The new lady on face of the $10 bill

The new face of the $10 bill will be revealed soon. On Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told reporters he is close to reaching a decision on who will be the first woman featured prominently on U.S. currency.
The decision was supposed to have been made by the end of 2015. But after announcing the proposed change and asking for public input in June, Lew said his department has been overwhelmed by a flood of responses. "We've gotten millions of responses. We're getting close," Lew told PBS's Charlie Rose on Tuesday.
Alexander Hamilton has been the face of the $10 bill since 1929. The redesign of the $10 bill will be the first in a series of redesigns intended to help stop counterfeiting. A popular petition to remove Andrew Jackson from the $20 was not a motivating factor, Lew said at the time of the initial announcement. "We have to value security in our currency. So we're going to have to do this in the order that bills need to be modernized to be safe from counterfeiting," Lew said Tuesday.
As part of the program, the $5 and $20 bills will also see changes, Lew added.
The popular Broadway musical Hamilton has brought the Founding Father to the forefront of American popular culture and sparked protests at the decision to remove the immigrant from the British West Indies from the face of the bill. But, Lew said, Hamilton will not be removed from the bill entirely; he will still appear on its obverse side. "Alexander Hamilton is one of my heroes. He's not leaving our money," Lew said.
Lin Manuel-Miranda, the creator of the musical, told his Twitter followers that Lew personally assured him he would be "very happy" with the redesign.
Since no living person can appear on U.S. currency, popular female candidates to replace Hamilton are Mary Washington, Susan B. Anthony and Harriet Tubman.

8 year old held at airport detention for a week

An unaccompanied eight-year-old boy has been held at Paris’s main airport for more than a week after trying to enter France with false identity papers.
Children’s rights campaigners have accused the French authorities of breaking international child protection laws by refusing to let the youngster join relatives in France.
The boy, who has not been named, was put on a plane to Paris from the Comoros Islands in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of south-east Africa, more than a week ago by his mother who, according to French and African media, wanted him to have a better life.
Carrying just a Spiderman backpack, he was arrested on arriving at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport on 21 March and detained in an airport holding area for those suspected of trying to enter the country illegally, after reportedly producing a French passport in his cousin’s name.
The French appeal court decided he must be held in the waiting area for his own protection.
But Catherine Daoud, a child protection lawyer, told French radio: “The imprisoning of children in the [airport] waiting area, especially young children like this, is against the international convention on child protection signed and ratified by France.”
She added: “Sadly, his is not an unique case. It’s shocking to see a young kid stuck in the same basket as the adults and with the police … for the child it’s a prison.
“What shocks us is that he is shut in. Why is he shut in? We’re talking about a place with bars, it’s no place for a child.”
The French interior ministry said on Wednesday that the boy’s mother had asked for the child to be returned to her.
The authorities were trying to organise for someone to accompany him back to Comoros, but the process had been delayed because of the Easter holiday, a ministry spokesman told the Guardian.
“The boy arrived with a borrowed passport and was in an irregular situation in French territory,” she said.
“This was confirmed by the police and he was placed in the waiting area. The judge for liberty and detention decided it was in the boy’s best interest to keep him in the waiting zone until inquiries could be made.
“The French authorities made contact with his family and his mother said she wanted to take this young boy back.
“On 25 March, the court of appeal decided he should remain in the waiting zone until he could be returned.”
She added: “It’s not for the ministry to question legal decisions. Obviously he is being correctly treated and is with someone from the Red Cross [at the airport].
“We want this child to be returned to his country of origin as his mother has requested, but accompanied this time.”
Daoud said 259 lone minors had been kept in the holding area in 2014. Like adults arriving in France without papers, they can be held for up to 20 days before being admitted or deported.
Isabelle Thieuleux of the organisation La Voix de L’Enfant (A Child’s Voice) was at the court hearing. “We were told the French administration had to be given time to organise the boy’s return to Comoros,” Thieuleux said.
“He left the hearing accompanied by two police officers. His bag was almost bigger than him, he was just a little thing.
“There’s no justification for imprisoning an eight-year-old child who has arrived in the country, and even less for the motive of his own protection. Where’s the protection for a child in such a place?”

Stanford swimmer charged with rape

A former Stanford University student and swimming champion is facing up to 10 years in prison after he was convicted of raping an unconscious woman he met at a campus party last year, Santa Clara County officials said Wednesday.
A jury found Brock Allen Turner guilty of three counts of sexual assault in Santa Clara County Superior Court on Wednesday afternoon, officials said.
"Today a jury of Santa Clara County residents gave a verdict which I hope will clearly reverberate throughout colleges, in high schools, anywhere where there may be any doubt about the distinction between consent and sexual assault," District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a statement. "No means no, drunk means no,passed out means no, and sex without consent means criminal assault.€"
Two graduate students riding bikes on Lomita Court around 1 a.m. Jan. 18, 2015, found Turner, a 19-year-old freshman at the time, on top of a partially clothed woman in a field near campus fraternity houses.
"She was lying on the ground unconscious, not moving," DeputyDistrict Attorney Alaleh Kianerci said when Turner was accused that month.
Both students restrained Turner as he tried to get away and called police, Kianerci said. The woman, who is not a student, was taken to a hospital and treated for her injuries.
Turner smelled of alcohol when he was arrested and told police he had seven cans of beer that night and thought he was having consensual sex with the woman, who authorities said was breathing but "completely unresponsive" as she lay near a tree and a trash bin.
"He stated that he was drunk but was able to remember everything," the police report says. "His head was a little fuzzy due to the effects of the alcohol, but he consciously decided to engage in the sexual activity with victim. He was having a good time with victim and stated that she also seemed to enjoy the activity."
The woman told police she had four whiskey shots and two shots of vodka that night but couldn't remember anything after talking to a few guys at a Kappa Alpha party, according to a police report.
Turner withdrew from school Jan. 27, 2015, the day prosecutors announced he would be charged, university officials said, adding he is no longer allowed on campus.
Stanford University had come under fire in the past for a lax response to campus sexual assault. Between 1997 and 2009, just four of 175 reported sexual assaults were formally adjudicated at Stanford, with two of the alleged attackers held responsible,according to a report by Michele Landis Dauber, a Stanford law professor.
California became the first state to pass legislation that shifted the standard of consent for sexual activity at colleges from whether a person said no to whether both partners said yes.The "yes means yes" law applies only to campus disciplinary hearings, not to state criminal proceedings.
Turner, who worked as a lifeguard, was a heavily recruited athlete before joining Stanford's high-powered swimming program,ranked 10th in the nation. He had been a dominant swimmer at Oakwood High School in Dayton, Ohio, twice winning the state championship in the 200- and 500-yard freestyle. He also took part in the 2012 U.S. Olympic trials.
Turner is out on $150,000 bail, officials said. His sentencing is scheduled June 2.

