hWorld’s oldest person dies at 115 in Los Angeles

September 12, 2009 at 12:00a.m.

LOS ANGELES — Although she liked her bacon crispy and her chicken fried, she never drank, smoked or fooled around, Gertrude Baines once said, describing a life that lasted an astonishing 115 years and earned her the title of oldest person on the planet.

It was a title Baines quietly relinquished Friday when she died in her sleep at Western Convalescent Hospital, her home since she gave up living alone at age 107 after breaking a hip.

She likely suffered a heart attack, said her longtime physician, Dr. Charles Witt, although an autopsy was scheduled to determine the exact cause of death.

“I saw her two days ago, and she was just doing fine,” Witt told The Associated Press on Friday. “She was in excellent shape. She was mentally alert. She smiled frequently.”

Shuttle lands in Calif.

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AP) — Space shuttle Discovery and its seven astronauts took a cross-country detour and landed safely in California on Friday after stormy weather prevented them from returning home to Florida for the second day in a row.

Discovery swooped through the sky, breaking through clouds, and touched down at Edwards Air Force Base north of Los Angeles an hour before sunset, ending its delivery trip to the international space station.

“Welcome home, Discovery,” Mission Control radioed. “Congratulations on an extremely successful mission.”

Yale offers $10K reward in missing-student case

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Investigators searching for a Yale graduate student who disappeared days before her wedding reviewed security-camera footage and checked the blueprints of the building where she was last seen as the university offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to her whereabouts.

More than 100 local, state and federal law enforcement personnel were involved in the investigation into Tuesday’s disappearance of Annie Le, said Yale spokesman Tom Conroy.

Man drives like monkey to elude speeding tickets

PHOENIX — A driver has racked up dozens of speeding tickets in photo-radar zones on Phoenix-area freeways while sporting monkey and giraffe masks, and is fighting every one by claiming the costumes make it impossible for authorities to prove he was behind the wheel.

“You’ve got to identify the driver, and if you can’t it’s not a valid ticket,” said Dave VonTesmar, a 47-year-old flight attendant said.

It took Arizona state police months to realize the same driver was involved and was refusing to pay the fines. By the time they did, more than 50 of the tickets had become invalid because the deadline for prosecution had passed.

Authorities have since stepped up their efforts to ensure that VonTesmar pays his $6,700 in fines.

SAN FRANCISCO — The nation’s top copyright official has joined the mounting opposition to a class-action settlement that would give Google Inc. the digital rights to millions of out-of-print books.

Her objections cast further doubt on whether the agreement will be allowed by a federal court, even as Google offered a concession Thursday aimed at smoothing the way for approval.

Parts of the settlement are “fundamentally at odds with the law,” Marybeth Peters, head of the U.S. Copyright Office, testified in a House Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday that was webcast. She also expressed concerns that the settlement would undermine Congress’ ability to govern copyrights and could have “serious international implications” for books published outside the United States.

Associated Press