Willie was being held on charges of kidnapping, aggravated assault and rape and was charged with capital murder in Tunica County. He’s expected to be charged with capital murder in Panola County, too.

Willie’s arrest unfolded after a woman who was involved in a domestic dispute in Tunica County asked him for a ride to the Sheriff’s Office on Tuesday morning. Instead of taking her there, authorities say he drove her to a field in these flat Delta farmlands and raped her.

A capital murder charge in Mississippi carries the possibility of a death sentence or life without possibility of parole, but Kamp said it would be up to prosecutors to decide on whether to seek the death penalty.

TUNICA, Miss. (AP) — To hear his neighbors tell it, James Willie was just a regular guy who sometimes played with the neighborhood kids. Police describe him as a cold-blooded killer who stalked his victims on dark stretches of Mississippi’s highways and shot two of them dead.

Authorities say the hunt for the highway shooter ended in that apartment when a woman climbed out a window Tuesday and went running for help, later telling authorities that Willie abducted and raped her. A 9mm gun and shell casing found during that investigation linked Willie to the highway shootings, Tunica County Sheriff K.C. Hamp said Friday.

Strain, the Public Safety spokesman, said the motive for the shootings remain under investigation. He also said authorities are trying to figure out why the victims pulled over because they had no apparent reason to stop on those dark, desolate stretches of highway.

“It was scary,” Shaffer said. “I was freaking out.”

Anita Shaffer was in town with her mother, Cheryl Ross, from Ann Arbor, Mich., to try their luck at the flashy Mississippi River casinos.

She said they arrived on Thursday and one of the first things they did was to locate the police station so they could drive there if someone tried to pull them over. They breathed easier Friday morning after learning a suspect had been arrested.

“As far as I know, he didn’t bother anyone here. I have talked to him a couple of times and he was very polite, courteous. It was a shock,” Island said, peering across the street to apartment D2.

Island’s fear became shock when he found out the suspected shooter lived across the way in a complex of a single-story white apartments with red tin roofs.

The first roadside killing happened May 8, when Thomas Schlender of Nebraska was found dead at about 1:30 a.m. in his car on Interstate 55 in Panola County. He had been traveling to Florida to pick up his grandson. Three days later, local casino employee Lori Anne Carswell was found dead in her car on Mississippi Highway 713 after working a late shift.

Fears that a fake officer may have been behind the shootings prompted authorities to urge drivers to use caution when approached by any vehicle with flashing blue lights, even telling people they should call 911 if they were being pulled over.

Police had warned drivers that a fake officer might be pulling over victims. But Mississippi Department of Public Safety spokesman Warren Strain said it appears that Willie had not been posing as an officer. Authorities are still investigating why the victims ended up pulled over the side of the highways.

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“If we’re going to err, we’re going to err on the side of public safety,” Strain said. “The fact is that we got him off the street and people can go back to a level of comfort.”

Authorities said Friday that the 28-year-old unemployed ex-convict is responsible for two fatal shootings that prompted fears that a police impersonator was preying on motorists late at night. The shootings terrorized parts of north Mississippi and made some people afraid to go out after dark.

At a news conference on Friday, Hamp said he believes robbery — possibly connected to drugs — was Willie’s motive, but the reason for the killings remains under investigation. Hamp said Willie has been “cooperative to a certain extent” but did not confess to the crimes.

___

Strain said it doesn’t appear that Willie was posing as an officer, but authorities don’t regret telling motorists to be wary of impersonators because that was one of several theories developed during the investigation and people needed to know that.

A shell casing in the field and Ruger pistol found in a car belonging to Willie’s girlfriend were linked to the highway shootings, Hamp said. He said the unidentified girlfriend has not been charged, though neighbors said she was taken for questioning Thursday and hasn’t come home since.

Deputies went to the apartment later that morning and arrested Willie without incident on the sex charge, Hamp said.

The arrest brought a sense of relief and not just to people who live around here.

Willie is a convicted felon who has served time for residential burglary. Hamp also said he’s a known drug abuser.

“It’s just shocking to me. It just don’t add up,” said Carolyn Gross, who lived next door to Willie and his girlfriend. “It just didn’t seem like he would do something like that. He was out here playing with our kids.”

“People were terrified,” said Johnny Island, who was working Friday on the front door of his apartment at the Tunica Courts complex.

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Last year's series opened with the funeral of Sheen's character, Charlie Harper, after he was apparently killed by a metro train in Paris.

All will return with small pay rises, US industry papers reported.

