Pittsburgh soldier’s death in Iraq under investigation

Pittsburgh soldier’s death
in Iraq under investigation

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. — A soldier from Pittsburgh has died in Iraq in a noncombat incident. The Army said Staff Sgt. Ryan D. Maseth, 24, based at Fort Campbell, Ky., died in Baghdad on Wednesday. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne) at Fort Campbell. The death is under investigation. Fort Campbell, a sprawling military base, is on the Kentucky-Tennessee state line.

Storm pounds California;
freeze subsides in Florida

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A fierce arctic storm pounded California on Friday, threatening to soak mudslide-prone canyons already charred by wildfires and to paralyze the mountains with deep snow. Power already was knocked out to more than a million residents, and the California Highway Patrol encouraged drivers to stay off the roads. Forecasters said the mountains could see 10 feet of snow total from the trio of storms that was expected through the weekend. The sprawling, swirling system spanned the length of the West Coast. Winds howled in the mountain areas, gusting up to 85 miles an hour, and in the Sacramento Valley, gusts topped 65 mph, the strongest in a decade.

Yosemite National Park rangers and sheriff’s deputies combed the Sierra foothills and mountain snow camps Friday afternoon searching for a missing Clovis man and his two children, said Clovis police spokeswoman Janet Stoll-Lee. John Hopper, 64, a volunteer chaplain with the Clovis police, left town Thursday morning with his 15-year-old twins, Matt and Sarah, to “go play in the snow,” Stoll-Lee said.

A freeze in the East was subsiding. Florida’s citrus growers weathered the cold largely unscathed, but strawberry and tomato growers watched Friday as some of their crops shriveled. A serious freeze would have devastated the Florida’s citrus trees.

Judge says surrogate
can keep child support

HARRISBURG — A surrogate mother can keep $48,000 in child support from the biological father, even though she later lost custody of the triplets to him, a state court ruled. The state Superior Court ruled Thursday that Danielle Bimber does not have to repay James Flynn of Kirtland, Ohio, who had given her the money before the same appeals court granted him custody in April 2006. The children were born in Erie more than four years ago, conceived with donor eggs fertilized by Flynn’s sperm and placed in Bimber’s uterus. Bimber took the boys home about a week after their birth because she felt Flynn — a Cleveland State University professor — and his girlfriend did not name or visit the newborns soon enough.

Howard Clery, 77, force
behind Jeanne Clery Act

KING OF PRUSSIA, Pa. — Howard Clery, who pushed for a landmark federal law requiring colleges and universities to disclose campus crime statistics following the rape and murder of his daughter in her dorm room in 1986, has died. He was 77. Clery died at his home in Palm City, Fla., on Tuesday, according to King of Prussia-based Security on Campus Inc. Clery co-founded the watchdog group a year after his daughter, Jeanne Clery, was killed by another student on the campus of Lehigh University in Bethlehem.

The Jeanne Clery Act, signed by President George H.W. Bush in 1990, requires colleges and universities to disclose information about campus crime and security policies in a timely fashion. The Education Department can fine violators up to $27,500 for each infraction or can suspend them from participating in federal student financial aid programs.

Female suicide bombers

BAGHDAD, Iraq — It goes against religious taboos in Iraq to involve women in fighting, but three recent suicide bombings carried out by women could indicate insurgents are growing increasingly desperate. The female suicide attacks come as U.S.-led coalition forces are increasingly catching militants suspected of training women to become human bombs or finding evidence of efforts by al-Qaida in Iraq to recruit women, according to military records.

With coalition forces pushing extremists out of former strongholds and shrinking their pool of potential recruits, the militants are being forced to come up with other methods to penetrate stiffened security measures, said Diaa Rashwan, who follows Islamic militancy for Egypt’s Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. Women have been responsible for 14 of 667 suicide attacks since May 2005, or 2 percent. In November and December, women carried out three suicide bombings in Diyala province. The last female suicide bombing had been in July.

Associated Press