SAN DIEGO — A San Diego man who led a card-cheating ring that bilked dozens of casinos out of $7 million was sentenced Monday to nearly six years in federal prison. Phuong Quoc Truong has acknowledged leading the ring, known as the “Tran Organization,” that targeted 27 casinos across the country, including three American Indian casinos near San Diego.
TALLAHASSEE — A bill to ban the release of recorded 911 emergency calls was sidelined Monday by its powerful legislative champion. The move came on the first work day of Sunshine Week, which spotlights the importance of open government. House Speaker Larry Cretul said that, after consulting with colleagues and media representatives, he decided to suspend efforts to push the bill through the Legislature.
SAN DIEGO — Toyota dismissed the story of a man who claimed his Prius sped out of control on the California freeway, saying Monday that its own tests found the car’s gas pedal and backup safety system were working just fine. The automaker stopped short of saying James Sikes had staged a hoax last week but said his account did not square with a series of tests it conducted on the gas-electric hybrid.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon came to Haiti on Sunday to offer assurances of his commitment to a post-earthquake nation that is short of shelter and suffering growing violence in teeming camps for the homeless.
KEY WEST — Ernest Hemingway’s home in Key West has been designated a literary landmark. Officials gathered Sunday afternoon to celebrate the landmark status at a ceremony on the grounds of Hemingway’s house on Whitehead Street. The designation is given by a division of the American Library Association.
MIAMI — The Securities and Exchange Commission charged a prominent Miami couple Wednesday with operating a $135 million Ponzi scheme through a real-estate investment scam that defrauded hundreds of people, mostly elderly Cuban-Americans. The SEC complaint filed in Miami federal court claims that Gaston Cantens, 71, and his wife Teresita Cantens, 73, promised unusually high returns of between 9 percent and 16 percent on investments in their Royal West Properties Inc.
NEW YORK — An air traffic controller at New York’s Kennedy Airport has been suspended after he allowed two children to radio instructions to several pilots. The Federal Aviation Administration said Wednesday that the children did so over the course of two days in mid-February.
PENSACOLA — Victims of a 2006 Florida nightclub shooting are suing the rapper Plies, claiming he has increased his credibility in the violent gangsta rap world and made money because of their suffering. The five victims had non-life threatening gunshot wounds after a fight broke out between his entourage and another rapper at the club in Gainesville.
LOS ANGELES — A lawsuit filed Tuesday challenges Los Angeles’ crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries, claiming it would force nearly all of them to close. The suit by the nation’s largest medical marijuana advocacy group accuses the city of violating the state constitutional rights of pot clinic operators and claims the city ordinance “deprives the seriously ill of the medicine promised them by the electorate and the Legislature of California.
COLUMBUS, Ohio — An Ohio teenager who ran away to Florida after converting from Islam to Christianity and her Muslim parents have agreed to continue counseling to work out their differences. Attorneys for 17-year-old Rifqa Bary and her parents came to the understanding Tuesday after a juvenile court hearing in Columbus.
JACKSONVILLE — Tiger Woods is back home after a week of family counseling in Arizona and is trying to get back into a routine that includes fitness and his first significant practice in 15 weeks, a person with knowledge of his schedule said Tuesday.
EWA BEACH, Hawaii — A tsunami threatened the Pacific Rim on Saturday, with an 8.8-magnitude earthquake off Chile sending potentially deadly waves across the ocean at the speed of a jetliner. Hawaii woke residents with sirens, alerting them to the waves.
ORLANDO — A killer whale attacked and killed a trainer in front of a horrified audience at a SeaWorld show Wednesday, with witnesses saying the animal involved in two previous deaths dragged the trainer under and thrashed her around violently.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday approved Florida’s version of the well-known Miranda rights warning, despite complaints that it wasn’t clear a suspect could have a lawyer present during questioning. The Court’s 7-2 decision restoring Kevin Dwayne Powell’s conviction is the first of several it will make this year clarifying exactly what the long-established Miranda rights require police to do.
TALLAHASSEE — The television ad war in the governor’s race kicked off with two attack ads, one criticizing Democrat Alex Sink’s banking career and the other saying Republican Bill McCollum voted four times to raise his own salary while the national debt soared.
TALLAHASSEE — A lawyer for former House Speaker Ray Sansom said he wouldn’t have gotten a fair shake from a select House committee that was to begin hearings Monday on an ethics complaint against the Destin Republican about 14 hours after he resigned.
LAKE PLACID — A tour bus carrying senior citizens on a cultural tour rolled over Monday on a rural stretch of road in central Florida, killing two people and injuring more than a dozen others, authorities said. The bus carrying 30 people, including the driver, had just visited murals in Lake Placid and was headed back to a nearby hotel when it crashed.
MELBOURNE — Three teenage girls were joking around and taking pictures on a narrow bridge when they were hit by a train, killing them as a friend watched helplessly, police and a witness said Sunday. The girls and the fourth teenager, a boy, had been hanging out in Melbourne’s downtown area — known for its shops and nightclubs — when they decided to cross the trestle around 6:30 p.
WILLISTON — Two men were injured but in stable condition after their small, experimental airplane crashed during an emergency landing about 20 miles south of Gainesville. The Levy County Sheriff’s Office says 65-year-old Phillip Seay Sr.
WASHINGTON — Top researchers now agree that the world is likely to get stronger but fewer hurricanes in the future because of global warming, seeming to settle a scientific debate on the subject. But they say there’s not enough evidence yet to tell whether that effect has already begun.
JACKSONVILLE — A Burger King employee in north Florida has been arrested and charged after two sandwiches he made were found to have hydrocodone pills in them. Jacksonville police say 20-year-old Woody Bernard Duclos was arrested Saturday on charges of poisoning food and possession of a controlled substance.
MARANA, Ariz. — Tiger Woods will end nearly three months of silence Friday when he speaks publicly for the first time since his middle-of-the-night car accident sparked stunning revelations of infidelity. However, his agent said Woods will not take any questions from a small group of media.
PITTSBURGH, Pa. — A Pittsburgh-area community college will let a student form a campus chapter of a group that promotes the rights of students to carry concealed weapons. A Community College of Allegheny County spokesman says Christa Brashier must provide a copy of the group’s revised constitution by March.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Iraq and Afghanistan veterans with questions about the new Post-9/11 GI Bill will again be able to get help by phone five days a week starting today. Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki says that GI Bill helpline employees have been tapped since December to help process a backlog in education claims.
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