No bond for teen charged in slayings

March 15, 2008

DURHAM - A teenager accused of killing two college students was held without bond yesterday as evidence emerged that one victim was shot in the forehead as a pillow was held against his face. An autopsy report released yesterday detailed how Abhijit Mahato, 29, a Duke University doctoral student originally from India, died. Mahato was found dead Jan. 18 inside his apartment a few blocks from campus. One of the two defendants in his death, Laurence Lovette, 17, was ordered held without bond on a first-degree murder charge. Later, he made an initial appearance on the same charge in the death of the University of North Carolina's student body president, Eve Carson. Carson, 22, was found March 5 about a mile from campus. The Athens, Ga., native had been shot several times. (AP)

AUGUSTA - Another burn patient has died of injuries suffered in an explosion at a Georgia sugar refinery, bringing the death toll to 13. Six patients remain in critical condition a little more than a month after the blast at the Imperial Sugar plant in Port Wentworth. Four are in serious condition. Investigators have said the explosion was fueled by airborne sugar dust at the refinery, near Savannah. They have not yet determined what ignited it. (AP)

TULSA - An Air National Guard jet mistakenly dropped a 22-pound nonexplosive, practice bomb on an apartment complex, damaging the foundation, but no one was injured, police said yesterday. The military pilot thought he had dropped the BDU-33 bomb, equipped with a dummy warhead, over a field in Kansas during a routine training mission out of Tulsa on Thursday. A couple returned home to the Canyon Creek apartment complex and found the ordnance partly buried in the foundation and the power knocked out, police said. (AP)

LAS VEGAS - A man who may have been exposed to toxic ricin in his motel room a month ago has regained consciousness and was being questioned by investigators, authorities said yesterday. Roger Bergendorff, 57, remained in critical condition in a hospital, where he has been since Feb. 14. Several vials of ricin powder were found in his room two weeks later. Investigators were speaking with Bergendorff for the first time, said Special Agent David Staretz, an FBI spokesman. Neither he nor Las Vegas police would provide more information. (AP)

Breast cancer patients who are overweight have more aggressive disease and are likely to die sooner, US researchers reported yesterday in the journal Clinical Cancer Research. A dangerous type of breast cancer, known as inflammatory breast cancer, was seen in 45 percent of obese patients, compared with 30 percent of overweight patients and 15 percent of patients of healthy weight. Researchers said they studied 606 patients. (Reuters)