HUNSTVILLE, Texas

Double murderer put to death by lethal injection

A man convicted of gunning down his former common-law wife and her brother more than two decades ago in Houston was put to death by lethal injection Wednesday evening.

Willie Trottie’s execution was carried out about 90 minutes after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his last-day appeals. He had contended he had poor legal help at his trial and questioned the potency of the execution drug.

Trottie repeatedly expressed love to witnesses – both people he selected and relatives of his victims, Barbara and Titus Canada – and several times asked for forgiveness as he was about to be executed.

Trottie, 45, was pronounced dead 22 minutes after the injection began.

His was the eighth lethal injection this year in Texas, and the first in the nation’s most active death penalty state since recent executions went awry in Oklahoma and Arizona.

WASHINGTON

Scientists say solar flare may disrupt power grids

An extreme solar flare is blasting its way to Earth and could mess up some power grids, satellites and radio transmissions, scientists say.

It’s been several years since Earth has had a solar storm of this size coming from sunspots smack in the middle of the sun, said Tom Berger, director of the Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado.

Solar storms happen often, especially during peaks in the solar cycle, and don’t directly harm people. But what makes this one more worrisome is its location on the sun along with its strength, he said.

“There’s been a giant magnetic explosion on the sun,” Berger said. “Because it’s pointed right at us, we’ll at least catch some of the cloud” of highly energized and magnetized plasma that can disrupt Earth’s magnetic sphere, which sometimes leads to temporary power grid problems.

Forecasters don’t yet know when Wednesday’s solar storm will arrive here and which part of the planet will be facing the sun and bear the brunt of the effects. It could arrive as early as Thursday morning or may take a few days. Berger said scientists will have a better idea after they get more satellite data.

SEATTLE

Gates foundation to spend $50 million to battle Ebola

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced Wednesday that it will spend $50 million to support emergency response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, marking the group’s largest donation to a humanitarian effort.

The Seattle-based foundation said the money will go to the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and international organizations involved in fighting transmission of the virus.

The foundation wants to help stop the outbreak as well as accelerate development of treatments and improve prevention.

DENVER

Recreational pot outsells medical marijuana in Colorado

Colorado is now selling more recreational pot than medical pot, a turning point for the newly legal industry, tax records released Wednesday show.

The state sold $29.7 million worth of recreational marijuana in July, the most recent data available. That was slightly higher than the $28.9 million worth of medical marijuana sold in the same month.

– From news service reports