WINTON, N.C. -- Lawyers for two PETA workers from Virginia charged with animal cruelty told a North Carolina jury that all the pair did wrong was to dispose of animal carcasses improperly.
The trial continues Thursday.
Adria Hinkle of Norfolk and Andrew Cook of Virginia Beach are being tried together on 21 counts of felony animal cruelty, seven counts of littering and three counts of obtaining property by false pretenses.
District Attorney Valerie Asbell says the defendants acted with malice and falsely represented their motives when picking up a cat and her kittens at an animal hospital and later euthanized them in their van instead of taking them to Virginia to be put up for adoption.
Defense attorneys each said the only thing their clients did wrong was to illegally dump the animals in a shopping center's garbage bin.
One of Hinkle's attorneys said the pair had paperwork from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in Norfolk that indicated they would pick up animals from the animal hospital and a shelter and that all would be euthanized.
(AP) Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democrats' losing presidential candidate in 2004, does not intend to run again in 2008, a Democratic official said Wednesday. This official said Kerry intends to seek a new six-year term in the Senate.
Kerry plans to disclose his political plans in remarks on the Senate floor later in the day, according to this official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid pre-empting a formal announcement. Kerry, 64, who lost the White House when Ohio voted for President Bush by 118,601 votes on election night in November 2004, was attending a Senate Foreign Relations Committee meeting and unavailable for comment.
His decision leaves a field of nine Democrats running or signaling their intention to do so, including Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, and Kerry's 2004 running mate John Edwards.
Who says politics is show business for ugly people? "An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore's film on the perils of global warming, scored two Oscar nominations Tuesday - for best documentary feature and best original song.
While he is not technically a nominee - the film's director, David Guggenheim, won the nod, as did singer Melissa Etheridge for the song "I Need to Wake Up" - Gore said he was "thrilled" that his movie was honored.
"The film . . . has brought awareness of the climate crisis to people in the United States and all over the world," Gore said in an e-mail statement. "I am so grateful to the entire team and pleased that the Academy has recognized their work. This film proves that movies really can make a difference."
Aides say the former vice president plans to walk the red carpet with Hollywood's beautiful people at the Academy Awards ceremony next month.
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