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Preacher’s killer’s right to visit kids upheld

(CNN) — The Tennessee Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to modify or overturn a lower court’s ruling allowing Mary Winkler, convicted of killing her minister husband, visitation rights with the couple’s three daughters.

Charles and Diane Winkler, parents of slain minister Matthew Winkler, had asked the court to intervene and either revoke Mary Winkler’s visitation rights or allow them to proceed only under supervision of a counselor.

The children — Patricia, Mary Alice and Brianna — have been living with their grandparents since their mother was arrested last year.

Winkler has not seen the children in 15 months, said Kay Farese Turner, her attorney. She said her client was absolutely elated about the news and believes this will be her best Christmas ever.

Turner said she believes the visit may come before Christmas.

A jury convicted Winkler earlier this year of voluntary manslaughter in the shotgun death of Matthew Winkler — not the first-degree murder conviction prosecutors had wanted. She said the slaying came after years of abuse, including physical violence and being forced to dress slutty for undesirable sex acts.

Winkler received a three-year sentence, but a judge required her to serve only 210 days, gave her credit for the five months she had already served and allowed her to serve the remaining 60 days in a mental health facility. She was released in August.

At the time of their father’s death in March 2006, Patricia was 8, Mary Alice was 6 and Brianna was 1.

Charles and Diane Winkler have moved to terminate Mary Winkler’s rights and have filed a $2 million wrongful death suit against her for their son’s slaying.

The termination issue has not been decided in court. Turner said the court may want to determine what, if any, bond Winkler has with her children before making a decision.

Attempts by CNN to contact attorneys for the Winklers were not immediately successful Wednesday.

In September, a lower court granted Winkler visitation with her daughters pending the outcome of the custody battle. The court specified the visits be supervised by a guardian ad litem appointed to represent the children’s interests and supervised by members of the couple Winkler is living with or by her sister. A subsequent appeal by the grandparents was denied, leading to their Supreme Court appeal.

The Winklers said if their former daughter-in-law got visitation with the children at all, it should be under the supervision of a professional counselor. At a September hearing, according to court documents, they said the children exhibit fear and confusion toward their mother and her role in their father’s death.

One expert, in testimony, quoted Patricia as saying her mother had killed her father and, I don’t know if she will kill me. I want to ask her if she would do that to me. It scares me, kind of; if she did, well, I guess I would see my father.

The Winklers also said that after telephone calls with their mother, the children experienced urination accidents, sleeping problems, graphic nightmares and sleepwalking.

They said the lower court erred by failing to appoint the guardian ad litem until after the September hearing.

Turner, however, said she believes terminating Winkler’s parental rights would not be in the children’s best interest.

She has a faith rarely seen, and she loves those children, Turner said.

After Matthew Winkler’s death, Winkler fled with the girls to the Alabama coast, where she was arrested. She said during a September appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show that she never expected to get away with killing her husband, but that she fled to be with her daughters and have some good times.
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Lee wins South Korean election by a landslide

SEOUL, South Korea (CNN) — Lee Myung-Bak, a former Seoul mayor and Hyundai executive currently facing investigation amid allegations of fraud, won South Korea’s presidential election Wednesday by a landslide.

Today, the people gave me absolute support. I’m well aware of the people’s wishes, said Lee, the 66-year-old leader of the conservative opposition Grand National Party, The Associated Press reported.

I will serve the people in a very humble way. According to the people’s wishes, I will save the nation’s economy that faces a crisis.

He will take office in February.

Lee’s main rival was Chung Dong-Young of the United New Democratic Party.

Chung, 54, a former television news anchor and unification minister, earlier told reporters he humbly accepted the people’s choice. I hope (president)-elect Lee Myung-bak will do a good job for the country.

Third-placed independent candidate Lee Hoi-Chang also congratulated Lee.

Supporters gathered outside the Grand National Party headquarters in Seoul broke into cheers as television stations started to report news of Lee’s victory.

Lee, 66, broke from the pack of candidates by virtue of his rags-to-riches life story and his business background.

He had collected trash to put himself through college, then rose to become one of the youngest CEOs of Hyundai Construction, earning himself the nickname The Bulldozer. Watch why Lee has the upper hand among voters

The frontrunner throughout the campaign, Lee has pledged to take a more critical stance over South Korea’s engagement with North Korea.

Lee said Thursday he would seek to achieve a nuclear-free Korean peninsula and strengthen Seoul’s alliance with the United States. The North’s abandonment of its nuclear programs is the way for the North to develop its economy, Lee told a news conference. Lee also said the divided Koreas can open a new era of cooperation through denuclearization, The Associated Press reported.

Lee also told reporters Thursday he will press North Korea to improve its human rights record, AP reported.

He also promised economic reform aimed at raising annual growth to seven percent per year and establishing South Korea among the world’s top seven economies.

