Sheriff: Suspect says bodies in Ga.

Sheriff: Suspect says bodies in Ga.

COLUMBUS

Investigators believe a missing elderly Ohio couple was killed in their home, and a murder suspect being questioned in West Virginia has told police he dumped their bodies in a Georgia cotton field, authorities said Friday.

Samuel K. Littleton II was arrested Wednesday in a wooded area in Princeton, W.Va., where the car belonging to 84-year-old Richard Russell and his 85-year-old wife, Gladis, was found in a Walmart parking lot a day earlier. The couple has been missing for nine days, and Bellefontaine police Chief Brad Kunze said authorities believe they were killed in their home in rural Bellefontaine, about 50 miles northwest of Columbus.

Littleton told police in West Virginia he dumped the bodies while driving through Georgia to Florida, according to a statement from the Lowndes County, Ga., sheriff’s office posted on the website of WSYX-TV in Columbus. The statement says Littleton was in the Valdosta, Ga., area Feb. 18, two days after the couple disappeared.

Amish buggy flips, 4 children die

MAYFIELD, Ky.

A horse-drawn buggy carrying an Amish family home from dinner and using a community telephone toppled in a rain-swollen creek in rural Kentucky, killing four children who were swept away in the swift-moving water, authorities said Friday.

The group was traveling in a downpour in the dark Thursday about 8:30 p.m. when the buggy flipped just a mile from their house. The buggy was crossing a creek that is normally a trickle, but often floods during heavy rains.

Those killed were a 5-month-old; a 5-year-old; a 7-year-old and an 11-year-old girl. seven children — one of them Samuel’s 11-year-old daughter Elizabeth — were on their way back around 8:30 p.m., an hour after the National Weather Service issued a flash flood warning.

Limited Medicaid cuts authorized

WASHINGTON

The Obama administration says cash-strapped states can make some Medicaid cuts, but not deep ones.

The Health and Human Services Department said Friday that states can raise premiums and drop a limited number of low-income adults from the rolls.

The changes stop well short of demands by Republican governors to scale back Medicaid enrollment to help balance their budgets. The new health-care overhaul generally requires states to keep current eligibility rules.

The administration now says states can raise premiums to reflect inflation, which might discourage some people from signing up. And states can drop coverage for adults making over $14,484, but not if those beneficiaries are pregnant or disabled. Only a small number of states now provide that coverage.

Advocates for low-income people praised the decision.

Angry Irish voters turn out for election

DUBLIN

Ireland’s government prepared for a whopping defeat and the country for more uncertainty as angry voters turned out Friday for a historic election triggered by the humiliating collapse of the “Celtic Tiger” economy.

The opposition Fine Gael party has enjoyed a wide lead during a campaign dominated by debate over how to rebuild an economy brought down by a property boom collapse, which in turn led to a bailout of Ireland’s failing banks.

The governing Fianna Fail party is bracing for a rout. It led the government through Ireland’s boom years in 1994-2007 and into the economic meltdown that ended up with a humiliating bailout from the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Associated Press