News briefs

Delaware diocese files for bankruptcy

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — The Catholic Diocese of Wilmington says it has filed for bankruptcy, one day before a sex abuse trial was set to begin.

The diocese filed Sunday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware. On Monday, a civil trial was scheduled to begin involving an alleged victim. The filing means the trial will be delayed.

The case would have been the first to come to trial under a Delaware law that created a two-year "lookback" window. That law allows claims of abuse to be brought even if the time allowed by the statute of limitations has passed. More than 100 lawsuits were filed before the period ended this summer, and some cases have been settled.

Priest in prison says he didn't kill nun

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A Roman Catholic priest imprisoned for killing a nun 29 years ago told a newspaper that he is innocent, but a prosecutor and the victim's nephew wondered why he is only making the claim now.

The Rev. Gerald Robinson, now 71, was convicted in 2006 for killing Sister Margaret Ann Pahl in 1980 by strangling her and stabbing her 31 times in a Toledo hospital chapel. Church historians have said it's the only documented case of a Catholic priest killing a nun.

"I didn't do this," Robinson told The Columbus Dispatch for Sunday editions. "I have no idea why anyone would do it."

Robinson was sentenced to a mandatory term of 15 years to life in prison.

Tropical depression forms in the Pacific

MIAMI (AP) — Forecasters say a tropical depression has formed far south of the Hawaiian Islands and that it is expected to strengthen over the next two days.

The National Hurricane Center says the depression's center Sunday afternoon is about 905 miles south-southeast of Honolulu. It is moving toward the west-northwest at about 15 mph.

Man faces retrial in deaths of 2 students

WASHINGTON, Pa. (AP) — A former Pittsburgh man again faces a possible death penalty in a retrial in the shooting deaths of two Ohio college students a decade ago.

Twenty-nine-year-old Terrell Yarbrough is scheduled to go on trial this week in the 1999 deaths of Franciscan University students Aaron Land and Brian Muha. Prosecutors say Land and Muha were kidnapped from their Steubenville, Ohio, home and driven to the Pittsburgh suburb of Robinson Township, where they were shot.