Around the Nation

Charles, Camilla visit market, farm

SAN FRANCISCO — Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, took their royal tour of the United States to Northern California yesterday, examining local produce at a market and lunching with locals at an organic farm near San Francisco.

The prince and Duchess of Cornwall will spend more than three days in the region, as the trip shifts from the power centers of New York and Washington to more rural areas, and issues close to the prince’s heart — organic agriculture and sustainable food production.

After a stop at the farmer’s market in the Marin County town of Point Reyes Station, the couple will visit Bolinas, a small coastal community about 30 miles north of San Francisco.

Convicted killer remains at large

HOUSTON — Jurors and victims’ relatives fear they might be targets of a death-row inmate who freed himself from handcuffs and walked out of a county jail in civilian clothes.

Convicted killer Charles Victor Thompson remained at large yesterday, authorities said. Thompson, 35, fooled at least four jail employees when he walked out of the Harris County Jail on Thursday.

“This was 100 percent human error; that’s the most frustrating thing about it,” sheriff’s spokesman Lt. John Martin said Friday.

Several relatives of Thompson’s victims — his ex-girlfriend and her boyfriend — went into hiding or agreed to police protection, the Houston Chronicle reported.

Ex-Klansman in prison for selling pipe bombs

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — A federal judge sentenced a former Ku Klux Klansman to 14 years in prison Friday for making pipe bombs and selling them to an undercover informant who said they would be used to kill illegal aliens.

Daniel Schertz, 27, apologized to his family before the judge gave him the maximum possible penalty in a plea agreement.

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