NATIONAL BRIEFS

CALIFORNIA: Woman accused of conspiring

to help terrorist militia in Somalia

A woman has been charged with conspiring to provide money and people to a Somali terrorist group to help carry out killings in the African nation, according to a federal indictment unsealed Monday in San Diego. Nima Ali Yusuf, 24, a permanent U.S. resident, conspired in Southern California and elsewhere to aid al-Shabab, an al-Qaida-linked militia trying to create an Islamic state in Somalia, the indictment states. Since 2007, roughly 20 men have left Minnesota to fight with al-Shabab. Authorities said one became the first known U.S. citizen to do a suicide bombing when he launched an attack in Somalia. It wasn't clear from the indictment whether Yusuf was connected to those men.

WASHINGTON: Wife of Justice Thomas stepping

down from her conservative group

Virginia Thomas, political activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has decided to relinquish control of Liberty Central, the conservative group she founded less than a year ago, so that the organization can escape the "distractions" of her media celebrity, a spokeswoman, Caitlin Carroll of CRC Public Relations in Alexandria, Va., said Monday. A source not authorized to speak publicly about the details said Liberty Central would be merging with the Patrick Henry Center, a Manassas-based conservative organization founded by Gary Aldrich, the former FBI agent who wrote a tell-all book about life inside the Clinton White House. Thomas launched Liberty Central in May as a grass-roots organizer and educator intended to serve as a clearinghouse of policy and candidate information for conservative activists and tea party groups. More recently, Thomas has been in the news as a result of her phone call to Anita Hill, suggesting that the lawyer who accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during his 1991 Senate confirmation hearings issue an apology.

ALABAMA: Ex-trooper cops plea in 1965 slaying

A former state trooper took a plea deal Monday in the 1965 slaying of a black man that prompted the "Bloody Sunday" march at Selma and helped galvanize America's civil rights movement. Indicted for murder more than four decades after the fatal shooting, James Bonard Fowler, 77, pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of second-degree manslaughter and was sentenced to six months in jail. It was a mixed victory for civil rights era prosecutions. The prosecutor and Jackson family members did not get the murder conviction they sought, but the jail time and an apology from Fowler seemed to help close a painful chapter in U.S. history. Bloody Sunday helped lead to the passage of the Voting Rights Act, and the killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson was an integral part of that story.