The week at a glance ... United States

Sacramento

Commutation stirs outrage: Hours before leaving office this week, former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger commuted the prison term of Esteban Nunez, the son of a former California Assembly speaker. Nunez was serving a 16-year sentence for his role in a 2008 San Diego brawl, which resulted in a stabbing death. Prosecutors say Nunez, who was 19 at the time of the crime, did not kill victim Luis Santos, but did stab two others who survived. “I speak for the overwhelming majority of San Diegans in stating that we are appalled and angry,” said City Attorney Jan Goldsmith. Schwarzenegger said he reduced Nunez’s term to seven years because the original sentence was “excessive” and equaled the term imposed on the actual killer. “I guess if you’re the son of somebody important, you can kill someone and get all sorts of breaks,” said Fred Santos, the victim’s father.

Silver Springs, Nev.

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Mustang roundup: Wild horses raced over rugged terrain with low-flying helicopters at their backs, as Bureau of Land Management agents launched their annual roundup last week. The BLM says 12,000 horses must be culled because the range can’t support a population of 33,700 mustangs and 4,700 wild burros roaming over 26 million acres of federal land. But the roundup drew dozens of protestors who say the helicopter roundups, in which horses are pursued for hundreds of miles, are unnecessary and inhumane. Last April, 79 horses died in a roundup in Nevada. Once captured, some horses are broken by prisoners at nearby correctional facilities and then put up for sale or adoption. “This is the last thing I thought I would be doing when I came to prison,” said James Redmon, an inmate who works with horses at the Northern Nevada Correctional Center.

Beebe, Ark.

Birds fall: Nearly 5,000 red-winged blackbirds dropped from the sky on New Year’s Eve, landing dead on rooftops, roads, and lawns and causing outdoor revelers to run for cover. “One of them almost hit my best friend in the head,” said Christy Stephens. The state Livestock and Poultry Commission said the birds had experienced “acute physical trauma,” but the cause was uncertain. “It just looked as if it had rained birds,” said Tracy Lightfoot, a city council member in Beebe, a gathering spot for blackbirds. Karen Rowe, coordinator of the bird conservation program at the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, said the birds may have been startled by fireworks and collided with trees and houses. Authorities say the bird deaths were unrelated to the deaths, days earlier, of some 85,000 fish in the Arkansas River.

Big Prairie, Ohio

Boy charged in mom’s murder: A 10-year-old boy appeared in an Ohio juvenile court this week on charges that he killed his mother with a .22-caliber rifle that had been given to him by his father. Deborah McVay, 46, was found dead from a single gunshot wound to the head in her home, about 75 miles south of Cleveland. The boy, who is being held at a juvenile facility in nearby Mansfield, pleaded not guilty. His 15-year-old sister, now staying with relatives, said her brother had argued with his mother after she told him to fetch firewood. “He went in his room, and obviously he got the gun and loaded it and shot my mom,” she said. The boy’s grandmother said he had behavioral problems. “He’s bad,” she said, “but there’s some good in him.”

Wilmington, Del.

Official’s body dumped: A body found at a landfill was identified this week as that of John P. Wheeler III, a graduate of West Point, Harvard Business School, and Yale Law School who had served in the Pentagon during the George W. Bush administration. Wheeler’s body was spotted tumbling from a dump truck last week when the truck returned to the dump after picking up garbage in nearby Newark. Toxicology and forensic reports are pending, but police ruled the death a homicide. As chairman of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, Wheeler, 66, was instrumental in getting the memorial built. An accomplished executive, he had recently been working for a defense contractor. Calling the case a “murder mystery,” Bayard Marin, an attorney who represented Wheeler in a neighborhood zoning dispute, said: “This is not the kind of guy you find in a landfill.”

Boston

Shah’s son commits suicide: Alireza Pahlavi, 44, the youngest son of the late Shah of Iran, killed himself this week in his apartment. He “was deeply disturbed by all the ills that had fallen upon his beloved homeland,” said a statement on his brother Reza’s website. “Although he struggled for years to overcome his sorrow, he finally succumbed.” Pahlavi died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. After leaving Tehran when Islamist revolutionaries overthrew his father in 1979, Pahlavi earned a bachelor’s degree from Princeton and a master’s in ancient Iranian studies from Columbia; he was pursuing a Ph.D. in that field at Harvard. His sister, Leila Pahlavi, committed suicide in 2001.