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again Tuesday on a second appeal in the case of a man who helped kill a guard at the state penitentiary.
• Rodney Berget was sentenced to death for the 2011 killing of Ron Johnson during a failed escape attempt. Berget was serving two life sentences for attempted murder and rape.
• The state Supreme Court overturned his initial death sentence because of an error by the judge in the case. But Berget was sentenced again to death last year and now argues that the lower court judge should have taken additional evidence at the second sentencing.
• Two other inmates were involved in Johnson's death. Michael Nordman was sentenced to life in prison, and Eric Robert was executed in 2012.
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New safety requirements set for Keystone pipeline
JOAN LOWY, Associated Press
• WASHINGTON (AP) -- Safety regulators have quietly placed two extra conditions on construction of TransCanada Corp.'s Keystone XL oil pipeline after learning of potentially dangerous construction defects involving the southern leg of the Canada-to-Texas project.
• The defects -- high rates of bad welds, dented pipe and damaged pipeline coating -- have been fixed. But the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration wants to make sure similar problems don't occur during construction of the pipeline's controversial northern segment, which is on hold pending a decision by the Obama administration.
• One condition requires TransCanada to hire a third-party contractor chosen by the pipeline safety agency to monitor the construction and make reports to the U.S. government on whether the work is sound.
• The second requires TransCanada to adopt a quality management program to ensure "this pipeline is -- from the beginning -- built to the highest standards by both Keystone personnel and its many contractors."
• The conditions are buried near the end of the 26 appendices in a voluminous environmental impact statement on Keystone XL released by the State Department on Jan. 31.
• Most of Appendix Z is devoted to 57 well-known "special conditions" that TransCanada agreed to three years ago. But conditions 58 and 59 are listed on an additional page.
• "Everybody looked at that appendix and said, 'Oh, 57 conditions. Move on.' Well, (Continued on page 21)
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