Sheen was sacked from the show last year after criticising its producers and months of reported drug use. About 28.7m tuned in to see Kutcher's debut.

US sitcom Two and a Half Men is to return for a tenth season, a year after Ashton Kutcher replaced Charlie Sheen.

He will also be seen later this year playing Steve Jobs in a film biopic of the late Apple Computers pioneer.

The deal follows protracted talks between Warner Brothers TV, Kutcher and his co-stars Jon Cryer and Angus T Jones.

The show's creator, Chuck Lorre, is also responsible for comedies such as Dharma and Greg and The Big Bang Theory.

The Hollywood Reporter says that, thanks to the show's success, Kutcher will receive "slightly more" than the $700,000 (£425,526) per episode he is thought to have made last year.

Instead, Kutcher was signed for a one-season contract. The actor explained: "The deal that we structured for the show was kind of a test deal: Can we get the show up? Can we get it going?"

It was the show's highest-ever audience and, although figures settled after the initial interest, the series was watched by an average of 15m viewers, a rise of 13%.

He admitted last year that he had considered cancelling Two and a Half Men following Sheen's departure.

His co-stars, who are paid less, will receive similar pay increases.

The show is broadcast by CBS in the States, and by Comedy Central in the UK

The budget includes a reduction of 956 full-time state employees compared to the current year. Those who remain — and earn less than $70,000 annually — will get a 2 percent pay raise. Lawmakers also included money for several specific new employees, including a “due diligence” officer to scrutinize state economic development deals and an additional animal health inspector to help enforce Missouri’s new requirements on commercial dog breeders.

Nixon said in a written statement that he will review every line in the spending plan over the next several weeks to “ensure that we have a balanced budget.” The budget takes effect July 1.

The election-year budget includes no tax increases — a fact touted by Republican legislative leaders and the Democratic governor alike. But it spends almost everything the state expects to take in, leaving a projected cushion of little over $6 million — far less than normal — for any midyear adjustments.

Yet the budget also could be cast as a bit of a gamble.

The budget trims $2 million from education for state prisoners, a roughly 20 percent reduction. It eliminates 40 of the more than 2,300 state employees who handle eligibility determinations for Medicaid, food stamps and welfare payments — a savings of an additional $2 million. The budget also cuts the subsidies that counties receive for property tax assessments from $3.41 per parcel to the $3 minimum allowed under state law — a savings of $1.3 million for the state at the expense of local governments.

In one of the budget’s more substantive changes, nursing homes for veterans now will receive most of the state’s fees from casinos, providing a dedicated funding stream to replenish a veterans trust fund that had been projected to run dry in another year. Early childhood programs, which had received those casino fees, will instead be funded through Missouri’s share of a nationwide tobacco settlement.

Lawmakers rejected a recommendation by Nixon to cut funding for public colleges and universities. They instead held higher education essentially flat, with an increase of $3 million split among seven institutions to address perceptions of per-pupil funding disparities.

Basic aid for K-12 school districts would rise by about $5 million, a small amount on top of the $3 billion received this year but enough for politicians to tout a record level of funding when they return to the campaign trail. School aid still would fall in excess of $400 million short of what’s called for by the funding formula.

“With the situation we were given, I think we have a really good product,” said House Budget Committee Chairman Ryan Silvey, R-Kansas City.

The Legislature’s final version of the budget opted against proposed cuts to child care subsidies. But several other programs were cut.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri lawmakers sent the governor a $24 billion budget plan Thursday that shores up funding for veterans homes, gives raises to a reduced state workforce and spares public schools and universities from cuts — a result legislators praised as an accomplishment in what they bemoaned as another tight budget year.

After the budget was nearly derailed during a tense start to the week in the Senate, the final version passed the House and Senate with comparative ease. It now goes to Nixon, who can veto particular appropriations or withhold money from programs if he believes the budgeted expenditures will exceed state revenues.

“Unless we make some tough decisions about revenue in this state, our budget will be in even a bigger hole next year,” said Rep. Sara Lampe, of Springfield, the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee.

Lawmakers ultimately backed away from a House proposal that would have eliminated a health care program for more than 2,800 blind residents who earn too much to qualify for traditional Medicaid but have assets of less than $20,000. The budget provides nearly full funding to continue the program, but it also attempts to cap participation at three times the poverty level and require premiums for those earning over 150 percent of the poverty level, or $16,755 annually for an individual.

Nixon’s office said the limits are invalid, citing court precedent that lawmakers cannot change state statutes through budget bills.

Democrats concurred, to a certain extent. Some suggested that lawmakers could have done more had they been willing to consider ways to increase taxes or boost collections of money Missouri already is owed.

