In the Nation

SAN DIEGO - The man who was the original voice of Charlie Brown in

Peanuts

television specials has been sentenced to a year in jail for stalking a former girlfriend and threatening her plastic surgeon. But he was immediately released to a residential drug-treatment center to complete his sentence.

Peter Robbins, 56, had already been in jail for four months. Superior Court Judge Dwayne Morning said Wednesday that he could spend the next eight months in treatment, but if he violated his probation he could spend four years in prison.

Borrowing a line from Charlie Brown's nemesis Lucy, the judge told Robbins: "Don't be a blockhead."

Robbins also received five years' probation and was ordered to pay $15,000 in restitution to the plastic surgeon.

- AP

ARLINGTON, Va. - Arlington County prosecutors plan to keep jurisdiction in their sexual-battery case against an Air Force officer who had led the branch's sexual-assault response unit.

The Air Force had asked to have the case transferred into the military justice system.

Lt. Col. Jeffrey Krusinski is scheduled for arraignment Thursday in General District Court on a misdemeanor sexual-battery charge. He is accused of groping a woman in a parking lot early Sunday.

County Commonwealth's Attorney Theo Stamos said Wednesday her office routinely prosecuted military members.

An Air Force spokeswoman confirmed the Air Force could bring its own case regardless of what Arlington County does but said the secretary of the Air Force must approve a dual prosecution. - AP

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. - Gov. Rick Snyder signed a bill Wednesday that clears the way to schedule Michigan's first gray wolf hunting season since the resurgent predator, reviled by some as a menace to farm animals and beloved by others as a symbol of untamed wildness, was driven to the brink of extinction in the lower 48 states a half-century ago.

Michigan would become the sixth state to authorize hunting wolves since federal protections were removed over the last two years in the western Great Lakes and the Northern Rockies, where the animals are thriving. Hunters and trappers have killed about 1,100 wolves in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. Officials estimate the remaining population at roughly 6,000.

The measure that Snyder approved lets the state Natural Resources Commission decide which types of animals can be hunted - authority that previously rested entirely with the legislature. The seven-member commission was expected to vote Thursday on a proposal by state wildlife regulators for a season this fall in which up to 43 wolves could be killed - about 7 percent of the 658 believed to roam the remote Upper Peninsula.

- AP