A federal jury Monday convicted Washington lobbyist Kevin A. Ring on five of eight counts related to the Jack Abramoff bribery and influence-peddling scandal, handing a victory to the Justice Department unit charged with fighting corruption in government.
After a two-week trial and three days of deliberation, the District panel of eight men and four women found Ring guilty on charges of conspiracy, fraud and illegal gratuities related to his work with disgraced lobbyist Abramoff and his former boss and congressman, John T. Doolittle (R-Calif.).



President Jose Mujica described Uruguay Monday as a "laboratory of confrontation" with Big Tobacco.
James Bonard Fowler is 77 now, but in 1965 he was a white Alabama state trooper facing the rising tide of the civil rights movement. On Monday, at the Perry County Courthouse in Alabama, that past came calling: Mr. Fowler pleaded guilty to the 1965 killing of a black man whose death triggered the historic civil rights marches from Selma to Montgomery.
Tina Fey got a little political airbrushing from PBS Sunday night during its annual broadcast of the Kennedy Center's Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
Here in the vast wilderness surrounding Peru's Alto Purús National Park, the locations of such trees, worth tens of thousands of dollars in the United States, have become closely guarded secrets among members of indigenous tribes.
For the first time, scientists believe they have witnessed the birth of a black hole. The evidence began arriving 30 years ago when a star 50 million light-years away imploded, setting into motion events that created a region where gravity is so great that nothing can escape, even light.





