Photo: André Lucat / SGP Italia

Usually, you wouldn’t want to see this much skin at a 90th birthday party. But when it’s a 90th birthday party for Paris Vogue, all bets are off. Carine Roitfeld and her Gallic crew threw a bal masqué in Paris last night, and though the faces were obscured, not much else was. Sheer—which has been all over the Spring runways—was the look of the night. The charge was led by the hostess, in a see-through, leopard-spotted Givenchy number, and her heiress apparent, daughter Julia Restoin-Roitfeld, in a gold-embellished sheer number from Peter Dundas’ Spring ‘11 Pucci runway. Natalia Vodianova, Mariacarla Boscono, Lily Donaldson, and Bianca Brandolini d’Adda were also feeling the transparent vibe. (Some, like Maryna Linchuk, above, went for sheer masks, too.)

Click here to check out our slideshow of the looks of the evening, and let us know—who wore it best?

When she testified in April she said none of her family had wanted her sister to marry Balfour.

The Oscar-winning actress was the first witness called in the trial and had attended every day of testimony.

Prosecutors had to build an overwhelming circumstantial case against him as there were no surviving witnesses or fingerprints to link him to the crimes.

She also sang I Will Always Love You at the Grammy awards this year in memory of the late Whitney Houston.

He showed no emotion as the verdict was delivered. The jurors had earlier indicated they were split but continued to deliberate.

A US jury has convicted a man of murdering three members of actress Jennifer Hudson's family in 2008.

Circumstantial evidence

The boy's body was found in the abandoned vehicle after a three-day search.

Ms Hudson, 30, a finalist on the 2004 series of American Idol, won an Oscar in 2007 for her supporting role in the musical Dreamgirls.

In court she was accompanied by her longtime partner, professional wrestler David Otunga.

"It has always been our position, and it still is, that William Balfour is innocent of these murders," she said.

Jennifer Hudson was overcome with tears as the verdict was read.

Prosecutors said Balfour then drove off in Jason Hudson's car with Julia's son, Julian King, and shot the boy several times in the head as he lay behind a front seat.

The jury deliberated for three days before delivering its verdict. Balfour, 31, now faces a mandatory life prison sentence.

Jennifer Hudson sang I Will Always Love You at the Grammy awards to remember Whitney Houston

"We didn't like the way he treated her, and I didn't like the way he treated my nephew," she told the court.

Defence lawyer Amy Thompson said she would appeal against the verdict.

Prosecutors said Balfour shot Ms Hudson's mother, brother and seven-year-old nephew after his estranged wife refused to reconcile with him.

At the time of the killings, Balfour was estranged from Ms Hudson's sister, Julia Hudson.

William Balfour, Ms Hudson's former brother-in-law, was found guilty on three counts of first-degree murder by the jury in Chicago.

They said that when Julia Hudson left home for her job as a bus driver on the morning of 24 October 2008, Balfour went into the home and shot Ms Hudson's mother, Darnell Donerson, 57, in the back, and then shot Jason Hudson, 29, twice in the head as he lay in bed.

New categories and techniques were on display, too. Jeweler and sculptor Jordan Askill introduced pieces with ethical amethyst, sourced from a mine in Zambia, which he worked into silver pieces with his trademark swallows (below left). (A giant swallow cuff, which opened to reveal a hidden compartment, blurred the line between his two pursuits.) Also in the new collection were his first fine-jewelry pieces, with tiny diamonds surrounding a faceted, hand-carved swallow pendant. Holly Fulton had begun working with mother-of-pearl for accessories and real seashells for statement-making jackets; the trick, she confided, is finding shells of uniform shape. Tait, whose finely wrought, voluminous pieces suggest Couture shapes, had a surprising new footwear collaboration: a set of crisscrossed trainers he designed with Nike. (He was wearing a pair himself, as was a model; he had no plans to produce them, he revealed, but persistent interest on the part of buyers may change all that.) And Sibling’s Cozette McCreery was on hand to show off her knitwear label’s first official women’s line, Sister by Sibling. Women had been ordering small men’s sizes for so long, she said, that she and her co-designers, Sid Bryan and Joe Bates, decided finally to cut and knit for them. They were cropped neon and sequin leopard tops (left) and two complementary, sweatshirt-style sweaters emblazoned with the words LOVE and HATE. They’d sold, she said, about evenly, though she expected more interest in LOVE. Call it a knitted insight into the human race.
—Matthew Schneier

Photos: Courtesy of Sibling; Courtesy of Jordan Askill