FLORIDA
Kirby Archer, 36, was sentenced to five consecutive life terms in the hijacking of the “Joe Cool” yacht in September 2007. Archer, who pleaded guilty in July, got one life sentence each on four counts of murder and a fifth life term for conspiracy.
TEXAS
The Brownsville Independent School District, one of the nation’s poorest urban districts, was awarded the coveted $1 million Broad Prize for Urban Education for guiding its nearly 50,000 students toward academic achievement.
GEORGIA
The children of Coretta Scott King and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. faced off in an Atlanta courtroom in a dispute over their mother’s personal papers.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
The U.S. will eventually stop all exports of elemental mercury, a neurotoxin harmful to humans, under legislation signed into law by President George W. Bush on Tuesday.
ALASKA
A high-level delegation from the Russian energy company Gazprom met in Anchorage with state officials Monday to talk about investing in Alaskan energy projects.
SOMALIA
Guns blazing, soldiers from a semiautonomous Somali region freed a Panama-flagged cargo ship and its 11 crew members from pirates. One soldier was killed in the action. Separately, the pirates holding an arms-laden Ukrainian vessel failed to act on their threat to blow it up.
HAITI
The UN Security Council voted unanimously to renew its peacekeeping mission in Haiti for another year, saying it is needed to reduce violence and crime.
ROMANIA
Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, overthrown in 1989, had no foreign bank accounts, a two-year parliamentary inquiry concluded.
CHINA
Milk recalled
All of mainland China’s milk powder and liquid milk produced before Sept. 14 was ordered pulled off shelves to be tested, the official Xinhua news agency reported. It’s the first time the government issued a recall of products since the tainted milk scandal began. Read the full story at chicagotribune.com/chinamilk
RUSSIA
“Hi, Peter Pan.”
— Kelly Miller, speaking by video link to her boyfriend, video game designer Richard Garriott, as he boarded the international space station 35 years after his astronaut father, Owen Garriott, orbited in Skylab. Garriott chuckled and replied, “I can fly.” He was greeted by Sergei Volkov, the son of a veteran of the Soviet space program.
MARYLAND
NASA engineers say they know how to fix the broken Hubble Space Telescope: They have to wake up computer parts that have been sleeping in space for more than 18 years, which should enable Hubble to resume operation by Friday.
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— Page compiled from Tribune news services
