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Search underway after N.S. sailor disappears

HALIFAX - U.S. and Canadian aircraft continued searching the ocean off Bermuda on Friday for a missing solo sailor from Nova Scotia.

Hubert Marcoux, 67, of Halifax left the province Nov. 9 and was supposed to reach Bermuda last Monday.

Marcoux is an experienced sailor, adventurer and author whose 2005 book Around the World in 18 Years chronicled his 18-year voyage that began when he was 44.

The search for Marcoux and his 14-metre boat Mon Pays began Thursday.

Lt. Ed Stansfield, spokesman for the Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Halifax, said Marcoux would have run into bad weather partway through his voyage.

"He would have experienced about four days of incredibly rough weather, with winds up to 60 knots and 10-metre seas," he told CBC News.

"Where he's sailing by himself, that would have been just an incredible experience, just trying to stay awake for four days at the helm."

Gosselin pleads guilty in sponsorship scandal

OTTAWA - Gilles-Andre Gosselin, a key player in the federal sponsorship scandal, pleaded guilty Friday to several charges related to fraud totalling $655,276.

Gosselin was immediately sentenced by an Ottawa judge to two years, plus a day.

"I'm sorry and I apologize," he told Judge Lise Maisonneuve, breaking into tears.

An executive with Ontario-based Gosselin Strategic Communications, Gosselin was charged last December with 19 counts of fraud for offences allegedly committed between 1997 and 2000.

His name surfaced in a 2004-2005 inquiry into the sponsorship scandal, which revealed the public-relations executive billed the government for 3,673 hours of work in 1997.

He told the inquiry, led by Justice John Gomery, that he had worked every minute of the hours he billed.

U.S. to drop case against Blackwater guard

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department intends to drop manslaughter and weapons charges against one of the Blackwater Worldwide security guards involved in a deadly 2007 Baghdad shooting, prosecutors said in court documents Friday.

The shooting in busy Nisoor Square left 17 Iraqis dead and inflamed anti-American sentiment abroad. It touched off a string of investigations that ultimately led the State Department to cancel the company's lucrative contract to guard diplomats in Iraq.

Tooth and fingers said to be Galileo's are found in container

ROME - A Florence museum says two fingers and a tooth believed to belong to Galileo Galilei have been found and will go on display next spring.

Three fingers and a tooth were taken from the astronomer's body in 1737 and placed in a container.

Paolo Galluzzi, director of the Museum of the History of Science, said a private collector had bought a container at auction containing two fingers and a tooth.

The fingers, from the right hand, and the tooth, will be shown to the public next spring.

Sources: The Canadian Press, The Associated Press