Enron wants to pay bonuses to top bosses

NEW YORK -- Fearful of losing senior managers and having trouble recruiting new ones, Enron Corp. Friday asked a bankruptcy court to approve payment of lucrative retention bonuses, severance and the legal expenses of current executives and board members.

The company said the spending is "critical" to its plan to rebuild. Each component requires bankruptcy court approval.

Part of the plan would allow the company to pay up to $90 million in bonuses to hundreds of senior managers working on asset sales. The payments would be funded with a small portion of the cash they collect from those sales.

Additional retention bonuses of up to $40 million would be paid to other senior managers involved in day-to-day operations.

"Clearly, some security must be afforded to these employees," the company said in its filing with U.S Bankruptcy Court. "Otherwise, they have little or no reason to defer finding new jobs."

For people now working at Enron but who might be laid off, the company is proposing a new severance package that would be based on years of service, with a maximum of eight weeks base pay and a minimum of $4,500. Total severance would not exceed $7 million.

Body of abducted girl found in Louisiana

HATHAWAY, La. -- The body of a 12-year-old girl was found Friday in a gully, a day after she was abducted from outside her home in southwestern Louisiana.

Jefferson Davis Parish Sheriff Ricky Edwards would not say where exactly Holli Thibodeaux's body was found, nor how she died. Edwards declined to give any further details.

Dozens of FBI agents had joined the search Friday for Holli. She was abducted Thursday at the Hathaway Village Trailer Park after the driver of a pickup stopped to ask for directions to nearby Jennings, Edwards said.

The man grabbed Holli, threw her into his truck and drove north on Louisiana Highway 26, Edwards said.

Another girl who was with Holli ran and escaped.

The FBI released a composite sketch of the suspect and said they were looking for a light blue, full-sized pickup truck with a new silver toolbox and a red-and-yellow ladder in the back.

Kentucky Senate tables bill to ban cloning

FRANKFORT, Ky. -- The state Senate on Friday tabled legislation to ban human cloning, likely ending the effort after a debate over how it would affect the future of medical research.

The measure passed in the House, but supporters of the state's top research institutions, including the University of Kentucky and University of Louisville, said such a ban would prompt top researchers to leave.

No cloning research is being done at either school, though both are leading researchers in Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and spinal cord injury. Some in those fields believe advances could be gained through cloning research.

An amendment, backed by the schools, was offered to exempt medical researchers from an outright cloning ban.

Dahmer action figure upsets victims' families

MILWAUKEE -- A Colorado company's line of dolls depicting serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and other murderers is in poor taste, an attorney for victims' families said Friday.

Spectre Studios offers hand-painted, posable figurines of Dahmer, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy and Wisconsin killer Ed Gein.

Creator David Johnson declined to be interviewed by The Associated Press, but said in an e-mail that he "was making money doing my artwork. I'm sure that seems a very feeble excuse for a victim's family member watching the news."

In 1991, Dahmer admitted killing 17 young men and boys in Milwaukee, mutilating the victims and cannibalizing some of them. Gein, whose story is echoed in the movies "Psycho" and "Silence of the Lambs," committed his crimes in Plainfield.

--From wire reports