SOUTH

STEWART TO SERVE TIME IN WEST VIRGINIA Martha Stewart will do her time farther from home than she had hoped, at a remote West Virginia prison where inmates sleep in bunk beds and rise at 6 a.m. to do menial labor for pennies an hour. The millionaire celebrity homemaker said yesterday that she has been assigned to the minimum-security women’s prison at Alderson.

Stewart, convicted in March of lying about a stock sale, had asked to serve her five-month prison term in Danbury, Conn., close to her 90-year-old mother and her own home in nearby Westport.

But a source familiar with the government’s decision, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press that Alderson was selected because it was more remote and less accessible to the media than Danbury or Stewart’s second choice of Coleman, Fla.

Those prisons are also more overcrowded, the source said. The Coleman prison, for example, is crowded with inmates moved from other Florida prisons because of the recent hurricanes.

Stewart, 63, must report to Alderson by October 8. She was allowed to remain free while she appealed her conviction, but decided earlier this month to serve her time right away, without waiting for her appeals to run their course, in order to put the “nightmare” behind her.

– Associated Press

HEALTH

IMPLANTED DEVICE SAID TO PREVENT STROKES A tiny tent-like device implanted into the heart appears to block strokes caused by a common irregular heartbeat, sealing off a spot where dangerous blood clots form, German and American researchers reported yesterday. While more research is needed, stroke specialists said the implant could offer long-needed protection for thousands of patients with a trial fibrillation. In early stage testing of 111 patients at very high risk of a stroke, the PLAATO device cut that risk by two-thirds, Dr. Yves Bayard of the CardioVascular Center in Frankfurt, Germany, told a gathering of cardiovascular researchers in Washington. These were “the worst imaginable patients,” yet the early signs of stroke protection “are overwhelming,” added Dr. Paul Kramer of Shawnee Mission, Kan., who helped lead the American half of that study. About 2.5 million Americans have atrial fibrillation, a type of irregular heartbeat most common among the elderly and on the rise as the population ages. It occurs when the top chambers of the heart, called the atria, speed up so fast that instead of pumping blood they quiver – literally looking like a bag of worms.

– Associated Press

MIDWEST

MAN CHARGED WITH BOMB THREAT MILWAUKEE – A man in prison on drug offenses was charged yesterday with threatening to blow up a federal building in downtown Milwaukee with a delivery truck filled with explosives. Steven J.Parr,39,was charged the same day he was to be sent to a halfway house in Janesville. U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic said Parr expressed hatred for the federal government and spoke about retaliating against law enforcement when he got out of prison. “We consider him extremely dangerous,” he said. It was unclear when Parr planned to take action, or if he had the materials and resources to carry out such an attack. Parr allegedly planned to blow up the Reuss Federal Plaza, a 14-story blue building that houses more than 800 federal employees and multiple agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Defense. Parr’s cellmate alerted federal authorities in two letters dated August 23, a criminal complaint said. The cellmate, whose name was withheld, said that Parr has extensive knowledge in bomb-making and considers Unabomber Ted Kaczynski one of his heroes, the complaint said.

– Associated Press