Victim Compensation

Shin Jin-tae says he lives in the unluckiest town on Earth. During World War II, when the Japanese occupied Korea, thousands of residents of this small farming community were shipped to Japan to work in munitions factories. Their destination: Hiroshima. Shin and his family were there on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, when the U.S. military dropped the atomic bomb, leveling the city center and vaporizing many of those within a mile of the blast.

Robert Blake, the actor acquitted of his wife's murder, should not have to pay her survivors a $30-million civil court award because he did not get a fair trial, his lawyers told appellate judges Tuesday. "All we asked for was a fair trial, and it wasn't," M. Gerald Schwartzbach argued to the state 2nd District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles. "Celebrities have the same rights as anybody else. . . . Mr. Blake was denied that." Attorney Eric J.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a lawsuit from Enron Corp. investors who sought to recover more than $30 billion from Wall Street investment bankers who they alleged had schemed with the failed Houston energy trading firm. Without comment, the justices dismissed an appeal from pension and investment funds, including the University of California. The funds had argued that all the key players in the Enron debacle should be held liable for their losses.

The former head of the California Highway Patrol and other top agency officials retaliated against a chief who had sought the top job and reported unfair practices in the agency, a state panel has concluded. The California State Personnel Board found that former CHP Commissioner Dwight "Spike" Helmick and four other command officers improperly acted against former CHP Chief Hubert Acevedo.

A British judge has ordered budget airline Ryanair to pay $7,850 to members of a calypso band who were ordered off a plane at gunpoint after another passenger said they were acting suspiciously. Five members of the London-based Caribbean Steel International band were aboard a flight waiting to go from the Italian island of Sardinia to London on Dec. 31, 2006, when a passenger alerted the crew.

What makes a martyr? Batul Abdul Hussein thought her son, Wesam Saleh, was one. On Feb. 13, 2007, as U.S. and Iraqi troops began enforcing a new security plan to quell violence in Iraq, the 25-year-old policeman left for his night shift. He never made it home alive. As his patrol rounded a curve in southwest Baghdad, Hussein said, it came under fire from U.S. forces who mistook the armed Iraqis rolling toward them in the dark for possible insurgents.

Five children who were injured or traumatized when a parolee opened fire at a Granada Hills Jewish community center in 1999 will receive $2.25 million from the Washington State Department of Corrections for its failure to adequately monitor the gunman before his rampage. Buford Furrow Jr., 46, is serving a life sentence in prison after pleading guilty in 2001 to the shootings at the North Valley Jewish Community Center.

Two members of a Bell Gardens family who said police beat them at a Halloween costume party in 2005 have been awarded a $4.5-million civil rights judgment, their attorneys said Monday.

Airlines were ordered Wednesday to pay passengers as much as $800 when they are involuntarily bumped from flights starting next month, the latest sign of a get-tough attitude in Washington toward the nation's air carriers. A new rule doubling the maximum compensation for bumped passengers was part of a package of measures announced by the Transportation Department to strengthen consumer protections and ease flight delays. Although in the works for months, the rule is going into effect as U.S.

He refused to take the Americans' blood money. Mohammed Hafidh Abdul-Razzaq had been summoned by U.S. Embassy officials who wanted to make amends for the killing of his 10-year-old son. The boy died during a shooting involving employees of Blackwater Worldwide, the U.S. security firm. Deputy Chief of Mission Patricia A. Butenis told him that she was sorry for what had happened, Abdul-Razzaq recalled. She gave him a sealed envelope. It had his name written on it. Abdul-Razzaq pushed it away.