WEST

BAIL DENIED FOR ENGINEER ACCUSED OF SPYING

SANTA ANA, Calif. – A federal judge in Santa Ana again denied bail Friday for a Downey man charged, along with his brother and wife, of acting as unregistered agents for the Chinese government.

U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney listened to testimony for more than six hours before deciding that Chi Mak, 65, should remain jailed pending trial on May 16.

Prosecutors have accused Chi Mak of taking computer disks from Power Paragon, an Anaheim-based firm that makes technology for American warships, and passing them to his brother, Tai Mak, who was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport as he and his wife prepared to leave the country for Hong Kong.

In court papers, defense attorney Ronald Kaye said documents found at Chi Mak’s home dealt with power technology and not weaponry or nuclear advances.

– Associated Press

INVESTIGATORS PROBE CALIF. PRISON SYSTEM

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – The California prison system’s use of some of its toughest, most feared inmates to help keep order behind bars led to the slaying of a guard, state investigators say. And the FBI is looking into whether the practice contributed to a second killing.

Although the practice is banned in some states, California’s top corrections official defends the limited use of “peacekeepers.” These influential inmates are entrusted to help the staff, smooth racial tension, and in some cases control fellow prisoners.

Critics worry that the freedom accorded peacekeepers lets them run drugs, order inmate assaults, and commit other crimes. Now the practice has come under scrutiny following two California slayings in which high-ranking gang members serving as peacemakers are alleged to have played a role.

Last January, a peacekeeper who had been released from his cell to mediate following a race riot stabbed a guard to death in Chino, the chief deputy for the prison system’s inspector general, Brett Morgan, said.

Just weeks before, a peacekeeper at a Sacramento-area prison ordered an assault that ended with a guard killing an inmate, according to confidential Corrections Department reports obtained by the Associated Press.

– Associated Press

WASHINGTON

HALLIBURTON CITED IN IRAQ CONTAMINATION

Troops and civilians at an American military base in Iraq were exposed to contaminated water last year, and employees for the responsible contractor, Halliburton, couldn’t get their company to inform camp residents, according to interviews and internal company documents.

Halliburton, the company formerly headed by Vice President Cheney, disputes the allegations about water problems at Camp Junction City, in Ramadi, even though they were made by its own employees and documented in company e-mails.

“We exposed a base camp population [military and civilian] to a water source that was not treated,” said a July 15, 2005, memo written by William Granger, the official for Halliburton’s KBR subsidiary who was in charge of water quality in Iraq and Kuwait.

“The level of contamination was roughly 2x the normal contamination of untreated water from the Euphrates River,” Mr. Granger wrote in one of several documents. The Associated Press obtained the documents from Senate Democrats who are holding a public inquiry into the allegations today.

– Associated Press

KERRY REJECTS NAY-SAYING ON ’08 PRESIDENTIAL BID

Senator Kerry of Massachusetts said yesterday that he is still considering whether to mount another bid for the presidency in 2008, despite indications that some prominent Democrats are nursing wounds from his 2004 race and would prefer to see him fade from the national stage.

During an interview on ABC’s “This Week,” Mr. Kerry was asked about a forthcoming article in Gentlemen’s Quarterly magazine collecting criticism of the his efforts to lay the groundwork for another presidential race, after losing to President Bush last fall.

“Everybody else can sit around and speculate but when I was 30 points down in Iowa and mortgaged my house and people said, ‘You’re crazy,’ I said, ‘I’m going to win,'” Mr. Kerry said. “I’m going to listen to my heart and my gut and that’s what would serve me best.”

When the interviewer noted that Democrats have rarely renominated presidential candidates in recent decades, Mr. Kerry replied, “Well, maybe the Republicans know something we don’t.”

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

SOUTHWEST

IS SOY A HAS-BEAN?

DALLAS – An American Heart Association committee reviewed a decade of studies on soy’s benefits and came up with results that are now casting doubt on the health claim that soy-based foods and supplements significantly lower cholesterol.

The findings could lead the Food and Drug Administration to re-evaluate rules that currently allow companies to tout a cholesterol-lowering benefit on the labels of soy-based food.

– Associated Press