Police work on kidnap of Smart gets investigation

SALT LAKE CITY -- An independent commission will be appointed to investigate how police handled the Elizabeth Smart abduction case, Salt Lake City's mayor said Monday.

Rocky Anderson said the five-member panel will begin its work after the completion of the case against Brian Mitchell, who is suspected in the kidnapping. He did handyman work at the Smart house one day in November 2001 and was identified by Elizabeth's younger sister as the man who may have taken the teen.

The commission will likely focus on the level of attention authorities gave the self-proclaimed prophet during the investigation, and whether they concentrated too hard on Richard Ricci.

Ricci had worked as a handyman at the Smart home more than a year before the kidnapping and was considered a possible suspect in the weeks after Elizabeth's disappearance. Ricci died last August of a brain hemorrhage in jail, where he was being held on an unrelated parole violation.

$80 million settlement reached by Merrill Lynch

WASHINGTON -- The Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday charged four former executives of Merrill Lynch with helping Enron inflate profits and mislead investors with financing deals. Merrill agreed to pay $80 million to resolve the 1999 case.

The SEC and Merrill, the nation's biggest brokerage firm, reached a tentative settlement agreement last month. The firm neither admits nor denies wrongdoing in the settlement, which it says ends the SEC's investigation into its dealings with Enron.

In a civil lawsuit filed in federal court in Houston, the SEC alleged that the former Merrill executives "aided and abetted Enron Corp.'s earnings manipulation" by working with Enron executives to set up the transactions. The four men are disputing the SEC's allegations.

NASA: Columbia's pieces fell in 'steady stream'

HOUSTON -- Columbia lost a "steady stream" of pieces from California all the way to its final breakup over Texas, as wires in its left wing burned and shorted out, shuttle officials told the accident investigation board Monday.

"We continue to be shocked that we had debris coming off the orbiter as we crossed the California coastline," said NASA flight director Paul Hill. He is leading debris recovery efforts in the West, which so far have yielded no wreckage.

To illustrate his point, Hill showed a video that was a composite of 15 to 20 amateur videos sent in by citizens.

Hill expressed amazement that during much of the time debris was falling and sensors were going haywire -- almost certainly from hot atmospheric gases that had entered a hole in the left wing -- "the vehicle flew perfectly, no indication of what was going on in flight control."

United asks judge to void union labor contracts

CHICAGO -- United Airlines asked a bankruptcy judge Monday to nullify its labor contracts, raising the pressure on its unions to agree to long-term cost cuts.

The move gives the two sides until May 1 to settle on negotiated terms or the court could void the contracts -- a drastic and risky means of slashing labor costs that is rarely employed in airline bankruptcies.

--From wire reports