Man blows off his own leg

Gruesome video footage has surfaced showing the moment a Georgia daredevil lost his leg shooting a semiautomatic rifle at a lawn mower packed with several pounds of deadly explosives.  David Pressley, 32, can be seen moving closer and closer to the explosive target as he peppers it with bullets. Moments later, the lawn mower suddenly explodes, unleashing a plume of smoke and shrapnel.  Authorities said one piece of shrapnel struck Pressley, severing his leg from below the knee, it was said.  The graphic video, recorded last week, captures blood splattering across the camera’s lens before Pressley yells, “I blew my leg off!”  Another voice says, “Call an ambulance!”  Pressley’s friends fashioned a tourniquet around his leg and drove him closer to the road, where he was picked up by authorities. He was eventually airlifted to a local hospital and was expected to recover, police said.  Lydiah Mays, one of Pressley’s neighbors, told WSB-TV that she heard the gunshots but wasn’t concerned until she heard the explosion, which shook her nearby home.  “I heard him scream, and so I came downstairs and we were all like looking out the front window,” Mays said. “You would’ve had to be on drugs or something to think it was a good idea to play with that and try to blow up a lawn mower.”  Tannerite — a mixture of ammonium nitrate and aluminum powder that explodes when struck by a high-velocity bullet — is normally used for target practice.  The product’s website instructs users not to place Tannerite inside, under or near any type of metal objects. For every pound of Tannerite, experts advise standing 100 yards away.  “Do not shoot targets larger than 1 pound unless it is required due to extreme long-range competition,” safety instructions on the Tannerite website read.  Police say Pressley used three pounds of the material and was only 25 yards away when the explosion occurred.  “It has become extremely popular in the last couple of years, and is sold in many outdoor supply stores such as Cabelas, Bass Pro Shops, Gander Mountain, and others,” Battalion Chief Craig League with Walton County Fire Rescue told the Loganville News. “One of the drawbacks with Tannerite is that the more of the product that you mix together and shoot the bigger and louder the explosion. This makes it quite dangerous for amateur use.”  “To my knowledge, this is the first injury that we have encountered in Walton County from the use of exploding targets,” he added.  Sheriff Joe Chapman said that he gets several complaints a week about Tannerite frightening people’s animals and waking children. He said that people are well within their rights to use the material on their own property but that they should ensure they have adequate space to do so safely.  The station reported that people have begun posting videos online of explosions that use as much as 100 pounds of Tannerite.  “Be careful,” Chapman said. “It’s very dangerous, it’s not a toy. It’s much more than a firecracker.”

Cyclist dies after crash in competition

Belgian cyclist Antoine Demoitie has died after a collision with a motorcycle during the Gent-Wevelgem race on Sunday, police said.

The motorcycle reportedly struck Demoitie after he had fallen from his bike.
Demoitie, 25, remained in critical condition after being transported to the hospital following the crash, but did not survive the injuries he sustained.
“The rider died. An inquiry is under way to determine the circumstances,” said Frederic Evrard, spokesman for the Nord-Pas-de-Calais regional gendarmerie in France.
Peter Sagan of Slovakia won the 151-mile race through Belgium and France.

Murderer escapes police custody

A manhunt is underway after a convicted murderer escaped from a southern Ohio prison on Sunday night.
John Modie, who was convicted of robbery, murder and escape in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, was imprisoned in the Hocking Unit of the Southeastern Correctional Complex in Nelsonville, Ohio, located about 70 miles southeast of Columbus. He was discovered missing when he was not present during an 11 p.m. count on Sunday night, according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. Details on the method of his escape haven’t yet been made available.
Modie, 58, was sentenced to 15 years to life for killing a woman in 2003, according to police records. On Monday morning, the department confirmed Modie’s escape in a post on Facebook. He’s described as a white male with gray hair and a gray moustache, 6 feet 4 inches tall and weighing roughly 230 pounds.
“We are working with the local law enforcement agencies and the Ohio State Highway patrol. All available resources are being utilized to apprehend John Modie,” the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction said in a statement Monday. “We ask for public assistance by reporting anything suspicious to law enforcement. You may see officers from various agencies in the area. Considering the storms that passed throughout the night, we suspect the escapee may seek shelter.”
The department added that Modie “should be considered dangerous.”
Hocking College, located three miles away from the facility from which Modie escaped, said Monday that its main campus is closed until noon because a “dangerous inmate has escaped from local prison.” The college advised students to stay indoors and report any suspicious activity.

Naval officer sells secrets for hookers, travel & alcohol

The party's nice while it lasts, but the hangover can be a real headache.

U.S. Navy Capt. Daniel Dusek was sentenced to 46 months in prison Friday for giving classified information to a foreign defense contractor.

In exchange, he got prostitutes, luxury travel and loads of other freebees, including booze.

"Captain Dusek's betrayal is the most distressing because the Navy placed so much trust, power and authority in his hands," said U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy. "This is a fitting sentence for a man who was so valuable that his conspirators labeled him their 'Golden Asset.'"

The 49-year-old is the highest-ranking official charged in the massive Navy bribery scandal. He pleaded guilty in January last year to a single count of conspiracy to commit bribery. He's been ordered to pay $100,000 in a fine and restitution.

Dusek was deputy director of operations for the Seventh Fleet. He later served as executive officer of the USS Essex and commanding officer of the USS Bonhomme Richard.

He admitted to using his influence to benefit Glenn Defense Marine Asia (GDMA). For decades, the contractor provided port services to U.S. Navy ships and Dusek would steer them GDMA's way.

According to his plea agreement, he hand-delivered Navy ship schedules to the GDMA office in Japan or emailed them directly.

Ten people have been charged in the scheme and nine have pleaded guilty. One awaits trial.

 

Family of 3 murdered

A popular practitioner of Chinese herbal medicine was found shot to death and wrapped in plastic along with his wife and 5-year-old daughter in their palatial two-story home in upscale Santa Barbara County. More than 170 miles to the south, a 27-year-old suspect was arrested in the San Diego area where he lives.
What connected the two men remains largely unclear. Authorities said only that the two were recently involved in a business deal, and that financial gain could have been involved in the slayings.

Pierre Haobsh, 27, of Oceanside was taken into custody at gunpoint at a gas station in San Diego County, Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bob Brown said Friday. Investigators with an arrest warrant had been following a red Lexus that belonged to him, Brown said. A loaded handgun and property belonging to one of the victims was found inside the car, the sheriff said.
Deputies who went to check on the welfare of 57-year-old Dr. Weidong "Henry" Han on Wednesday found the bodies of the physician, his 29-year-old wife, Huijie "Jenni" Yu, and the couple's 5-year-old daughter, Emily Han, in the family's multimillion-dollar home on the outskirts of Santa Barbara.
Their bodies were found shot, wrapped in plastic and duct-taped in the garage, a sheriff's statement said. They had last been seen the night before they were found.
"This investigation is far from over," Brown said. "It is complex and ongoing."
Two business associates of Han went to his home after he failed to show up for a meeting — something they told authorities was highly uncharacteristic of him. The associates called authorities when they found the front door ajar and the family's cars parked outside.
  Sheriff's Office opened a homicide investigation after deputies discovered the remains of three people in the house. Post-mortem examinations will be…
Authorities didn't say what led them from the palatial two-story home that sits on 7 acres surrounded by avocado trees to the Oceanside area, where Haobsh was arrested, more than 170 miles to the south.
Haobsh is a U.S. citizen, authorities said, but few other details about him were released. No relatives, friends or an attorney who could comment were found in an initial search by The Associated Press.
The killings shocked Santa Barbara, where Han, who owned and operated the Santa Barbara Herb Clinic, was a popular figure.
The couple's daughter was a kindergartener at Foothill Elementary School in the Goleta Unified School District, where counselors were made available to her classmates and their parents. "It is impossible to express the tremendous pain that this situation presents to us," Superintendent William Banning said in a statement.
Han had owned and operated the Santa Barbara Herb Clinic since 1991, according to the clinic's website. Public records show he is a licensed acupuncturist.
A biography on his website says he earned degrees in Oriental and Western medicine from a Beijing university in 1982, graduating at the top of his class. He moved to the U.S. a few years later to study psychology.
Han came from a family of Chinese doctors and provided traditional treatments including acupuncture, acupressure and herbal formulas from an on-site Chinese pharmacy.
He is co-author of the book "Ancient Herbs, Modern Medicine," and he was working on a volume about how to integrate Chinese and Western medicine. At the clinic, he created individualized herbal formulas for each patient that were filled at an on-site pharmacy.
"Not only is he going to be missed by me personally and professionally, but this community is going to miss him incredibly. He was the man," said Dr. Glenn Miller, a psychiatrist who co-authored "Ancient Herbs, Modern Medicine" with Han and considered him one of his closest friends.
"Patients we share would talk about how in the true sense of the word he was a healer, in that he would listen to the wholeness of his patients," said Miller, who choked up several times as he spoke to the AP. He said Han wanted his patients healed both physically and emotionally.
A somber recording on the clinic's voicemail said the facility was closed Friday, but people would be there to greet those who wanted to express their condolences.
"Our doors will be open for you to honor, pay respects and celebrate the lives of Dr. Henry Han, his wife, Jenni, and daughter Emily. They truly were special," the recording said.

