The news at a glance...United States

last updated 8 January 2015

Santa Fe

Save our sauce: New Mexico is cracking down on foreign chiles, under a new law that bans restaurants, stores, and roadside stands from falsely claiming that imported chiles were grown in the state. New Mexico is fiercely proud of its fiery red and green peppers, spelled “chile” to distinguish them from lesser chili peppers with an “i”. But the state’s $400 million chile industry has struggled in the face of imports from Mexico and Asia, which are up to 30 percent cheaper and are often passed off as local products by unscrupulous businesses. New Mexican farmers say that is one reason why the state’s production has fallen from 34,500 acres to fewer than 9,000 acres in the past 20 years. Former chile farmer Andy Nuñez, the state representative who introduced the bill, said, “New Mexico chile is the best, and we should protect it.”

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House of horrors: A Fort Worth–area man known for his charitable work was arrested this week after police rescued a 62-year-old woman who had been bound, raped, and tortured in a secret compartment in his home. Jeffrey Allan Maxwell, 58, a vice president of his local Kiwanis Club, faces charges of kidnapping and sexual assault, and is now considered a suspect in the cold-case disappearances of two women, including his former wife, Martha. A search of Maxwell’s home turned up chains, leather restraints, sexual devices, and, according to one investigator, an “electric winch used for stringing up animal carcasses.” Police said Maxwell, who confessed to kidnapping and sexually assaulting the woman, had been arrested in 1987 for slitting his wife’s throat but never went on trial, because she returned to him and dropped the charges. Five years later, she disappeared.

Joliet, Ill.

Prison wages: The Illinois Supreme Court heard arguments this week on whether the state can seize the $11,000 that a convict earned working in the Joliet prison’s wood shop for $2 a day. Kensley Hawkins, 60, has been ordered to turn over his savings to help pay off the $455,000 the Illinois Department of Corrections says it has spent feeding and housing him since he was jailed for murder in 1982. Like many states, Illinois holds prisoners liable for their incarceration costs, but appellate court judges disagreed on whether the state, having deducted 3 percent of Hawkins’s prison wages, could come back for more. Defense lawyer David Simonton said Hawkins wouldn’t be punished this way “if he had spent some more of his money” at the prison commissary.

Washington, D.C.

Crowley resigns: The top State Department spokesman resigned abruptly last week after he called the Pentagon’s treatment of accused document leaker Bradley Manning “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid.” P.J. Crowley, 59, a retired Air Force colonel who was National Security Council spokesman in Bill Clinton’s White House, told students at MIT that the treatment of Manning, an Army private accused of leaking 250,000 confidential State Department cables to WikiLeaks, violated American norms of justice. Days later President Obama, called upon to defend the Pentagon’s treatment of Manning, deemed it “appropriate.” Manning, 23, is being held in solitary confinement 23 hours a day, is stripped naked each night, and is forced to wear a suicide-proof smock to bed—for his protection, military officials said. Crowley took responsibility for his remarks but stopped short of retracting them. The treatment of prisoners should be “prudent and consistent with our laws and values,” he said.

New York City

Bus crash: The driver in a horrific predawn bus crash that killed 15 and left a Bronx highway littered with body parts had a long criminal record, including prison terms for forgery and manslaughter. He had also been arrested after ignoring tickets for speeding and driving without a license. Ophadell Williams, 40, who police believe fell asleep at the wheel, was a regular on the demanding route, a same-day turnaround that takes passengers to and from the Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut. Returning to New York’s Chinatown on I-95, Williams lost control of the bus at about 5:30 a.m. It careened into a guardrail, tipped on its side, and skidded some 300 feet into a steel exit-sign stanchion. The bus roof was sheared off, and the sign pole sliced through the cabin at “passenger eye level,” said Capt. James Ellson of the New York Fire Department. At least one rider was decapitated, and several lost limbs. Federal authorities are investigating, and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is looking into how he was able to “obtain and retain a commercial driver’s license.”

Miami

Mayor recalled: Voters angry over property tax hikes and high city-hall salaries voted this week to oust Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Alvarez by a stunning 88 percent margin. The Republican former police chief, who was re-elected to the mayor’s post in 2008, had raised property taxes for more than half of Dade County’s homeowners after the recession and a wave of foreclosures reduced property tax revenues by 25 percent. At the same time, he approved public funding of a new baseball stadium for the Florida Marlins and gave raises to some of his staff members. “County voters have demonstrated by their ballot that they are tired of unaccountable officials, of being ignored, and of being overtaxed in this very difficult recessionary time,” said billionaire Norman Braman, who launched the recall campaign. The county commission will decide within 30 days whether to appoint a new mayor or call a special election.

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