NATION IN BRIEF : NEW JERSEY : Judge Reduces Prison Term for ‘Terrorist’

A federal judge in Newark, N.J., reluctantly knocked more than eight years off the sentence of “a professional terrorist” arrested while transporting explosives on the New Jersey Turnpike. U.S. District Judge Alfred J. Lechner said he “disagreed very, very seriously” with the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled that Lechner had exceeded sentencing guidelines in 1989 when he sentenced Yu Kikumura to 30 years in prison. Kikumura, reputedly a member of the Japanese Red Army, a radical leftist group, was arrested in 1988 at a turnpike rest area with three bombs in his car. Officials said he was arrested two days before he planned to blow up a Navy recruiting center in New York City as revenge for the U.S. bombing of Libya.