$200 million in cocaine seized

Texas authorities have intercepted a semi-submersible vessel attempting to bring $200 million in cocaine into the United States.

US Customs and Border Protection agents aboard a surveillance aircract detected the vessel along the Eastern Pacific ocean. Agents arrested four people who operated the self-propelled vessel. The mini-sub was carrying 12,800 pounds (5.5 tons) of cocaine and began to sink after the raid on March 2.

“This type of cooperation and teamwork produces these kinds of results where suspects are arrested and narcotics prevented from reaching U.S. shores,” John Wassong, director at the National Air Security Operations Center, said in a statement on Thursday. “Our crews will continue to take every opportunity to disrupt this type of transnational criminal activity.”

In 2015, US Customs and Border Protection agents completed 198 seizures, disruptions and interdiction events, confiscating 213,000 pounds of cocaine during the fiscal year.

Doctor assaults multiple patients

A prominent New York City emergency room doctor accused in January of sexually abusing four female patients was indicted this week on five criminal counts, PEOPLE confirms.
An indictment was returned Thursday against Dr. David Newman, a 45-year-old physician and book author who has given TED Talks and blogged for The New York Times and Huffington Post. An Iraq war veteran, Newman was the director of clinical research in emergency medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan.
Newman has since been fired, hospital officials confirm.

Authorities initially arrested Newman in January after a woman claimed he had drugged, groped and masturbated on her, according to a criminal complaint obtained by PEOPLE.
Newman has been indicted on one count of first-degree sexual abuse and four counts of third-degree sexual abuse, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. said in a statement.
His alleged crimes occurred between August 2015 and his January arrest.
"As alleged in this indictment, four young women who came to the hospital for medical treatment were sexually abused by the very doctor entrusted with their care," Vance said. "One was sedated to the point of being physically helpless – a nightmare scenario for any patient to endure."
Vance contends Newman allegedly sexually abused three of his victims who sought treatment in August, September and October. In January, Newman allegedly sexually abused a female patient who complained of shoulder pain.
One of Newman's alleged victims, Aja Newman, filed a civil suit against the doctor last month, claiming he'd given her morphine during her visit and waited until she was sedated before assaulting her.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary damages. It names other emergency room staffers who, the suit alleges, "failed to enforce internal policies."
The suit also claims the hospital allegedly "negligently" hired, trained, and supervised Newman, according to court documents.
Newman's Huffington Post biography claims his book, Hippocrates' Shadow: Secrets From the House of Medicine, "explores the underbelly of modern medicine and the fraying of the patient-doctor bond, using patient narrative and examples of misconstrued research."

22 year old man arrested in connection with 1 year olds death

A 22-year-old man jailed in connection with the disappearance of a 1-year-old girl hasn't been talking with investigators, a sheriff said Friday, a day after investigators found what is believed to be girl's body a few miles from where she was last seen.
Owen County Sheriff Leonard Hobbs said he couldn't give details on what investigators have learned so far about Shaylyn Ammerman's disappearance. But he said investigators are looking into other persons of interest in the case.
"Right now, there's just too many unanswered questions, too much information we haven't gathered yet," Hobbs said during a news conference. "I'm sure that in the next few days and weeks they'll have all the information they need to bring charges accordingly."
Authorities found the body of a girl that matches Shaylyn's description Thursday night on private property near the White River outside of Gosport, state police Sgt. Curt Durnil said. He said they were tipped off to that location by witnesses and persons of interest.
The Owen County coroner's office planned an autopsy on Friday to confirm the child's identity and determine the cause of death.
Gosport is about 40 miles southwest of Indianapolis and only a few miles from Shaylyn's father's house in Spencer, which was where she was last seen.
Shaylyn was reported missing Wednesday morning from her father's home in Spencer, prompting a search by more than 100 people from several police departments and other agencies.
The girl's father and grandmother, Justin Ammerman and Tamera Morgan, were the last people known to have seen her late Tuesday. She had been staying at her father's home under a joint custody arrangement with the girl's mother.
"I put her to bed around 10 or 10:30 and I checked on her at midnight before I went to bed," Morgan said. "She was laying in her bed sound asleep, and then we went to bed and we woke up and she was gone."
Ammerman said he was "just shocked that somebody would do this to me," and that he believes someone took his daughter from her crib in the middle of the night.
Authorities haven't said why they believe the 22-year-old man was involved in Shaylyn's disappearance. Durnil said investigators know he was in the house the night the night she vanished, but they don't know his exact role.
"The investigation is not close to being over," he said.
The man remained jailed Friday on preliminary charges of obstruction of justice, failure to report a dead body and unlawful disposition of a dead body. He hasn't been formally charged.

Woman hotel worker found dead in freezer

A kitchen worker died after she was apparently trapped inside of a walk-in freezer for about 13 hours at a downtown Atlanta hotel, police said Tuesday.
A search for the woman began when she didn't return home after her shift at the Westin Peachtree Plaza, one of the city's most recognizable skyscrapers with its cylindrical shape. Investigators reviewed hotel surveillance video, and they believe she may have entered the freezer about 8 p.m. Monday. She was found shortly after 9 a.m. Tuesday, Atlanta police Lt. Charles Hampton said.
The Fulton County Medical Examiner's Office identified the woman as Carolyn Robinson, 61, of East Point.
There was evidence the woman tried to get out of the freezer, but Hampton didn't elaborate on what led investigators to believe that.
"It appears that there was some type of mechanism to allow anyone who was inside to be able to exit," Hampton said. He wasn't sure if it was working properly.
"Right now there does not appear to be any foul play," Hampton said.
The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating, spokesman Michael D'Aquino said in an email.
The hotel said in a statement it was devastated by the tragic loss of its long-time worker.
"We are working closely with the authorities in their investigation, and we are providing whatever support that we can for her family," the statement said.
Police plan to wait for an autopsy to determine whether the woman had any type of medical condition that may have prevented her from getting out, Hampton said.

