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A Philadelphia jury has ordered GlaxoSmithKline to pay $2.5 million over birth defects allegedly caused by its antidepressant drug Paxil.

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Wrestling icon Albano dies Captain Lou Albano, who became one of the most recognized professional wrestlers of the 1980s after appearing in Cyndi Lauper’s ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun’ music video, died Wednesday. He was 76. Albano, whose real name was Louis Vincent Albano, died in Westchester County in suburban New York, of natural causes. With his trademark Hawaiian shirts, wily goatee and rubber bands hung like piercings from his cheek, Albano was an outsize personality who, in a career spanning nearly five decades, was known as much for his showmanship as for his talent in the ring.

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The verdict is the first of about 600 similar Paxil lawsuits filed around the country.

The jury found the company guilty of negligence but not outrageous conduct, and rejected punitive damages.

Plaintiff Michelle David of suburban Philadelphia has a son born four years ago with several heart defects. He spent months in the hospital and has had several surgeries. The family’s lawyer says he will need at least one more.

GlaxoSmithKline says it plans to appeal the verdict.

KABUL

Runoff could be difficult

Afghan officials would face a daunting task in organizing a runoff presidential election before the arrival of winter — including hiring unbiased staff and securing polling stations in areas under threat of Taliban attack.

The problems are unlikely to end there. Even if the Afghans were to pull it off, there’s no guarantee that another ballot — which seems increasingly probable — would produce a reliable partner for the U.S. and its allies in confronting the Taliban-led insurgency.

Election officials are expected to rule within days on fraud allegations over the Aug. 20 election. The vote was marred by charges of ballot-stuffing and voter coercion, mostly to the benefit of the incumbent, President Hamid Karzai.

TORONTO

Possible new da Vinci found

A new portrait by Leonardo da Vinci may have been discovered thanks to centuries-old fingerprint and palm print.

Peter Paul Biro, a Montreal-based forensic art expert, said that a fingerprint on what was presumed to be a 19th-century German drawing of a young woman has convinced art experts that it’s actually a Leonardo.

Canadian-born art collector Peter Silverman bought “Profile of the Bella Principessa” at the Ganz gallery in New York on behalf of an anonymous Swiss collector in 2007 for about $19,000.

NEW YORK

Terror suspect connected

The airport shuttle driver accused of plotting a bombing in New York had contacts with al-Qaida that went nearly all the way to the top, to an Osama bin Laden confidant believed to be the terrorist group’s leader in Afghanistan, U.S. intelligence officials told The Associated Press.

Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, an Egyptian reputed to be one of the founders of the terrorist network, used a middleman to contact Afghan immigrant Najibullah Zazi as the 24-year-old man hatched a plot to use homemade backpack bombs, perhaps on the city’s mass transit system, the two intelligence officials said.

Intelligence officials declined to discuss the nature of the contact or whether al-Yazid contacted Zazi to offer simple encouragement or help with the bombing plot prosecutors say Zazi was pursuing.