USA

During his formal sentencing, former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick declined to speak in court Tuesday before being placed in the Wayne County jail, where he will spend 120 days. The punishment was worked out last month in a plea agreement after Kilpatrick pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice. The judge chided him for trying to protect his political career by lying about an extramarital affair and other misdeeds.

An attorney for Sen. Ted Stevens (R) of Alaska asked the Justice Department Tuesday to investigate alleged "serious constitutional violations" by federal prosecutors in winning a guilty verdict in Stevens's corruption trial. Meanwhile, GOP presidential candidate John McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, urged Stevens to resign.

Using one-third of ocean-caught fish for animal feed is a waste of a valuable human food source and a potential problem for marine ecosystems, scientists said Wednesday in the Annual Review of Environment and Resources. Their study indicates that 90 percent of medium-sized species fished from the ocean, such as sardines and anchovies, are turned into agricultural and aquacultural feeds.

Excavation work in Salt Lake

City has turned up a rich lode of ancient plant fossils that date back 198 million years, Utah's state paleontologist Jim Kirkland said Tuesday. The fossils, which could fill in information gaps about a transitional period between the mass extinction of the late Triassic period and the rise of dinosaurs, were found at a future office complex site.

Citizens United, a conservative advocacy group, is spending more than $1 million this week to distribute about 1.25 million copies of a 95-minute, anti-Barack Obama DVD in issues of Ohio's three largest newspapers, along with papers in Florida and Nevada.

The US needs to test its nuclear-weapons stockpile and modernize its strategic arms program to “maintain a credible deterrent,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday. He also urged the next president to pursue a “shorter, simpler, and easier to adjust” strategic arms agreement with Russia.