Son of wrongly cremated mother comes out

Annie Pearl Little, 82, died on Christmas Day. On the day of her funeral at McCall’s Bronxwood Funeral Home in the Bronx, the manager there called her only son, Donald Little.
“You need to come in early,” Mr. Little said he was told by the manager, Patricia Myers.
He did as instructed, and he said Ms. Myers informed him: “You’re going to have to have a closed casket. We cremated the wrong body. Your mother got cremated.”
“She said, ‘The other lady looked like your mother,’” Mr. Little said.
On Dec. 29, a funeral was held for the other woman, Val-Jean McDonald, 81, at Union Baptist Church in Harlem. Some 200 relatives and friends attended and faced the body in an open coffin. But it was not Ms. McDonald — it was Ms. Little, wearing Ms. McDonald’s clothes and jewelry in a coffin bearing Ms. McDonald’s name. The McDonald family — Ms. McDonald had eight sons — shared their story and described how they rationalized what they believed to be a change in their mother’s appearance on Tuesday. They prayed over and eulogized the wrong woman, and then attended her cremation the next day at Woodlawn Cemetery.
The family, after being told by the funeral home of the mix-up, then held a private viewing and cremation with the proper body. But one mystery lingered: Who was the woman everyone had mistaken for Val-Jean McDonald?
The mystery was resolved when Mr. Little and his lawyer, Robert Di Gianni, contacted The Times after the article appeared.
Mr. Little said he was floored by the news that the manager had delivered. “I went outside to walk it off,” he said. But he did not walk long; the viewing was only an hour away, he said.
He arranged photos of his mother on the closed, and presumably empty, coffin. She lived in Co-op City in the Bronx. Her husband was a Korean War veteran who died in 2015 and was buried at Calverton National Cemetery on Long Island. Ms. Little was to be buried with him. Cremation was never an option, he said.
“My family doesn’t believe in cremation,” Mr. Little said.
He greeted mourners — about 50 arrived, he said — with the bad news. “We’re going to have to have a closed casket because they cremated the wrong body,” he told them. “One of my friends said, ‘Aren’t they supposed to be labeled?’”
He later learned his mother had had a large send-off at Union Baptist. He said whatever comfort that news might have brought him — his mother had been a devout Baptist, he said — was outweighed by his grief at having missed the ceremony.
“She’s dressed up and paraded around in other people’s clothes and jewelry,” he said. “People kissing her and taking pictures. It’s heartbreaking I couldn’t do that.”
McCall’s Bronxwood Funeral Home admitted its mistake in a letter that Mr. Little showed a reporter. “Please accept my apologies for mistakenly having your mother Annie Little cremated,” the letter said. It asked for Mr. Little’s signature, which was to convey consent for McCall’s to amend documents to show that Ms. Little had been cremated. Mr. Little said he refused to sign.
McCall’s said through a spokesman that the remains would stay in the funeral home’s custody until Mr. Little contacted McCall’s and authorized their transfer to Calverton for burial.
“We offered to have a limousine take him to Calverton Cemetery with his mother’s remains, but as of today, Mr. Little has been unable to return to McCall’s to approve these details,” the spokesman, George Arzt, said.
Mr. Little said he could not sleep. “I’ve been having bad dreams about her being burned up,” he said. He said he had visited a therapist several times since February.
His lawyer, Mr. Di Gianni, said Mr. Little intended to sue McCall’s for breaching his right of sepulcher, or his right to choose cremation or burial for his mother.
The McDonald family took several pictures of the woman they believed was their mother in the coffin on Dec. 29, and when Mr. Little said on Wednesday that he wanted to see one, they allowed a reporter to give him one.
Mr. Little took a long look at the woman in the coffin with the wrong name on the side. “That’s my mother,” he said. “That’s my mother.”

Man chooses to wear sign instead of being jailed

A man has chosen to wear a sign proclaiming he's a thief rather than go to jail for theft in Ohio.
Forty-three-year-old Greg Davenport, of Liberty Township, pleaded no contest this month to a theft charge for stealing merchandise from a Wal-Mart store in the township in December.
A Girard Municipal Court judge found Davenport guilty. But he gave him the sentencing option of wearing a sign saying, "I am a thief. I stole from WalMart" or serving 30 days in jail.
Davenport has to wear the sign in front of the store eight hours a day for 10 days of his choosing.
Davenport says the sign is better than being in jail, and he just wants to finish his punishment.

U.S. Illeagal male aliens more likely to be employed than Amercian born males

Men who come to the US illegally are more likely to be employed than native-born American males, according to a new paper from Harvard University’s George Borjas, an authority on the economic impact of undocumented workers in the US.
It’s not a surprise that many undocumented immigrants come to the US to work. But the Borjas study is an ambitious attempt to shed light on how undocumented immigrants in the US have typically interacted with the US labor market over the last two decades.
The outcomes are clear. Employment rates of undocumented immigrants are sharply higher than those of native-born American men. Borjas found that 86.6% of illegal immigrants had work compared to 73.6% of native-born males when looking at a sample from 2012-2013. That 16-percentage-point gap shrinks once Borjas controlled for the fact that undocumented immigrants tend to be younger than native-born men. But it remains wide, with employment rates of undocumented workers 10 percentage points higher than native men of a similar age.
Such a revelation could influence US policy toward the some 11.4 million undocumented immigrants who resided in the US as of 2014. Their presence is a high-profile political issue, most recently helping drive the candidacy of Republican hopeful Donald Trump.
Undocumented workers now account for roughly 5% of the total US labor supply. Previous work co-authored by Borjas found that their presence has driven down wages of low-skilled US workers in recent years.
Borjas’ findings are part of a global story in which the poorer residents of the rich economies, such as the US, have been losing ground as globalization and trade have lifted large chunks of the world population out of poverty.
Rising standards of living in places such as China and among immigrants both legal and undocumented in the rich world would clearly be a good thing.
But to the extent those gains have been driven by damage to the poorer portions of the rich world as well as rising inequality in the world’s richest countries, they should be thought about carefully.

Police searching for isis suicide bomber who fled airport

Islamic State claimed responsibility for suicide bomb attacks on Brussels airport and a rush-hour metro train in the Belgian capital on Tuesday which killed at least 30 people, with police hunting a suspect who fled the air terminal.
Police issued a wanted notice for a young man in a hat who was caught on CCTV pushing a laden luggage trolley at Zaventem airport alongside two others who, investigators said, later blew themselves up in the terminal, killing at least 10 people.
Officials said about 20 died on the train close to European Union institutions. Islamic State said that too was a suicide attack. The tolls were vague because of the carnage at both sites.
The coordinated assault triggered security alerts across Europe and drew global expressions of support, four days after Brussels police had captured the prime surviving suspect in Islamic State's attacks on Paris last November in which 130 people were killed.
Belgian authorities were still checking whether the attacks were linked to the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, said Federal Prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw, although Belgian security experts said the level of organization involved suggested they had been in preparation for more than just a few days.
 
Private broadcaster VTM said police went to the area after a taxi driver reported driving three people to the airport and became suspicious when they did not let him touch their baggage.
Last week, explosives and an Islamic flag were found during a raid on an apartment in the south of Brussels. Police also found a fresh fingerprint of Abdeslam's there, putting them on to his trail. It was not clear if Abdeslam had been involved at that stage in planning the airport attack.

In a statement, Islamic State said "caliphate soldiers, strapped with suicide vests and carrying explosive devices and machineguns" had targeted the airport and metro station, adding that they had set off their vests amidst the crowds.

It was not clear, however, that the attackers used vests. The suspects were photographed pushing bags on trolleys and witnesses said many of the airport dead and wounded were hit mostly in the legs, possibly indicating blasts at floor level.
"A photograph of three male suspects was taken at Zaventem. Two of them seem to have committed suicide attacks. The third, wearing a light-colored jacket and a hat, is actively being sought," prosecutor Leeuw told a news conference.
A government official said the third suspect had been seen running away from the airport building. Police later found and detonated a third explosive device at the airport.
Security commentators noted that the two men in dark clothes who officials said had died were both wearing gloves on their left hands only. One expert speculated they might have concealed detonators. The man in the hat was not wearing any gloves.
"If you recognize this individual or if you have information on this attack, please contact the investigators," a police wanted notice for the third man read. "Discretion assured."
Belgian police appealed to travelers who had been at the airport and metro station to send in any photographs taken before the attacks in their efforts to identify the bombers.
After questioning Abdeslam, police issued a wanted notice on Monday, identifying 25-year-old Najim Laachraoui as linked to the Paris attacks. The poor quality of Tuesday's CCTV images and of the Laachraoui wanted poster left open whether he might be the person caught on the airport cameras.
Citizens of the United States, Spain and Sweden were among the injured, their governments reported.