But the election was thrown into uncertainty Monday when the National Assembly voted to investigate accusations of fraud against him after political opponents released a video clip of him saying he founded an investment company at the center of stock manipulation charges.

Lee will take over from Roh Moo-Hyun, who had promised reform and clean governance. But scandal has marred his five-year term, with a string of Cabinet officials forced to resign over corruption allegations and Roh himself surviving an impeachment attempt in 2004.

Critics have also challenged Roh’s economic policies, saying he raised taxes, created higher unemployment and caused real estate prices to soar.

At the same time, he improved relations with North Korea and became only the second South Korean president to meet with his counterpart in the North.

Roh offered his congratulations to Lee on Wednesday. We respect the people’s choice shown in this election, presidential spokesman Cheon Ho-seon said in a statement, AP reported. Lee is to take office in February.
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Jamie Lynn Spears pregnancy raises legal questions

(CNN) — The announced pregnancy of Jamie Lynn Spears — the 16-year-old children’s television star and younger sister of beleaguered pop star Britney Spears — is casting new light on how states deal with the thorny issue of consensual sex among teens.

Spears, the star of Nickelodeon’s Zoey 101, told OK! Magazine that she’s pregnant and that the father is her 18-year-old boyfriend.

There has been no public talk of criminal prosecution in the case. Consensual sex between the two may well have been legal, depending on where and when it took place.

But critics of the nation’s statutory rape laws say that laws that are ignored in some cases can be used to put other teens in prison and land them on sex-offender registries.

You have a disturbing disparity in how these laws are enforced, said Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University. I have no problem at all with nailing adults who sleep with children, but I have a problem with the prosecution of teenagers in consensual relationships.

What this case should focus the nation on is having a more evenhanded approach to these cases. Watch a psychologist talk about how Spears’ pregnancy could lead to parents talking to their kids about sex

In Louisiana, where Spears lives, it is a misdemeanor for someone age 17 to 19 to have consensual sex with someone age 15 to 17 if the difference between their ages is more than two years.

In California, where she sometimes tapes her television show, it’s a misdemeanor to have sex with someone younger than 18 if the offender is less than three years older. Someone more than three years older could be charged with a felony.

According to OK! Magazine, which first reported the news Tuesday, Spears said the father of her baby is longtime boyfriend Casey Aldridge.

Turley said most states have similar laws but rely on prosecutors to be selective in enforcing them. But that’s a recipe for legal problems, he said.

The issue drew international attention when a Georgia teen was sentenced to 10 years in prison for having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl when he was 17.

In 2005, Genarlow Wilson was tried for the rape of a 17-year-old girl at a hotel-room party. While he was found not guilty of that charge, he was convicted of aggravated child molestation for the act with the 15-year-old — even though he was less than two years older.

Georgia law, which has since been changed, required a mandatory 10-year sentence on the charge of aggravated child molestation and required Wilson to register as a sex offender when he was released. Under the revised Georgia law, the act now would be a misdemeanor.

Now 21, Wilson was released from prison in October — after serving more than two years — when the state Supreme Court ruled his sentence was grossly disproportionate to his crime.

The current laws leave too much to prosecutorial discretion, Turley said. We saw in the Wilson case how prosecutorial discretion can lead to grotesque results.

He said statutory rape prosecutions of teens are more common in Southern states and small towns than they are elsewhere in the country or in big cities.

B.J. Bernstein, Wilson’s attorney, argued throughout his case that Wilson was imprisoned for an act that, while perhaps morally questionable, probably is going on among teens everywhere.

If you prosecuted, even with misdemeanors, all those cases, you’d clog up the justice system with kids having sex, she said. It’s a social issue — and it may be something that parents don’t want to happen or wish wouldn’t happen at that age — but it shouldn’t be a crime.

Spears, who turned 16 on April 4 and says she is 12 weeks into her pregnancy, told the magazine she plans to raise her child in Louisiana, so it can have a normal family life.

Nickelodeon released a statement saying the network respects Spears’ decision to take responsibility in this sensitive and personal situation.
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Official: Three dead in chemical plant explosion

JACKSONVILLE, Florida (CNN) — Three workers are dead and five are injured after an explosion Wednesday at a chemical plant sent a thick plume of smoke over a section of Jacksonville, according to the city’s fire department spokesman.

Literally, it’s a hellish inferno. There is no other way to describe it, Tom Francis told reporters.

The Duval County Medical Examiner’s Office said it had not received any reports of deaths.

Officials ordered an evacuation of nearby business. By 4 p.m. ET, the order had been lifted after tests of the air found no toxicity, Francis said. See a report about the blast

Firefighters were still battling hotspots, and the effort will be going on for quite some time, he said.

