WASHINGTON - For the sixth successive week, average retail gasoline prices have dropped nationwide, falling below $2.30 a gallon for the first time since early August.
The federal Energy Information Administration said yesterday that U.S. motorists paid $2.296 cents a gallon on average for regular grade last week, a fall of 8 cents from the previous week. Pump prices are still 32.7 cents higher than a year ago.
Average retail prices peaked at $3.07 a gallon in early September, a reflection of the extreme tightness in the market after Hurricane Katrina, which knocked out refineries in the Gulf region, as well as pipelines that deliver fuel to the East Coast and Midwest. Prices have since fallen because of the recovery of oil production and refining plants, increased imports from Europe and a slight moderation of demand.
GOLDEN, Colo. - A woman who wanted to be a "cool mom" was sentenced yesterday to 30 years in prison for plying teenage boys with alcohol and drugs and having sex with them.
Silvia Johnson, 41, of suburban Arvada, wept through some parts of her three-hour sentencing, including when she told District Court Judge Peter Weir she was sorry.
Weir said he weighed mitigating circumstances - such as Johnson's age, her lack of a felony record, and her documented mental-health issues - in coming to his decision. But he could not look past Johnson's "ultimate act of selfishness," he said.
In 1995, astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope produced "The Pillars of Creation," an image of stars emerging from biblical-looking clouds of dust that became an icon of the space age.
Now astronomers operating NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have made their own version. The new image, appropriately called "Mountains of Creation," shows star-forming pillars in a region known as W5 in the constellation Cassiopeia. These pillars, at heights up to 40 light-years, are 10 times as large as those in the famous Hubble image.
The astronomers, led by Lori E. Allen of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, say that the towering mountains of the new image probably represent the densest, most fecund remnants of a larger cloud that is being eroded by radiation and winds of particles from a ferociously bright star in the region.
AUSTIN - An attorney for U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay said yesterday that he will request an early December trial date for DeLay, the former House majority leader, if the case gets that far.
Attorney Dick DeGuerin said in a letter that "time is of the essence" in the case that has temporarily forced DeLay to step down from his top House post. Judge Pat Priest has set a Nov. 22 hearing to consider requests to drop the charges against DeLay and his co-defendants.
"Should the indictments survive the hearings of November 22, we will request a trial date in early December," DeGuerin wrote in his letter to Priest.
DeLay and two of his associates are charged with criminal conspiracy and money laundering in the case, which stems from fundraising and spending in the 2002 Texas legislative races.
WASHINGTON - The federal coordinator for Gulf Coast recovery efforts said yesterday that he will focus on ensuring the region's levees are stronger than they were before Hurricane Katrina - but he cannot offer assurances that they could withstand another storm of that size.
Donald Powell said he may not be able to quantify how long-term recovery efforts are progressing for at least eight months in the region, which he compared to a war zone. But he said he and local authorities need to focus first on security - making sure that levees can withstand another big storm.
WASHINGTON - The prosecutor in the CIA leak case has prompted another fight with the news media, this time over access to material prosecutors will turn over to defense attorneys for I. Lewis Libby.
Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is asking for a protective court order that would bar Libby and his legal team from publicly disclosing "all materials produced by the government."
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