A witness said he heard shouts in Arabic and shots shortly before two blasts struck in a crowded airport departure lounge at the airport. Belgian media said police found a Kalashnikov assault rifle next to the body of an attacker.
A lockdown imposed after the attacks was eased and commuters and students headed home as public transport partially reopened.
Islamic State, which controls parts of Iraq and Syria and has supporters and sympathizers around the world, said: "We promise the crusader alliance against the Islamic State that they will have black days in return for their aggression against the Islamic State."
Belgium, home to the EU and the headquarters of the NATO military alliance, has sent warplanes to take part in operations against Islamic State in the Middle East.
Austrian Horst Pilger, waiting on a flight with his family when the attackers struck, said his children had thought fireworks were going off, but he instantly knew an assault was under way.
"My wife and I both thought 'bomb'. We looked into each other's eyes," he told Reuters. "Five or 10 seconds later there was a major, major, major blast in close vicinity. It was massive."
Pilger, who works at the European Commission, said the whole ceiling collapsed and smoke flooded the building.

U.S. President Barack Obama led calls of support to Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel.
"We must be together regardless of nationality or race or faith in fighting against the scourge of terrorism," Obama told a news conference in Cuba. "We can and we will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world."
Michel spoke at a Brussels news conference of a "black moment" for his country. "What we had feared has come to pass."
In Paris, the Eiffel Tower was lit up with the colors of the Belgian flag on Tuesday evening in a show of solidarity with Brussels.
The Twitter hashtag #JeSuisBruxelles was trending as were cartoons riffing on the theme of the city's irreverent emblem, Manneken Pis, a small fountain statue of a boy urinating. In the images, he is cheekily relieving himself on a Kalashnikov.
Brussels airport will remain closed on Wednesday but the metro, trains and other transport will open, at least in part.
Alphonse Youla, 40, who works at the airport, told Reuters he heard a man shouting out in Arabic before the first explosion. "Then the glass ceiling of the airport collapsed."
"I helped carry out five people dead, their legs destroyed," he said, his hands covered in the victims' blood.
Video showed devastation in the hall with ceiling tiles and glass scattered across the floor. Bloodied bodies lay around.
Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands, all wary of spillover from conflict in Syria, were among states announcing extra security measures. Security was tightened at the Dutch and French borders with Belgium.
The blast hit the train as it left the platform at Maelbeek station, close to EU institutions, heading to the city center.
VRT carried a photograph of a metro carriage at a platform with doors and windows completely blown out, its structure deformed and interior mangled and charred.
"We are at war and we have been subjected to acts of war in Europe for the last few months," said French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, who is due in Brussels on Wednesday for a previously arranged visit.
Train services on the cross-channel tunnel from London to Brussels were suspended. Britain advised its citizens to avoid all but essential travel to Brussels.
While most European airports are known for stringent screening procedures of passengers and their baggage, that typically takes place only once passengers have checked in and are heading to the departure gates.
Abdeslam, the prime surviving suspect for the Paris attacks on a stadium, cafes and a concert hall, was captured by Belgian police after a shootout on Friday.
Interior Minister, Jan Jambon, said on Monday the country was on high alert for a revenge attack.
(Additional reporting by Andrew Heavens in London, Ali Abdelaty and Eric Knecht in Cairo, Barbara Lewis, Robert-Jan Bartunek, Clement Rossignol, Julia Fioretti, Meredith McGrath, Foo Yun Chee, Robin Emmott, Jan Strupczewski, Bate Felix and Alastair Macdonald in Brussels and Jochen Elegeert in Amsterdam; Editing by Ralph Boulton, David Stamp and Grant McCool)

Boy is killed w/ arrow while playing "Hunger Games" w/ other kids

They were kids, three of them, who thought they were only playing a game.
But the game involved a bow and arrow, and it ended when one boy was fatally struck in the head.
West Virginia State Police say that Caleb Fairchild, 15, was killed Saturday night while playing a game his friends called “dodging arrows,” it was said. The death is believed to be an accident; the teenage boy who shot the arrow could be charged with involuntary manslaughter.
“They were in the front yard, they would take turns, one of them would actually run across the yard while another one would shoot the bow,” Trooper Randall Holden told the television station. “They said they weren’t trying to hit anybody, shooting into the grass, and I guess a stray arrow went up and struck Caleb in the head.”
It’s not clear who came up with the game, or why the kids decided to play it.
“I’ve been a policeman for almost 25 years. This is the first time I’ve ever heard of it,” State Police Sgt. C.R. Sutphin said. “They were just goofing around, thought it was a good idea. It’s just a bad decision, if you ask me.”
It’s not thought that Fairchild’s death was the result of a lack of adult supervision, Holden said, and no adults are facing any charges.
“I just think 15-year-old boys will be boys and they snuck out, wanting to shoot some bows and ended up getting into an incident,” he said.
Fairchild was an eighth grader in Chapmanville, W. Va., a small town 45 miles southwest of Charleston.
Carlee Adkins, a sixth grader, said she had been dating Fairchild since St. Patrick’s Day. The last text she received from him, on Saturday night, read: “Bye babe, I love you.”
She had never heard of the game, and didn’t think it was Fairchild’s idea, she said: “He never liked doing that stuff. That was somebody else’s suggestion.”
Counselors and a pastor were on site at Chapmanville Middle School Monday to comfort grieving students. But Adkins said she was too distraught to go to classes.
After he was shot, Fairchild was taken to Logan Regional Medical Center and then Charleston Area Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead, the AP reported. Now state police and the Boone County Prosecutor’s Office are investigating exactly what happened.
Sutphin said that officials may pursue a negligent homicide charge.
Fairchild’s friends mourned him on Facebook, posting a picture of the boy wearing headphones in his ears, a swatch of blond hair falling into his eyes, the words “RIP Caleb” emblazoned over it in black lettering.
Adkins said that her boyfriend had been shy, artistic and a fan of any music other than country. He was teaching her how to skateboard. They’d been looking forward to going to the spring formal together.
“He was a nice kid and he was easy to hang out with and be around,” she said. “He’d do anything for a person.”

