SAN ANGELO, Texas -- The latest member of a polygamist group whose sprawling West Texas ranch was raided in 2008 has been sentenced to 75 years in prison for sexual assault of a child.
Thirty-five-year-old Merril Leroy Jessop was sentenced Friday. Jurors earlier this week also found he violated Texas laws prohibiting bigamy.
Prosecutors say Jessop tried to delete photos and other documents connecting him to an underage bride.
Jessop is the fourth member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to be tried since authorities raided and seized documents from the Yearning For Zion Ranch. The weeklong raid temporarily sent 439 children to foster care.
The Texas attorney general's office says eight more group members are awaiting trial.
Arrests halted secret contacts
KABUL -- The arrests of top Taliban figures in Pakistan abruptly halted secret U.N. contacts with the insurgency at a time when the efforts were gathering momentum, the U.N.'s former envoy to Afghanistan said Friday.
Kai Eide, a Norwegian diplomat who just stepped down from the U.N. post here in the Afghan capital, said the discussions that he and others from the U.N. had with senior Taliban members began in the spring of 2009 and included face-to-face conversations in Dubai and elsewhere.
He criticized Pakistan for arresting the Taliban's No. 2 and other members of the insurgency, saying the Pakistanis surely knew the roles these figures had in efforts to find a political resolution to the 8-year-old war. Pakistan denies the arrests were linked to reconciliation talks.
"There was an increase in intensity of contacts, but this process came to a halt following the arrests that took place in Pakistan," Eide told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from his home outside Oslo.
Clinton: 'On the brink' of treaty
MOSCOW -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday that American and Russian negotiators are "on the brink" of agreement on a nuclear arms reduction treaty.
After meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Clinton said she expects a treaty-signing soon, although she mentioned no date or place.
"Our negotiating teams have reported that they have resolved all of the major issues and there are some technical issues that remain," she said at a joint news conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
"But we are on the brink of seeing a new agreement between the United States and Russia," Clinton added.
Her remarks were more pointedly optimistic than just a day earlier, when she cautioned against presuming success soon.
FDA warns of Zocor side effect
NEW YORK -- The Food and Drug Administration said Friday the highest available dose of Zocor, a component in cholesterol drugs, can cause muscle damage as well as severe and potentially lethal kidney damage.
The agency said statin drugs like Zocor are known to cause muscle damage in some patients, but the risk is more severe when patients are taking 80 milligram doses of Zocor, which is the highest FDA-approved dose.
The side effects include rhabdomyolysis, a form of muscle damage that can lead to kidney damage or failure, and death.
Zocor is the brand name for the drug used by Merck Co. of Whitehouse Station, New Jersey. Its chemical name is simvastatin.
TB cases higher in former USSR
Drug-resistant tuberculosis cases in much of the former Soviet Union are three to six times higher than in the rest of the world, according to a report released this week by the World Health Organization.
About 4 percent of tuberculosis cases worldwide are resistant to two standard drugs, the report said. However, because the surveillance for drug-resistant TB is highly variable around the world, it is impossible to say whether the number of these cases is rising or falling, experts concluded. Nevertheless, every place the problem is looked for it is found.
"What we can say is this is a serious threat to global health, with rich and poor countries, all countries, at risk," said Mario C. Raviglione, head of WHO's Stop TB Department.
-- From wire reports
