Wind fans wildfire on rangeland
High wind hampered fire crews again Sunday as they fought a wildfire that had dashed across nearly 300 square miles of remote rangeland in northern Nevada.
The brush fire 50 miles northeast of Winnemucca had exploded from less than 30 square miles to 292 square miles since Thursday, making it one of the nation’s biggest wildfires of the season, fire information officer Susan Marzec said.
No buildings had been damaged but the blaze posed a potential risk to the tiny towns of Midas and Tuscarora as well as scattered ranches. Flames were within three miles of Midas and 11 miles of Tuscarora.
CINCINNATI
Mom gets 40 years in children sex case
A woman who molested at least one of her five children and prompted four of them to have sex with each other has been sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Robin Kraft, 26, had pleaded guilty in June to two charges of rape and four counts of child endangering. Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge David Davis on Friday imposed the maximum sentence, saying Kraft should not be released from prison while she can bear children.
Prosecutors said Kraft and her husband, Paul Kraft, 32, sexually abused their four sons and one daughter, ages 1 to 6, in 2004.
In March, Paul Kraft received five life sentences on five rape charges and 96 additional years on 12 charges of pandering sexually oriented material involving a minor. He is ineligible for parole.
NEW YORK
Astor’s son defends himself
The son of millionaire philanthropist Brooke Astor, sued by his own son for allegedly neglecting his 104-year-old mother, said Sunday that his accusers “have not only exercised bad manners but total disrespect and lack of decency.”
“I know that I am right and they are wrong and that the media should not assume that an accused is guilty without the opportunity to defend themselves,” Anthony Marshall said in a statement.
Marshall, 82, said he was not notified that his mother was taken to Lenox Hill Hospital last Monday nor that she was released Saturday.
LOS ANGELES
Gibson sorry for ‘despicable’ tirade
Mel Gibson is again confronting accusations of anti-Semitism, two years after his blockbuster film “The Passion of the Christ” prompted him to assure viewers he was not prejudiced against Jews.
Early Friday, Gibson reportedly unleashed an expletive-laden tirade of anti-Semitic remarks during a drunken driving arrest in Malibu. A day later he issued an apology for what he called “despicable” statements he made, but did not elaborate.
Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, called Gibson’s latest apology “unremorseful and insufficient.”