U.S. & WORLD NEWS DIGEST | Lawmakers explore adding snow days

Lawmakers explore adding snow days

COLUMBUS

Ohio lawmakers are moving to give back to snowbound school districts two calamity days they lost under former Gov. Ted Strickland.

The state Senate Education Committee on Tuesday had a hearing on a plan to increase the current allotment of three “snow days” to the old five days.

The bill’s sponsor tells The Blade newspaper of Toledo that schools in his part of northern Ohio already have closed more than three times this winter. Sen. Tim Grendell of Chesterland says the make-up days that must then be added to the end of the school year can be unproductive and expensive.

Gov. John Kasich supports more calamity days. State Sen. Peggy Lehner, who chairs the education panel, tells the Dayton Daily News lawmakers want to pass a bill next month.

N. Korea rejects talks with S. Korea

SEOUL, South Korea

North Korea said Thursday that it would not engage in further military talks with South Korea, accusing Seoul of lacking serious intent to improve relations.

The announcement by the North’s military, made in a statement carried by state media, came one day after its first military talks with South Korea in months ended with no agreement.

The discussions were aimed at laying the groundwork for higher-level defense talks and were the first official dialogue between the Koreas since a North Korean artillery barrage killed four people on a front-line South Korean island in November.

Police: Girl was kept locked in bathroom

DAYTON

An Ohio couple who kept a 9-year-old girl in a barricaded bathroom for years when she wasn’t in school are in jail after the girl told a school nurse about how she was being treated, police said Wednesday.

Dayton police Sgt. Larry Tolpin said Brian G. Hart, 50, and Rivae Hart, 49, were in the Montgomery County jail on kidnapping and child- endangering charges under $50,000 bond. No attorney was listed for them.

The girl, Rivae Hart’s granddaughter, was kept in an area consisting of a half-bathroom and a small edge of a hallway blocked by two stacked dressers topped by a wooden mattress board, Tolpin said Wednesday. He said the girl slept on a cot with only a blanket.

The fourth-grader has had no problems at school, he said.

Strokes rising fast among the young

LOS ANGELES

Strokes are rising dramatically among young and middle-aged Americans while dropping in older people, a sign that the obesity epidemic may be starting to shift the age burden of the disease. The numbers, reported Wednesday at an American Stroke Association conference, come from the first large nationwide study of stroke hospitalizations by age. Government researchers compared hospitalizations in 1994 and 1995 with ones in 2006 and 2007.

App lets users keep track of their sins

SOUTH BEND, Ind.

Can your iPad or iPhone bring you closer to God? A new application for the devices aims to help Roman Catholics who haven’t been to the confessional booth in a while keep track of their sins, one Commandment at a time.

The $1.99 “Confession: A Roman Catholic App” can’t grant forgiveness — you still need to receive the sacrament from a real, live priest like always. The app’s designers and some believers see it as a way to spur Catholics back into the habit of repenting.

Associated Press