In Brief | Nation & World | 3-20-14

Toyota’s $1.2B penalty in criminal case offers possible glimpse into future of General Motors

DETROIT — General Motors, beware.

Wednesday’s announcement that Toyota will pay $1.2 billion to avoid criminal prosecution for hiding information in a recall case could be a glimpse into your future. It’s also a warning to anyone selling cars in the U.S.: Although the federal government’s road-safety watchdog doesn’t have big fangs, the Justice Department does.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s maximum fine for hiding information is $35 million, a pittance to automakers. But the Justice Department can reach deeper into your wallet and hurt your reputation with damning public statements.

Shortly after the announcement, Attorney General Eric Holder issued an apparent warning to GM and other automakers, saying the Toyota deal was “not necessarily the only time we will use this approach.”

General Motors Co., which is facing a federal criminal probe over delays in recalling small cars with a deadly ignition switch problem, has many parallels to the Toyota case.

Texas finds new execution drug supply; prison officials refuse to name source

HOUSTON — Texas has obtained a new batch of the drugs it uses to execute death row inmates, allowing the state to continue carrying out death sentences once its existing supply expires at the end of the month.

But correction officials will not say where they bought the drugs, arguing that information must be kept secret to protect the safety of its new supplier. In interviews with The Associated Press, officials with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice also refused to say whether providing anonymity to its new supplier of the sedative pentobarbital was a condition of its purchase.

The decision to keep details about the drugs and their source secret puts the agency at odds with past rulings of the state attorney general’s office, which has said the state’s open records law requires the agency to disclose specifics about the drugs it uses to carry out lethal injections.

“We are not disclosing the identity of the pharmacy because of previous, specific threats of serious physical harm made against businesses and their employees that have provided drugs used in the lethal injection process,” said Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jason Clark.

The dispute in the state that executes more inmates than any other comes as major drugmakers, many based in Europe, have stopped selling pentobarbital and other substances used in lethal injections to U.S. corrections agencies because they oppose the death penalty.

Israel warplanes strike targets in Syria, escalating tensions after roadside bombing

JERUSALEM — Israeli warplanes unleashed a series of airstrikes on Syrian military posts early Wednesday, killing one soldier and wounding seven in one of the most serious clashes between the countries in the past four decades.

The airstrikes came in retaliation for a roadside bombing a day earlier in the Golan Heights that wounded four Israeli soldiers on patrol along the tense frontier with Syria. The overnight raids marked a sharp escalation of activity for Israel, which largely has stayed on the sidelines during Syrian President Bashar Assad’s battle against rebels trying to topple him.

It is unclear which of the many groups fighting in Syria may have planted Tuesday’s bomb. But Israel has said it holds Assad responsible for any attacks emanating from his country, and accused his forces of allowing the attack to take place.

“Our policy is clear. We hurt those who hurt us,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Israel captured the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau overlooking northern Israel, from Syria in the 1967 Mideast war. It later annexed the area, though that move is not internationally recognized.

By wire sources