WASHINGTON (AP) — The victims of the Metro train collision in Washington included the recently retired commanding general of the D.C. National Guard and his wife; two working moms; a retired teacher who was working as a substitute, and a woman who worked with nurses around the world.

Here is what family members, co-workers and others had to say about them:

Maj. Gen. David F. Wherley Jr., 62, was the retired commanding general of the D.C. National Guard. His wife Ann, 62, was also killed in the collision. They lived in Washington.

U.S. Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton wrote in an e-mail that she developed a close relationship with Wherley, especially during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as D.C. National Guard members were transformed from weekend warriors to Army troops in battle.

Wherley worked on deployment and return ceremonies for troops, funding for Guard members’ tuition and afterschool activities conducted by the Guard.

Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty said of Wherley: “He was as fine a public servant, as dedicated to the United States of America … as anyone I have ever met.”

Jeanice McMillan, who was at the controls of a transit train that plowed into another, would have done anything to prevent the accident, friends and relatives said.

She was a devoted mom to her college-age son and while she had struggled financially, she loved her job ferrying commuters and tourists around the nation’s capital, those who knew her said.

“If she could have stopped the train, she would have done everything in her power,” said Joanne Harrison, a neighbor at McMillan’s apartment building in Springfield, Va.

McMillan, 42, a Buffalo, N.Y., native, moved to the Washington area about a dozen years ago, her family said. She worked for the U.S. Postal Service for several years before joining the Metropolitan Washington Area Transit Authority in 2007 as a bus driver. Officials say she became a train operator in March.

Fifty-nine-year-old Mary Doolittle of Washington, who went by Mandy, was an upbeat person with an irrepressible joy and a great sense of humor. She was drawn to health care to support nursing around the world, according to her supervisor, Jeanne Floyd of the American Nurses Credentialing Center.

After working in Italy for several years and graduating from Rice University, the senior international specialist had been at the credentialing center for the last eight years working on the association’s outreach to the international community.

“She talked constantly about the colleagues who would write to her on a daily basis from around the world asking for her assistance. She thought it was her duty and honor to help this population, many of whom are underserved in their country,” Floyd said.

Dennis Hawkins’ sister, Helen Paulette Hall, said that “when you saw Dennis, you saw a smiling face.”

She said the 64-year-old retired teacher and D.C. resident worked as a substitute at Whittier Elementary School in Washington. Although he did not have children, the sons and daughters of his seven siblings were close to him.

Hawkins, a graduate of Western Michigan University, taught all his adult life, Hall said.

“He was a very religious man, family oriented,” she said. Hawkins was at Hall’s house for a Father’s Day dinner with their father.

A cousin of 23-year-old Lavonda “Nikki” King of Washington said King was riding the train from work to pick up her two young sons.

Brittne Rowe said King had just started a job after becoming engaged. Rowe says her cousin was a great mom.

King last called another family member while boarding the Metro train in Takoma Park.

A friend of a Metro crash victim said Ana Fernandez, 40, of Hyattsville, Md., worked evenings as a housekeeper to raise her six children.

Jessica Guillen said Fernandez, a frequent Metro rider, was on her way to work.

Fernandez’s children are 21, 18, 14, 12, 11 and 1 1/2 years old, and Guillen said Fernandez was like a second mother to her.

The stepmother of Veronica Dubose says the Washingtonian worked and went to school in the evenings to support two young children.

YaVonne Dubose said her 29-year-old stepdaughter was heading to her first day of school for certification classes, which might have allowed her to work 9-5 hours as a certified nursing assistant.

An 8-year-old son, Raja, and an 18-month-old daughter, Ava, were her top priority, her stepmother said.

“She was a trouper,” Dubose said. “If she was on the side of the road with a flat tire, she would change it herself before she would ask for help.”

Dubose said her stepdaughter planned to move her family to North Carolina after she obtained the certification.

THE tattooist embroiled in a row with a teenage girl who claims he tattooed 56 stars on her face when she only asked for three has said he will help pay for them to be removed.

Rouslan Toumaniantz said today that Kimberley Vlaminck ‘absolutely’ agreed she wanted 56 stars tattooed on the left side of her face.

But now the 18-year-old is suing Toumaniantz, claiming she had asked him for only three stars – and had fallen asleep during the procedure, waking up to a nightmare in her Belgian hometown of Courtrai.  Read original story

Toumaniantz – himself covered from head to foot in tattoos and piercings – said he would help pay for half of the treatment to remove the tattoos.

Gallery: Celebrity tattoos

‘I maintain that she absolutely agreed that I tattoo those 56 stars on the left side of her face,’ he told newspaper La Derniere Heure.

