Saturday, April 23, 2011
McCain wants more support for rebels
BENGHAZI, Libya
U.S. Sen. John McCain called for increased military support for Libya’s rebels Friday, including weapons, training and stepped-up airstrikes, in a full-throated endorsement of the opposition in its fight to oust Moammar Gadhafi.
In the Libyan capital, meanwhile, a senior official said government troops would step back and allow local armed tribesmen to deal with rebels in the besieged city of Misrata.
The action came a day after the U.S. began flying armed drones to bolster NATO airstrikes.
Study ties bullying, family violence
LOS ANGELES
A new study underscores something researchers have known for some time with regard to bullying: that kids involved with it are more likely to display risk factors such as poor grades and drug and alcohol use.
They’re also more likely to have witnessed or been directly involved in violence within their families, researchers reported — a link that previously had been established only in smaller studies.
The bullying report was published Thursday in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. It was based on the Massachusetts Youth Health Survey, an anonymous survey of nearly 6,000 public middle- and high-school students conducted in January 2009.
Homemade rope aids jail escape
ST. LOUIS
A “knuckleheaded corrections officer” is to blame for the escape of two men who apparently climbed down a homemade rope Friday morning to escape from a St. Louis detention center, the mayor’s chief of staff said.
The St. Louis Post- Dispatch reported that Vernon Collins, 34, and David White, 33, were discovered missing just before 7 a.m., but police believe they might have been gone for 90 minutes by that time.
White was caught later at a gas station wearing what a station clerk described as a “Bruce Lee wig,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. Collins remained at large Friday afternoon.
First lady’s plane came closer to jet
WASHINGTON
A plane carrying first lady Michelle Obama this week came even closer to a big military cargo jet than previously reported, the National Transportation Safety Board said Friday.
The distance between the two planes closed to 2.94 miles before air-traffic controllers at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington directed the first lady’s plane to abort a landing, the board said in a statement. The Federal Aviation Administration previously had said there was more than three miles between the planes.
Wash. mulls fee for electric cars
OLYMPIA, Wash.
Drivers of electric cars may have left the gas pump behind, but there’s one expense they may not be able to shake: paying to maintain the roads. After years of urging residents to buy fuel-efficient cars and giving them tax breaks to do it, Washington state lawmakers are considering a measure to charge them a $100 annual fee — what would be the nation’s first electric-car fee.
Bedbug suit tossed
NEW YORK
A former TV news staffer’s pioneering lawsuit over bedbug bites she received at her office has been thrown out by a judge who said workers can’t necessarily hold their employers’ landlords responsible for injuries on the job.
Jane Clark’s lawyer said Friday she planned to appeal the dismissal of the case, which the court said apparently marked the first time a worker sued an employer’s landlord over bedbugs.
Combined dispatches