A former Nasa flight surgeon said today the woman astronaut accused of trying to kidnap and murder a love rival had suffered “mental anguish”.

Twice-convicted Washington, DC-area sniper John Allen Muhammad was today sentenced to six consecutive life terms with no possibility of parole, a sentence Maryland prosecutors described as insurance in case his Virginia death sentence is ever overturned.

John Allen Muhammad was today sentenced to six consecutive life sentences for the October 2002 killings of six people during a sniper shooting spree that terrorised the Washington, DC region.

John Allen Muhammad’s conviction for six more murders in the spree of US sniper shootings in the Washington area gives prosecutors the insurance they sought – that there is little chance he will leave prison alive.

John Allen Muhammad aggressively questioned his former sniper protégé Lee Boyd Malvo today and kept referring to the young man testifying against him as “son”.

Lee Boyd Malvo testified in Rockville, Maryland, today that his former partner and father figure, John Allen Muhammad, told him before the 2002 sniper attacks that panicked the region around America’s capital for weeks, “We’re going to terrorise this nation".

Lee Boyd Malvo is expected to take the stand in Rockville, Maryland, on Monday to testify against John Allen Muhammad, his former mentor and alleged accomplice in the October 2002 Washington area sniper shootings trial.

Prosecutors today began building a forensics case against John Allen Muhammad, as the convicted sniper who is serving as his own attorney in his second trial attempted to demonstrate that little evidence linked him directly to the three-week Washington area sniping spree in October 2002.

John Allen Muhammad, due to be tried in May for six sniper killings in Montgomery County, in 2002, is “psychotic, delusional and paranoid,” and is not competent to stand trial or represent himself, according to a motion filed before a US court.

FORMER WorldCom Inc chairman Bernard Ebbers has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for orchestrating the largest accounting fraud in US history, an $11 billion (€8.9bn) scheme that drove his company into bankruptcy.

PHIL MICKELSON ended his magical year with golf's magic number. The Masters champion shot a 13-under 59 to win the PGA Grand Slam of Golf, a two-day competition for the year's four major winners.

THE growth in mobile phone use could have excluded large numbers of young, newly-registered voters from the opinion polls in the run-up to the presidential elections.

German Alex Cejka and Swede Richard Johnson have made it 18 Europeans in next week’s US Open at Olympia Fields near Chicago.

The scientist who led Britain’s contribution to the “book of life” – the blueprint of human DNA – was awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine today.