‘A witness, a woman who was present, has already been questioned by police, and she confirms it.

‘But be that as it may: Kimberley is unhappy and it is not my wish to have an unsatisfied client. There is a way to remove the tattoos with the help of a laser. I accept to pay for half the cost.’

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the Iranian nation’s massive turnout in the recent presidential elections has challenged Western democracy.

“The recent election in Iran posed a great challenge to the West’s democracy,” Mehr news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying in a cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

He noted that the presidential election was a referendum in which some 40 million Iranians voted for the principles of the Islamic Republic in Iran.

“The ideals of the Islamic Revolution were the winners of the election,” Ahmadinejad added.

He also noted that the results of the election show that 25 million people [who have voted for Ahmadinejad] have approved his way of management of the country.

GENEVA (Reuters) – A French woman who confessed to killing banker Edouard Stern after they had sado-masochistic sex and argued over $1 million was found guilty on Wednesday of murder, rather than the lesser charge of a crime of passion.

Judge Alessandra Cambi read out the verdict reached by the Geneva jury of six women and six men after a one-week trial that revealed sordid details of the relationship between the artist and Stern, one of the richest men in France.

The jury’s statement said that Cecile Brossard “acted with a certain determination” in killing her long-time lover and then cleaning up evidence of the crime and fleeing the country, checking her bank balance between flights.

“Her state of despair was not excusable,” the jury said, rejecting calls from Brossard’s lawyers to consider the death a crime of passion, which carries a shorter prison term.

Earlier on Wednesday, the 40-year-old defendant apologized to Stern’s family in the packed courtroom, where Stern’s ex-wife and Brossard’s sister Delphine looked on. “I am not a thief,” she said. “I am a woman still madly in love.”

Stern, 50, was found dead in his Geneva luxury flat in March 2005. Four bullet wounds pierced the head-to-toe flesh-colored latex outfit he wore from the night before.

Sex toys littered his bedroom full of millions of dollars worth of antiques. Brossard admitted to having cleaned up the crime scene and thrown the murder weapon into Lake Geneva.

The 38th richest man in France, Stern counted President Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist politician Laurent Fabius among his friends. He was once heir apparent to his father-in-law, Michel David-Weill of the investment bank Lazard Freres.

“HATE AND MONEY”

Court papers show Brossard confessed to having killed Stern with his own revolver following an argument over $1 million he put into her Swiss account, funds she had demanded as “proof of his love for her.”

He blocked the money after she refused to return it.

The jury noted in its verdict that Brossard had called her banker regarding the $1 million between flights as she fled first to Italy and then to Australia.

The Stern family lawyer Marc Bonnant had said in his plea on Tuesday for a murder conviction: “The million is the cause of everything. She killed him when he wanted to get back the million and at no other moment in their relationship.”

Geneva chief prosecutor Daniel Zappelli, in his summary, said: “If there is passion in this case, it is that of money. It was not love that killed, but hate and money.”

Brossard is due to be sentenced on Thursday afternoon, and faces up to 20 years in jail for murder. She has already spent four years in preventive custody.

Defense lawyers Pascal Maurer and Alec Reymond portrayed Brossard as a victim of a tormented relationship dominated by the manipulative Stern. It was fueled by an explosive mix of kinky sex and his alleged promises to marry her, they argued.

Brossard said that she shot Stern after he told her: “One million dollars is a lot of money to pay for a whore.”

“When I heard that, I understood that I would never be his wife. I wanted to carry his name, it was a little girl’s dream. My head, my heart imploded,” Brossard testified, telling how she fired the first shot between the eyes of her masked lover.

DES ‘Tuppence’ Moran was allegedly murdered over missing millions of dollars he hid for his dead brother, a clan insider claimed.

Moran family associate Bert Wrout told the Herald Sun the secret of where Lewis Moran’s missing millions were died with his brother Tuppence, who was shot in a cafe on Monday.

Bert Wrout, who was wounded when Lewis Moran was killed in 2004, said his mate had stashed away a fortune.

“It’s always over the same thing – money. Lewis’s missing millions. It’s here, there and everywhere,” he said.

“Various people were holding it for him. I’m sure quite a lot dies with Tuppence.”

The claim came as gangland matriarch Judy Moran was yesterday refused bail after being declared a public risk.

“We believe she will endanger the safety and wellbeing of the public,” Purana Taskforce Detective Sen-Constable Stephen Reidy told Melbourne Magistrates’ Court.

She will be moved to the Dame Phyllis Frost women’s prison at Deer Park today.

Ms Moran, 64, sat stony-faced as Magistrate Jelena Popovic refused bail over the murder of her brother-in-law.

Ms Moran and co-accused Suzanne Kane are both charged with being an accessory after the fact.