Pianist's ex-wife kills thier own children

Texas police on Monday accused the estranged wife of internationally renowned pianist Vadym Kholodenko of killing the couple's two young daughters before stabbing herself.
Sofya Tsygankova faces two counts of capital murder in the deaths of 5-year-old Nika Kholodenko and 1-year-old Michela Kholodenko. Police say Vadym Kholodenko arrived Thursday at his wife's home in Benbrook, a Fort Worth suburb, to pick up the girls and found them dead in their beds and Tsygankova in an "extreme state of distress."
Benbrook police Cmdr. David Babcock said Monday that Tsygankova was served with arrest warrants in the Fort Worth hospital where she is undergoing a mental health evaluation. Authorities also have said she was recovering from knife wounds.
It's not clear how the girls died. The Tarrant County medical examiner's office said Monday that it had not completed autopsies. Police have said the children had no visible trauma.
Babcock said Tsygankova's bond would be set at $2 million. An attorney for Tsygankova did not immediately return phone and email messages for comment Monday.
The Ukranian-born Kholodenko won the prestigious Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth in 2013, beating nearly 30 finalists from 12 countries. He received a $50,000 cash award and assistance with domestic and international tours.
  Police say their daughters Nika and Michela were found dead in their home on March 17… Kholodenko had been scheduled to perform with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra last weekend, but was supposed to be replaced by another pianist in the wake of the deaths. Kholodenko and Tsygankova married in 2010 and filed for divorce in November, according to Tarrant County court records. Kholodenko no longer lived at the home with Tsygankova and their daughters, but routinely picked up the children from the home in the mornings.
A representative for Kholodenko did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did officials at the Ukranian embassy in Washington.
Babcock has said police were called to the couple's home twice before Thursday. He declined Monday to give details on what those calls were about or whether they resulted in any charges.

Top Chef winner... Arrested bloody & high after fight

Top Chef winner Paul Qui was arrested Saturday in Austin after his girlfriend accused him of assault, according to an arrest affidavit obtained by PEOPLE.
Officers responded to a disturbance at 7:46 a.m. Saturday at Qui's apartment after one of the chef's friends called police to report that the chef and his girlfriend were fighting and breaking things inside the apartment.
According to the arrest affidavit, officers found Qui, 35, with "blood all over his face, arms, legs and clothing." They say they discovered his girlfriend crying and holding her young son. Qui's girlfriend told police the couple had been dating for one year and living together for eight months.
She told officers that night Qui had friends over and the group had been using alcohol, cocaine, Xanax and marijuana. The girlfriend said she had been asleep with her son when Qui and the friends came to the apartment, and they asked her to join the partying and she complied, having a few drinks.
According to police, the girlfriend said that Qui was intoxicated and became jealous of his friends, accusing them of flirting with her and trying to convince her to have group sex. He eventually kicked his friends out and allegedly "became enraged and starting knocking over furniture," according to the arrest affidavit.
According to the police affidavit, the girlfriend said she tried to leave the apartment with her son, but that Qui would not allow her to leave, and allegedly pushed his girlfriend and her son away from the door and then threw her against the walls and doors.
An arresting officer said he noticed a cut on the woman's forearm and brusiing on her arms, and reported her jaw was "slightly puffy and swollen." According to the officer, Qui admitted to knocking over the furniture and to not allowing his girlfriend to leave, because he wanted her to be there when officers arrived so they could see the damage in the apartment and that he could tell his side of the story.
Qui, who won Top Chef in 2011, owns qui restaurant in Austin. Qui and a rep for the restaurant did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Qui was arrested on charges of unlawful restraint and assault causing bodily injury to a family member, a public information officer for the Travis County Sheriff's Office told PEOPLE. He was released on Saturday on $20,000 bond.

Alive after 11 years missing?

An Australian tabloid claims it has "proof at last" that the legendary singer's ex-boyfriend Patrick McDermott is alive and has been secretly living in Mexico under an alternative name since his mysterious disappearance nearly 11 years ago.
Australia's Woman's Day alleges in it's new cover story that it knows where Patrick is.
An investigator told the mag: "It's rumored he was with a German national. I spoke to people there [in Mexico]. The girl he was traveling with was described as having a German accent. ... To come up with the conclusion that he fell off the boat, and allegedly no one saw him fall off the boat, is the most preposterous thing I've ever heard in my life."
Patrick and the "Grease" star had been dating for nine years when, in June 2005, he vanished during an overnight fishing trip near San Pedro, California. No one saw him go overboard, although 22 people were on the boat.
Olivia reported that he was missing a week after the fishing excursion when he didn't show up for a family event.
His body was never found. In 2008, the Coast Guard said Patrick, a cameraman, had "likely drowned."
Mystery and suspicion has shrouded the incident since the get go. At the time of his disappearance, Patrick owed $8,000 in child support to his ex-wife, Yvette Nipar, for the care of their son, Chance, among other debts. Also, his life insurance policy would reportedly leave $100,000 for Chance after his supposed death.
Many have wondered if Patrick was actually alive and faked his death. Five years after Patrick disappeared, Dateline NBC reportedly hired a group of investigators who claim to have found Patrick under his birth name of "Patrick Kim" living near Puerta Vallarta, Mexico.
In a press conference, the lead investigator, Philip Klein, told reporters: "Mr. McDermott's wishes, according to his counsel, is not to be 'hounded' any longer by investigators or the media." 

