Ohio gets grant for merit-pay program

Ohio gets grant for merit-pay program

WASHINGTON

The Education Department is giving school districts and nonprofit organizations from across the country $442 million to create merit-pay programs for teachers and principals.

The Teacher Incentive Fund is aimed at attracting and rewarding quality educators and encouraging them to work in the country’s highest-need schools. The programs will create performance pay systems based on evaluations of educators, among other incentives.

Winners include school districts, private companies that run charter schools and state education departments in Indiana, Tennessee, Ohio and Louisiana.

Va. executes woman

JARRATT, Va.

The first woman to be executed in the U.S. in five years has been put to death in Virginia for arranging the killings of her husband and a stepson over a $250,000 insurance payment.

Teresa Lewis, 41, died by injection at 9:13 p.m. Thursday. She became the first woman executed in Virginia in nearly a century.

Lewis enticed two men through sex, cash and a promised cut of an insurance policy to shoot the sleeping men in October 2002. Both triggermen were sentenced to life in prison, and one committed suicide in 2006.

7 die in shootout in Mexico resort city

ACAPULCO, Mexico

Mexican authorities say seven people were killed in a shootout between rival drug gangs in the Pacific resort city of Acapulco.

Guerrero state investigative police director Fernando Monreal says gunmen used grenades and automatic rifles to attack a house in a residential area of Acapulco on Thursday.

Number of unwed, live-in couples rises

WASHINGTON

For love or money? The number of unmarried couples living together is rising sharply as many young adults who are having a hard time finding jobs are now “doubling up” with significant others.

The number of opposite-sex unmarried couples who shared living arrangements jumped 13 percent this year to 7.5 million, the Census Bureau reported Thursday. That’s compared with a 2 percent decrease between 2008 and 2009.

There were about 620,000 same-sex couples living together, a figure not statistically different from a 2008 census estimate of 565,000.

21 killed in fighting in Somalia capital

MOGADISHU, Somalia

Heavy fighting between Islamist militants and pro-government troops raged in several parts of Somalia’s capital Thursday, killing at least 21 people and wounding nearly 78, an official said.

Mortar shells pounded northern and southern neighborhoods in Mogadishu as militants launched attacks with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns, according to a witness.

Storm could hit Florida next week

MIAMI

Newly formed Tropical Storm Matthew steamed west toward the coast of Central America on Thursday, the first stop on a highly uncertain path that could potentially threaten Florida by next week.

The National Hurricane Center expected Matthew, with winds up to 40 mph, to skirt coastal Nicaragua and Honduras and approach Belize as a hurricane by Sunday. But from there things get dicey, reflected by the center’s five-day “cone of uncertainty” looking more like a bubble.

Combined dispatches