Hayward, Wis.
Minnesota truck driver Chai Soua Vang faces mandatory life in prison after being convicted of six counts of murder on Friday.
Vang claimed that he acted in self-defense when he shot six hunters Nov. 21. He said he was confronted by the hunters, who used racial slurs and threatened him.
State Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager said in her closing argument that Vang ambushed and pursued the victims. She also told jurors Vang said two of the victims deserved to die because they used racial slurs against him.
Vang's attorney, Steven Kohn, said the prosecution could not prove who fired the first shot. He added that the confrontation was fueled by racial prejudice.
The killings highlighted racial tensions between the primarily white Wisconsin north-woods citizens and Hmong immigrants from Southeast Asia.
Vang served in the National Guard and described himself as an experienced hunter.
MADISON, WIS.
A UW-Madison biophysical chemist was named one of six Society Fellows by the Biophysical Society for 2006. The society is a group of 7,000 scientists who engage in global biophysics research.
Thomas Record, professor of chemistry and biochemistry said he hopes receiving this fellowship will help the university continue to attract talented students and funding for research.
In his 35 years with the university, Record has researched cell proteins and their interaction with DNA sequences.
Before coming to UW-Madison in 1970, Record completed his undergraduate work at Yale, received his Ph.D. at the University of California, San Diego and did postgraduate work at Stanford University.
KABUL, Afghanistan
Hundreds of thousands of citizens flocked to schools, mosques and tents across Afghanistan Sunday to vote in the war-weary nation's first legislative elections since 1969, as militants largely failed to follow through on threats to disrupt the polling with violence.
The elections marked the final phase of an international plan to transform Afghanistan into a stable democracy, drawn up after U.S.-led forces ousted the extremist Islamic Taliban government in December 2001.
However, several polling centers in the capital, Kabul, and in rural areas south of the city were almost deserted by noon. Some observer organizations predicted the turnout nationwide would prove far lower than the 70 percent of voters who showed up to select President Hamid Karzai last October in Afghanistan's first democratic presidential election.??