Wrong mother in casket at funeral & cremated

After a long battle with cancer, Val-Jean McDonald, mother of eight sons, with more than 20 grandchildren, almost as many great-grandchildren and three great-great-grandchildren, succumbed on Dec. 18 at the age of 81.
Her funeral, 11 days later, attracted scores of mourners to Union Baptist Church in Harlem: her sons, from Manhattan, New Jersey, Georgia, Texas and Australia; other relatives and friends; and people who had never met her but knew her children.
They all filed past the open coffin, seeing familiar remnants of Ms. McDonald’s life: a favorite pink blouse and white suit, and her finest jewelry.
“Why did they cut off all her hair?” a son, Errol McDonald, 57, remembers thinking. “Maybe it’s the cancer.” He bent and kissed her.
But sometimes children see what adults cannot. Adults rationalize. Children call it like it is.
“My 10-year-old son said, ‘Daddy, that’s not Grandma,’” recalled Mr. McDonald, a school maintenance worker in Manhattan. “I said, ‘Yes, that’s what happens,’” he told the boy, explaining that people can look different in death.
The next day, the family attended Ms. McDonald’s cremation at Woodlawn Cemetery.
Six days passed. Then, a manager from McCall’s Bronxwood Funeral Home in the Bronx, which had handled the arrangements, called another of Ms. McDonald’s sons, the Rev. Richard McDonald, with shattering news, he said.
“She says, ‘That body was not your mother,’” Richard McDonald said in an interview. “‘Your mother is still here.’”
The woman who had been in that coffin, seen by all those people, kissed by her sons, was not Val-Jean McDonald at all.
The revelation left Ms. McDonald’s family angry and incredulous, and asking themselves hard questions: How could so many people not have recognized that the woman in the coffin was not Ms. McDonald? How could her sons have convinced themselves, to a man, that this stranger was their mother?
And how could a funeral home make such a mistake?
A spokesman for McCall’s, George Arzt, declined to discuss specifics of the episode. “We have spoken to the families affected and acknowledged our deepest sorrows,” he said.
The state’s Division of Cemeteries is investigating the matter, a spokesman said. The state’s Bureau of Funeral Directing is conducting a review, a spokeswoman said.
Several of the McDonald brothers described a sort of collective acceptance that while the woman had not looked exactly like their mother, it was plausible that the combination of her time at the hospital on a respirator and the embalming process had altered her appearance. In short, they had all seen what they wanted to see — their mother.
“It’s shameful,” Richard McDonald said.
The family first viewed the body at McCall’s on the day of the funeral, in the coffin they had ordered, with their mother’s name stitched into the fabric along the side. She was dressed in the pink blouse and the suit, and earrings and a wristwatch. The sons looked at the dead woman’s face.
“We all did a double-take,” Mr. McDonald, 55, pastor of the Love of Jesus Family Church in Jersey City, said. “We thought something happened, and this is the best they could do.”
A third son, Darryl McDonald, 51, had traveled to the funeral from Melbourne, Australia, where he is a basketball coach. “I said, ‘Rich, that doesn’t look like Mom,’” he recalled. “He told me she’d been in the hospital for a long time. She had tubes and all, and her face could have changed. I was like, ‘O.K.’”
No other theory seemed plausible. “You’re in a funeral parlor,” Darryl said. “There is just no way that’s not my mother. You would never think that.”
Adults would not, anyway. Another of Ms. McDonald’s granddaughters said that day that the woman did not look like her, and like Errol McDonald’s son, she had been corrected.
“A child would speak on it,” said Leroy McDonald, 60, a fourth son. “An adult says, ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’ Someone says, ‘That’s not your mom,’ in a funeral home? That would be appalling.”
He thought back to when he first saw the body. “When you look from a distance, it looks like my mom,” he said. “You know what threw me off? The lady had my mother’s clothes on.”
More than 100 people attended the visitation hour before the funeral that evening, and more than that went to the ceremony, Richard McDonald, who officiated, said. He said the first floor of the church, which holds about 200 people, was filled, with others sitting upstairs. Several mourners, himself among them, eulogized the woman in the coffin, recalling Ms. McDonald’s years of service with the United States Postal Service and her raising eight boys in a crowded Harlem apartment.
The next day, Ms. McDonald’s children accompanied the coffin to Woodlawn, where it was received at the crematory. Later, Richard McDonald worried that he had forgotten to say his customary prayer — “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
Then, on Jan. 5, the shattering call came. A manager at McCall’s contacted Mr. McDonald to tell him of the mistake.
Photographs were taken of Ms. McDonald, still at the funeral home, and emailed to him.
“That’s my mom,” he replied. He called his brother Darryl, who was to fly back to Australia later that day.
“He said, ‘Are you sitting down?’” Darryl recalled. “‘Remember when you said it wasn’t Mom?’”
Darryl McDonald drove to McCall’s to confirm the news. His mother was naked on a metal table under a sheet, he said.
“The lady was apologizing,” he said, referring to the funeral home manager. “She only realized what she had done when she was looking for the other lady.”
The brothers scheduled another cremation at Woodlawn on Jan. 9. There was a brief viewing, with Ms. McDonald in a white gown in a coffin similar to the first. Four members of her family saw her that day.
Side-by-side photographs of the two women in their coffins suggest they were roughly the same age and size, with similar dark complexions. The McDonald family did not learn the names of the other woman or her family.
Ms. McDonald was cremated at Woodlawn. Richard McDonald made sure to say the prayer that time: “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
The owner of McCall’s, James H. Alston, met with a reporter last Tuesday. “I don’t have any comments to make with respect to any of this,” he said. He looked at photographs of the two women and said, “Looks like the same woman to me,” but declined to identify the one who had been cremated first.
“We have a stellar record,” Mr. Alston said, adding that McCall’s has been in business for 50 years. “We have a stellar reputation in this community. We’re known for our care, compassion, professionalism, the quality of our work.”
Mr. Arzt, the funeral home’s spokesman in the matter, said, “All aspects of the situation were shared with the appropriate government regulating agencies, and therefore we cannot say anything further.”
The director of Woodlawn Cemetery, David Ison, declined to comment. A spokesman for the Division of Cemeteries said there was no indication that the crematory violated any regulation; crematories cannot open coffins without good cause under state law, relying on funeral directors to provide the identity of the remains.
The McDonald family has, until now, told few people about what happened. Leroy McDonald said the people he had told had the same reply: “I knew it!”
Errol McDonald has heard similar responses, with friends and relatives telling him they thought something was wrong, but, as they put it, “I didn’t want to say anything.”
Leroy McDonald claimed Ms. McDonald’s remains, leaving McCall’s with a parting shot that day: “I said, ‘You sure this is my mother now?’”

Ex state trooper kills 2 during robbery attempt

A retired state trooper killed a turnpike toll collector and a security guard in a holdup attempt at a toll plaza and then was shot dead by troopers while trying to escape with the money, authorities said.
Clarence Briggs, who retired four years ago, confronted two Pennsylvania Turnpike toll collectors with a handgun on Sunday morning at the Fort Littleton toll plaza in Dublin Township, 65 miles west of Harrisburg, the state capital, police said. Briggs ordered both into an adjoining office and tried to tie them up but fled after a struggle, they said. Both employees left the building as a fare collection vehicle arrived and a security guard emerged, they said.
Briggs then shot and killed one of the toll collectors, Danny Crouse, who had been on the job for less than three months, and Ronald Heist, a retired York police officer who was employed by a detective agency and was working as turnpike security, Capt. David Cain said.
Briggs then fired at the fare collection vehicle, Cain said, and after the driver fled he jumped into the vehicle and drove it to his car, which was parked at the end of a service ramp a few hundred yards away. He started unloading money from the collection vehicle, Cain said.
Troopers arrived within minutes, and the first trooper exchanged shots with Briggs, who was wounded and died at the scene, police said.
Briggs, who was from Newville, retired in January 2012 from the Newville station of Troop T in Cumberland County, which is part of the turnpike system. Cain, the commander of Troop T, said it was possible Briggs had been waiting for the collection vehicle, but he declined to comment on whether an investigation was focusing on the retired trooper's familiarity with turnpike operations and collection procedures.
Turnpike chairman Sean Logan vowed at a news conference at a turnpike maintenance facility in Shade Gap that officials would "expend whatever resources necessary and make sure we find out exactly what transpired this morning and to make absolutely certain that our system is secure and that our employees are protected."
Logan said such an event had happened only "a handful of times" in the 75-year history of the turnpike, which extends 360 miles across the state.
"Our system is very secure, very safe," he said. "We just want to make sure if there's more we can do that we will do it."
He described the Fort Littleton stop as "one of our lowest-volume" interchanges, and officials said there was no indication why it was targeted.
The other turnpike toll collector, who was uninjured, was home resting and recovering but planned to return to work in a day or two.
Briggs, officials said, retired after 26 years with an honorable discharge, and there was no indication of the reason for his actions.

2 deputies killed

Two sheriff's deputies in Indiana were shot, one of them fatally, while serving a warrant for drug-related offenses on Sunday, police said.
A suspect, who has not been identified, died in the incident, which took place in Russiaville in central Indiana, about 50 miles north of Indianapolis, they said.
Deputy Carl Koontz of the Howard County Sheriff's Department was killed in the incident, and Deputy Sergeant Jordan Buckley was wounded, Indiana State Police said. Buckley was in stable condition at a hospital.
The two were shot at after they knocked on the door of a residence to serve the warrant. They then returned fire.
"With an extremely heavy heart I'm sorry to report Deputy Carl Koontz has succumbed to his wounds," a State Police spokesman, Sergeant John Perrine, said on his Twitter feed.
Koontz had been with the State Police for nearly three years, while Buckley was a nine-year veteran of the force, according to Perrine.

Missing young girl found dead after father's murder

The search for a 14-year-old Houston-area girl who had disappeared after her father was found fatally shot in a rural area north of the city ended Friday after police announced a body found earlier this week is that of the missing teenager.
A decomposing body found in west Houston on Wednesday afternoon was identified as Adriana Coronado, said Houston police spokeswoman Jodi Silva. The body was lying in an open field a few feet from the road.
Adriana was identified through fingerprint verification by the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences.
A cause of death for the teenager has not yet been determined, Silva said.
The girl was last seen on Saturday in the Houston suburb of Katy, where she lived. Investigators believe Adriana might have been with her father, Caesar Vladimir Coronado, when he was killed. His body was found Sunday about 80 miles north of Houston in Walker County. The father's burned pickup truck was found near Conroe, 45 miles south of his body.
The Walker County's Sheriff's Office on Thursday released surveillance video of a person of interest in the case. The video showed an unidentified heavyset man leaving the father's truck in Conroe Sunday night. The truck is driven off screen and a few seconds later, a burst of light can be seen coming from the direction of the truck. Authorities believe the burst of light was when the truck was set on fire. The man can be seen running away from the direction of the truck and later seen running down an alley.
Investigators said the man might have been picked up by a dark-colored SUV.
Walker County Sheriff Clint McRae has said that investigators don't have a motive in the case and don't know what the father was doing in Walker County.