Six patients have been transported to Shands Hospital in Jacksonville, hospital spokeswoman Kelly Crockmeier said. In all, 14 people have been taken to hospitals, Francis said.

A Shands official said the hospital incident command system had been activated — something done only to put the staff in high alert in anticipation of trauma patients.

The blast occurred at the T2 Lab on Faye Road in an industrial area on the waterfront in north Jacksonville. See a map of the site of the explosion

A woman who answered the lab’s 24-hour facility emergency phone said the plant manufactures ecotane, a gasoline additive that reduces tailpipe emissions, according to the laboratory’s Web site.

Police have cordoned off the area near Faye Road, closed off highway exits to the site and set about evacuating office workers from the city’s industrial section, said WTLV-TV reporter Grayson Kamm. At least 15 fire trucks were at the scene.

A spokesman for JEA, a Jacksonville power company, said it has a power generating plant across the street and was evacuating all nonessential employees from the building.

The billowing black smoke could be seen from the city’s downtown district, said Florida Times-Union reporter Bridget Murphy. Murphy said she talked to several workers as they walked out of the area, who were shaken to the core.

They described a hissing noise and then a sound wave, she told CNN.

Murphy has reported that sources tell her that two people are dead.

Antonio Padrigan was trying to get in touch with his son who works in a plant in the area but was having no luck reaching him on his cell phone.

He was shook up when he called me, but I can’t get through to him anymore, Padrigan said. I don’t know if he’s in the hospital or what.

CNN I-Reporters Jonathan Payne and his son Calvin shot pictures of the explosion. They felt the blast shake their home, which is about 15 minutes away, and went to see what was going on because they thought there had been a plane crash.

Calvin, 16, shot photos from the car, and Jonathan stepped outside to shoot photos that turned out clearer.

Carlton Higginbotham, 63, was working at home on Townsend Boulevard in Jacksonville when a loud boom shook his house, he said.

It was a gunshot-type explosion; it wasn’t a rumble, he said.

The insurance salesman and his neighbor ran outside and noticed thick smoke billowing from the other side of the St. Johns River, which separates his neighborhood from the site of the blast.

The cloud that came out of it was white, some would say mushroom-shaped, Higginbotham said. It was followed by dark, dark smoke.
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Australia to surveil Japan whaling

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia will send planes and a ship to conduct surveillance of Japanese whaling ships off Antarctica, the government announced Wednesday.

The craft will collect photographic and video evidence that would be used to decide if Australia will launch legal action to try to stop Japan’s whaling program, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said.

Smith also said Australia will lead a group of anti-whaling nations in lodging a formal protest with the Japanese government within the next few days against Japan’s plans to harvest more than 1,000 whales. Those would include 50 humpbacks, in its largest-ever scientific whale hunt.

We are dealing here with the slaughter of whales, not scientific research, Smith told a news conference. That is our start point and our end point.

An Airbus A-319 used by the Australian government’s scientific division in Antarctica would conduct surveillance flights over the Japanese fleet, which is due in its target area soon.

In addition, Australia will send a ship operated by Australia’s Customs service to the area to collect potential evidence that could be used in international legal action against Japan.

The Japanese Embassy in Canberra declined to comment.

Smith said Canberra was taking advice on whether it could launch legal action against Japanese whaling in a range of international forums, including the International Court of Justice, the International Whaling Commission and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.

Each year, Japan defies a ban on killing whales in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, a massive feeding ground in the Antarctic Ocean that the International Whaling Commission has declared off-limits for commercial whaling. Japan says its program is exempt because it is for scientific purposes.

Critics call the Japanese program a sham, noting the meat turns up for sale for human consumption.

Smith said he did not expect the tough new stance on whaling to create diplomatic problems between the Japanese government and the new government of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who was elected in November.

Smith declined to identify the other nations involved in the official protest, saying it was up to them to identify themselves.

An independent panel of Australia’s leading international law experts concluded in May that the Australian government could take legal action to stop the Japanese whaling.

The so-called Sydney Legal Panel concluded that Japan’s rapidly expanding scientific whaling program breached the U.N.’s Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Antarctic Treaty System, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species and the International Convention on the Regulation of Whaling.

Australia’s announcement came as anti-whaling protesters pledging to put themselves between Japanese harpoon guns and their whale prey left from New Zealand to confront the whalers.

The Greenpeace ship Esperanza left the port of Auckland for Antarctic waters determined to find the Japanese whaling fleet and protect the whales, not attack the whalers, the group’s Southern Oceans whale campaigner Karli Thomas said.

Already the U.S.-based Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has sailed to the Antarctic Ocean vowing to use whatever means necessary to block Japan from harvesting whales.

We’ll be taking nonviolent direct action to stop their hunt … putting ourselves, our inflatable boats, in between the harpoonists and the whales to stop them getting a clear shot, Thomas told The Associated Press.
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