In the Nation

NEW YORK - An innocent man framed by a police detective who doubled as a killer for the mob has won a $9.9 million settlement from New York City. The settlement, announced Thursday, set a record for a civil rights lawsuit against the city.

Barry Gibbs, 61, spent nearly 19 years behind bars in the 1988 slaying of a prostitute. He was freed in 2005 after a key witness said that New York detective Louis Eppolito had coerced him into wrongfully identifying Gibbs as a suspect.

Eppolito and his partner, Stephen Caracappa, were convicted in April 2006 on charges they moonlighted as professional hit men. A jury found them responsible for eight murders. Both are serving life sentences. - AP

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department alleged Thursday in a new terrorism case that a Texas man communicated with the fugitive al-Qaeda cleric whose name surfaced in the shootings at Fort Hood.

Court documents say Barry Walter Bujol of Hempstead, Texas, had been communicating by e-mail with Anwar al-Awlaki, the native-born U.S. citizen who exchanged e-mail messages with the alleged Fort Hood gunman, Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan.

A federal grand jury indictment in Houston alleges that Bujol tried to supply personnel, currency, and other items to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Court documents say that Awlaki gave Bujol a document titled "42 Ways of Supporting Jihad" and that Bujol asked Awlaki for advice on how to provide money to the "mujahideen" overseas.

Awlaki is believed to have inspired attacks on the United States and is hiding in Yemen, two Yemeni security officials said. Yemen says he is also suspected of contacts with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the suspect in the Christmas Day jet-bombing attempt. The FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force began investigating Bujol in 2008. - AP

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - The state of Alaska will have to wait until at least Monday for permission to proceed with its plans to kill at least seven wolves inside a national wildlife refuge in order to protect a caribou herd that supports a Native village.

U.S. District Judge H. Russel Holland set a hearing for oral arguments, rejecting the state's request for immediate approval for aerial predator control.

The state is suing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for blocking its plan to kill wolves on Unimak Island, the easternmost in the Aleutian chain. The state says the killing of wolves on the calving grounds is necessary to save the declining caribou herd, now at about 400 animals - down from more than 1,200 in 2002. Caribou are an important subsistence food for about 62 residents of Unimak. - AP

The National Rifle Association endorsed Sen. John McCain on Thursday in Arizona's Aug. 24 Republican Senate primary, providing high-profile support for the four-term incumbent's conservative credentials as he tries to shake a primary challenge by former U.S. Rep. J.D. Hayworth.