FOSTER PARENT SEXUALLY ABUSING BOYS SINCE 1986

A longtime foster father on Long Island has been charged with sexually abusing five boys, all of them his adopted sons, in a case where the authorities suspect there are many more victims.
The father, Cesar Gonzales-Mugaburu, 60, who had 140 boys placed in his care over 22 years, was being held on $500,000 cash bail at the Suffolk County jail on Friday.
Thomas J. Spota, the county’s district attorney, said the victims were 8 to 20 years old at the time they were abused. (The 20-year-old was abused as both a child and an adult, according to an indictment.) The abuse is alleged to have occurred from August 1996 to January of this year.
Mr. Spota said he could not understand why the New York City Administration for Children’s Services and a nonprofit that the agency contracted, SCO Family of Services, continually placed children with Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu despite “red flags” over nearly two decades.
“What I really want to look at at the very end of all of this: How did the system designed to help them fail them in such a spectacular way?” he said. “These kids deserve an answer to that.”
The agency and the nonprofit issued separate statements on Friday that expressed a commitment to keeping children safe, and said they were cooperating with the authorities.
In court and at a news conference, Mr. Spota described a “house of horrors” in Ridge, N.Y., where Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu deprived boys of food and made them stand in the cold.
Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu took actions that Mr. Spota said he believed were intended to isolate the children and to conceal the abuse. The foster father would not give them access to phones or allow them to invite friends to the home, and prohibited them from dating and extracurricular activities, the prosecutor said.
The case unfolded in January when two foster children who were in Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu’s care at the time told an SCO caseworker that he had made inappropriate comments, graphically describing sexual acts.
The police investigated, and Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu was charged with sexual misconduct and endangering the welfare of a child. He asked a detective to talk to one of his five adopted sons, who is now 28.
“A detective said, ‘Hey, if there’s any way you can be of help to me, let me know,’” Mr. Spota said, describing a conversation with one of the sons. “He said, ‘Let me think about it.’”
Less than a week later, the son came forward with others who said they had been abused. “The chain of events started then,” Mr. Spota said.
The police identified 10 victims, including the five sons and the two foster children. Abuses to the three others were beyond the statute of limitations, Mr. Spota said. Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu was also charged with sexual misconduct involving a dog.
Mr. Spota and Gerard Gigante, chief of detectives with the Suffolk County Police Department, urged any foster children who had been abused by Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu to come forward.
The police first investigated Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu for a complaint in 1998 but could not substantiate that claim and others that followed over the years, Chief Gigante said.
Suffolk County Child Protective Services stopped placing children with Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu in 2001. Chief Gigante would not disclose the circumstances surrounding the end of the county’s relationship with the foster father, citing a continuing investigation.
But Mr. Spota said the split should have served as a warning for the New York City agency and SCO. The nonprofit had also stopped using Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu as a foster parent for a period that was not specified on Friday, but resumed placements in 2013, Mr. Spota said, adding that SCO had also placed some children from Washington State with Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu.
Mr. Spota said he would investigate the agency and the nonprofit and would look at whether Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu was certified to be a foster parent at all times. Foster parents are supposed to be employed and not dependent on the money from their foster children, Mr. Spota said. But investigators have not been able to confirm that Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu worked as a wine distributor and dog groomer, as he has claimed.
He had as many as eight children in his care at one time and received $2,200 to $2,400 per child per month, Mr. Spota said.
Daniel T. Driscoll, who was identified by prosecutors as Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu’s lawyer, could not be reached on Friday.
Pat Cawley and Christine Stein, both residents in Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu’s neighborhood, said they had watched several weeks ago as Suffolk police officers raided the house and opened the windows and doors.
Mr. Cawley used to ride bicycles with some of the boys who lived in the house. He said the boys came to Mr. Gonzales-Mugaburu in search of better lives.
“You get dropped into this Satan’s castle,” he said. “You regret knowing people like that.”

Hospital worker exposes thousands of patients to blood born illness

For thousands of unwitting residents of Colorado and Washington, the reach of the nation’s opioid addiction crisis just got closer to home.
As reported, patients who underwent surgery at two area hospitals over the span of several months from 2011-12 are being contacted and told to be tested for HIV, hepatitis B, and hepatitis C. Concern about possible exposure to these blood-transmitted illnesses stems from the indictment earlier this year of a man briefly employed as a surgical technician at both institutions.
Rocky Allen, 28, was indicted this February in Denver on charges of tampering with a consumer product and obtaining a controlled substance by deceit. According to the indictment, in January Allen swapped a syringe containing the narcotic painkiller Fentanyl for a similar syringe filled with an unspecified substance. At the time, he was working at that city’s Swedish Medical Center, and as in Seattle, thousands of Colorado residents who had surgery there are now advised to get tested for the same illnesses.
Because the potentially tainted Fentanyl is an injected medication, if other substitutions by Allen went undetected screening for blood-borne infections is prudent.
The recommendation to be tested springs from an “overabundance of caution,” according to Karen Peck, a spokesperson for Northwest Hospital and Medical Center, one of the two Washington hospitals where Allen had been employed. (The other, nearby Lakewood Surgical Center, has issued similar advice to a little over 100 patients who received care there when Allen was an employee.) A statement from Northwest stresses that there is no evidence that any patients there were actually exposed to tainted medication, and that actual risk is extremely low.
“We know patients are very concerned,” Peck told The Daily Beast. However, while an investigation is ongoing, at this time there is no evidence that Allen made a similar swap while employed there. Peck hastened to reassure that patients currently receiving care at Northwest are not being exposed to risk.
Fentanyl is a particularly potent opioid pain medication, and comes in numerous dosage forms. It is often used as an adulterant or substitute for heroin, and using both in combination poses a substantial risk for overdose.
Earlier this week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issued new guidelines for prescribing narcotic pain medications. In its report, the CDC notes that since the turn of the new century over 165,000 people have died of such overdoses. Over the past decade, this trend has been on the incline, in contrast to falling rates of death from other causes like heart disease and cancer. This increase in mortality parallels the increase in sales of opioid medications (which also includes drugs like Oxycontin and Vicodin, among numerous others). The authors note that in 2012 alone, enough of these prescriptions were written to supply every adult in America with their own personal bottle.
In an attempt to stem this tide, the CDC advises that for management of pain lasting more than three months, non-pharmacological and non-opioid medications are preferred. For those for whom narcotic prescriptions are appropriate, providers should proceed with caution, starting with low-dose, short-acting options.
Of course, there are times when such prescriptions truly are appropriate. The period immediately after major surgery would certainly be one of them. Medications like Fentanyl are often necessary for patients who are being treated for truly painful conditions.
But as the situation plays out in Washington and Colorado, it serves as a stark reminder that the fallout from the opioid addiction crisis can land in very unexpected places. Even patients whose own pain management was entirely appropriate have now been affected by it, albeit distantly. Efforts to combat the growing health problem are needed not only for those currently struggling with addiction to pain medication, but for those who might be touched by it in ways they could never have predicted.