Yesterday’s bail hearing was told police found three handguns – including two 9mm pistols – in a hidden safe inside the home Ms Moran once shared with Lewis.

Sen-Det Stephen Reidy, of the Purana Taskforce, said ballistic tests were being carried out on the guns.

He said police also found a loaded shotgun, complete with extra cartridges, hidden under cushions about a metre from the back door of the house.

“This is an ongoing investigation and we believe she (Ms Moran) will endanger the safety and well being of the public,” Sen-Det Reidy said.

Police also expressed concerns Ms Moran could abscond or destroy evidence.

Chief prosecutor Gavin Silbert, SC, said Ms Moran’s home was set on fire after she was arrested, possibly out of revenge, and that any further acts of retribution could endanger the public.

Sen-Det Kathryn Underwood, of the Purana Taskforce, said Ms Kane also posed an unacceptable risk.

The court heard she had shown a willingness to destroy evidence and construct alibis.

Ms Popovic said both women appeared to have access to serious firearms and that, in her view, constituted a concern “in terms of the safety of members of the community”.

Ms Kane’s de facto husband, Geoffrey Amour, 43, has been charged with murder and is due in Melbourne Magistrates’ Court today.

Police are still hunting a second gunman after releasing a man they arrested on Tuesday without charge.

The court heard Mr Amour and Ms Kane, who lives interstate, were staying at Ms Moran’s home while Ms Kane was in Melbourne for a company liquidation.

India’s prime minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistan’s president Asif Ali Zardari have met on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Russia, and Dr Singh’s first words were a clear rebuke – that Pakistan should not allow itself to be used for terrorism.

It’s the two leaders first meeting since last November’s Mumbai terrorist attacks, which India blames on Pakistani based militants linked to the Lashkar-e-Taiba group.

CHENOY: There is a kind of a log jam between India and Pakistan and that is India is saying that the terror apparatus in Pakistan must be dismantled and terrorist infiltration in India must stop before there is a dialogue and the Pakistanis are saying that in order to decide all this, there is a need to resume the dialogue.

ABBANY: Well, I wonder whether India is being a little unfair on Pakistan, given that Pakistan is having to fight certain issues on a number of fronts, whether it is terrorism or internal political instability. There is also still of course the issue for Kashmir for both India and Pakistan. Should India not come to the table and help its neighbour?

CHENOY: Yeah, India should come to the table, but please remember Mumbai, despite lots of evidence given to Pakistan. This has caused a lot of disquiet and anger in India.

ABBANY: But Pakistan is fighting militants now of course in the Swat Valley and there is talk about them opening up a new operation in South Waziristan, that has the backing of the United States. And is that not the same for India? I know that India wants Pakistan to go after Lashkar-e–Taiba. Is that not the same thing?

CHENOY: There are a number of camps which train terrorists in Pakistan near administered Kashmir and elsewhere. India wants those camps shut down and India wants terrorism in the form of infiltration by Lashkar-e-Taiba and other terrorists into Indian territory and attacks of that sort also shutdown. And of course the problem is that to do all this will require tremendous, political capital by Zardari, because the army which is the most powerful of forces in Pakistan will want concessions in return. So actually both countries have painted themselves into a corner.

ABBANY: So if Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India says as he has said, I mean he’s very keen to resolve issues with Pakistan. But he said that he is prepared to meet Pakistan more than halfway. What does that mean, more than halfway?

CHENOY: Well, more than halfway that even if initial steps are taken and some of these organisations that have been banned actually action is taken against them and then India would go in for a dialogue and later become a composite dialogue which would include Kashmir.

ABBANY: Which would be to the advantage of the entire region, because this sort of rivalry over what’s important for South Asia is perhaps causing more trouble, rivalry between India and Pakistan?

CHENOY: Yes, but you must remember that the problem is how much can Zardari deliver, because of the crucial role of the Pakistan army.

ABBANY: And you think that he can’t deliver very much?

CHENOY: Well the problem with Zardari is that he made unnecessary enemies and the civilian political establishment he disenfranchised the Sharif brothers and all of that. There has been a deal on that. I don’t think Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif trust Zardari very much. So Zardari has to build the political capital and its support within his own country for major steps within them. But I certainly see no option for other side but to talk, but certainly the political will to do anything is lacking and quite frankly, in both countries. For example, other issues like withdrawal from the Siachen glacier of troops, which is a great environmental hazard and other issueswhich are relatively easier issues to solve than Kashmir. These have not been solved, so there just can’t be talk about talk. They should talk and they should try and move ahead and solve some of the outstanding issues, which will create a much better atmosphere for finally dealing with the more difficult situation of Kashmir.