Striking workers OK transit pact
Striking bus drivers, train operators and mechanics overwhelmingly approved a new contract with the city’s mass transit agency Friday, setting the stage to end the area’s first transit strike in 24 years.
Union President Yvette Salazar said the revised offer was approved by 82 percent of workers who voted. If the Regional Transportation District also approves the deal today, transit workers will go back to work Monday.
Under terms of the revised contract, workers would get a wage increase of $1.80 an hour over three years.
Nearly 1,750 members of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1001 walked off the job Monday.
Los Angeles
Guilty plea entered in wiretap probe
A former record company executive pleaded guilty Friday to hiring a Hollywood private eye to tap his former girlfriend’s phones to learn how the woman might testify in a business lawsuit.
Prosecutors said Robert Pfeifer hired investigator Anthony Pellicano in 2000 and paid $125,000 to listen to the girlfriend’s phone conversations.
Fourteen people have been charged so far in the wiretapping investigation, and Pfeifer, 51, is the fifth to enter a guilty plea. Sentencing for the former Hollywood Records president was set for June 26.
Pellicano, 62, has pleaded not guilty to charges of bugging phones and bribing police to get information on celebrities and others.
New York
Episcopalian panel releases report
An Episcopal Church panel studying the furor over the denomination’s first openly gay bishop proposed Friday that dioceses use “very considerable caution” from now on in electing bishops with same-sex partners, but stopped short of the moratorium critics demanded.
The commission also recommended that the American church offer “apology and repentance” for the turmoil its actions caused within the global Anglican Communion, and said dioceses should stop creating blessing ceremonies for same-gender couples, at least temporarily.
The suggestions are among several that will go before a June meeting of the top Episcopal legislative body, called the General Convention, which can revise or reject the proposals. The outcome of their debate will be critical, shaping not only the future of the American church, but also its role as the U.S. representative of world Anglicanism.