Nation briefs 11/4/03

Defense Department settles with Linda Tripp

WASHINGTON -- Linda Tripp will get more than $595,000 from the Defense Department to settle a lawsuit over the release of confidential personal information about her to a magazine, her lawyers said Monday.

Based on information supplied by Pentagon officials in 1998, The New Yorker reported Tripp did not admit an arrest on her security application for her job at the Defense Department. She had been arrested for grand larceny when she was a teenager.

Tripp, whose secret tapes of conversations with Monica Lewinsky helped lead to President Clinton's impeachment trial, sued the Defense Department two years ago, alleging violations of the Privacy Act. She had worked for the department as a public affairs specialist.

FCC proposes fines for AT&T do-not-call violations

WASHINGTON -- AT&T faces a $780,000 fine for reaching out and touching consumers who had asked to be left alone, federal regulators said Monday.

The Federal Communications Commission said it was the first major penalty for violating do-not-call rules for telemarketers.

The FCC said AT&T made 78 phone calls to 29 consumers who had asked the company to leave them alone. The proposed fine is $10,000 per call.

"This puts telemarketers on notice that we will take all measures necessary to protect consumers who chose to be left alone in their homes," FCC chairman Michael Powell said.

Witness who led police to sniper testifies

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. -- The man who led police to sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad after spotting his car at a Maryland rest stop said Monday he stayed on the line with 911 dispatchers for nearly three hours, giving them updates as officers moved into position.

Whitney Donahue, a refrigeration mechanic from Greencastle, Pa., testified at Muhammad's murder trial that he spotted the blue Chevrolet Caprice on Oct. 24, 2002, and believed he saw two people inside.

At one point, 911 dispatchers asked him to double-check the tags. He said he enlisted another driver to check them as he drove out.

"I really wasn't wanting to get shot," Donahue said.

Congress OKs $87.5 billion for Iraq, Afghanistan

WASHINGTON -- Congress voted its final approval Monday for $87.5 billion for U.S. military operations and aid in Iraq and Afghanistan, a day after Americans in Iraq endured their worst casualties since March.

In an anticlimactic moment for which only a handful of senators appeared, the Senate approved the bill by voice and handed a legislative victory to President Bush, who had requested a similar package two months ago. The voice vote -- in which Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., was the only one to shout "Nay."

Two employees fired for roles in anthrax hoax

HARTFORD, Conn. -- Two state workers were fired Monday over a 2001 anthrax hoax that forced the evacuation of more than 800 employees from an office building.

Joseph Faryniarz and David Sattler were dismissed by Connecticut's Department of Environmental Protection for engaging in an activity which is "detrimental to the best interests of the agency or the state," said commissioner Arthur Rocque.

Faryniarz was convicted last December of lying to federal agents about the source of a white powder found on his desk next to a piece of paper marked with the misspelled word "anthax" on Oct. 11, 2001.

The agency's headquarters was closed for two days after the evacuation. Government officials estimated it cost $1.5 million to respond to the hoax.

-- From wire reports