NATION IN BRIEF
CHICAGO -- As Illinois Gov. George Ryan decides whether to commute the sentences of some death row inmates, more than 400 law professors said in an open letter to Ryan that he would be justified in granting clemency to all of them.</br></br>Ryan stopped the state's executions nearly three years ago after courts found that 13 death row inmates had been wrongly convicted since the state resumed capital punishment in 1977. He is reviewing clemency requests from more than 140 of the state's 160 death row inmates and has said he will rule before he leaves office Jan. 13.</br></br>In 1986, New Mexico Gov. Toney Anaya commuted the sentences of all his state's death row inmates. Arkansas Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller did the same thing in 1970.</br></br>NEW YORK -- Milton Glaser, the graphic artist who designed the "I {heart} NY" logo, has proposed a new slogan: "Together for the City We Love." He said the new phrase, which he has submitted to City Hall, could help New Yorkers bond during tumultuous times.</br></br>MINNEAPOLIS -- The airplane crash that killed senator Paul D. Wellstone (D-Minn.) may have been caused by the plane's slow speed as it prepared to land, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported. The Beechcraft King Air A100, carrying Wellstone and seven others, was traveling as slow as 85 knots -- equivalent to 100 miles per hour on land -- as it approached a small airport in northern Minnesota on Oct. 25, according to a study of radar data by the National Transportation Safety Board. Pilots and investigators said the plane should have been flying at a speed of at least 120 knots.