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Nation in brief: Supreme Court keeping a low profile

Compiled from news dispatches

October 5, 2008

The Supreme Court is doing its best to stay out of the spotlight in the final days of the presidential campaign and while the other two branches of government struggle to deal with turmoil in the financial markets. The justices open their new term tomorrow with no cases on abortion, race or other social issues that might split the court and the nation. The most entertaining case of the term involves celebrities' use of profanity on live television.

A disbarred attorney who lived three doors down from Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton was convicted yesterday of murdering his wife in what prosecutors said was an attempt to collect life insurance money. A Westchester County jury found Carlos Perez-Olivo guilty of second-degree murder. He could get life in prison. Prosecutors said the troubled lawyer shot his schoolteacher wife, Peggy, in the back of the head as she dozed in their car during a drive to their home in Chappaqua on Nov. 18, 2006. The 59-year-old said an armed stranger forced him off the road, muscled his way into the car and fired three shots as the two men struggled.

Nine major U.S. airlines are farming out aircraft maintenance at twice the rate of four years ago and now hire outside contractors for more than 70 percent of major work, the government says. Contractors overseas handled one-quarter of the outsourced maintenance. At the same time, U.S. oversight of repair facilities is lagging, the Transportation Department's inspector general found. Investigators said the Federal Aviation Administration has failed to closely track how much maintenance is outsourced and where it is performed.

Someone tossed a firebomb into a fraternity house about a block from the University of Colorado, in Denver, setting off a brawl that sent one man to the hospital, police said. The firebomb early Friday caused no injuries or significant damage. A feud between the fraternity and residents of a nearby apartment or with another fraternity might have led to the incident. A jug of charcoal starter fluid with a burning firecracker attached was thrown into the Sigma Alpha Epsilon house through an open door about 2:15 a.m. Someone inside pushed it back out with a wet mop.