees used antiseptic soap and ointment to eliminate bacteria on their skin and in their noses. Orange County health officials have known about the continuing hospital-acquired infections since the middle of December, when lab tests confirmed that five infants had been infected by the same strain of a superbug.
3_ Doctor accused: A doctor was charged Thursday with performing genital mutilation on two young Minnesota girls who traveled to Michigan with their mothers. Dr. Jumana Nagarwala was arrested after the 7-year-olds identified her as the person who performed procedures on them in February at a clinic in suburban Detroit, according to the FBI. Also known as female circumcision and practiced by some religious groups, female genital mutilation of minors is illegal in the U.S. unless there’s a legitimate health reason.
_4 Detention center: A private prison company has announced a $110 million federal contract to build the first immigrant detention center under the Trump administration. The GEO Group said Thursday that the 1,000-bed detention center will be in Conroe, Texas, north of Houston.
_5 WikiLeaks criticized: CIA Director Mike Pompeo denounced the antisecrecy group WikiLeaks on Thursday as a “hostile intelligence service” and a threat to U.S. national security, a condemnation that differed sharply from President Trump’s past praise of the organization. In his first public speech since becoming America’s spy master, the former Republican congressman escalated the agency’s hostility to WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, accusing them of making common cause with dictators. While “Assange and his ilk” claim they act in the name of liberty and privacy, Pompeo said in Washington that in reality, their mission is “personal self-aggrandizement through the destruction of Western values.”
Chronicle News Services