Casey Anthony now owes $217,000

Casey Anthony now owes $217,000

ORLANDO, Fla.

A Florida judge on Friday increased the reimbursement costs Casey Anthony must pay to investigators for searching for her missing 2-year-old daughter three years ago.

Judge Belvin Perry added an additional $119,000 to the bill she owes four law- enforcement agencies in central Florida, bringing the total to more than $217,000. That’s still short of the $500,000 prosecutors were seeking.

Anthony was acquitted in July on charges of murdering her daughter, Caylee. But the 25-year-old was convicted of four misdemeanor counts of lying to authorities.

Yemen president abruptly returns

SAN‘A, Yemen

President Ali Abdullah Saleh abruptly returned home to Yemen on Friday after more than three months of being treated in Saudi Arabia for wounds from an assassination attempt, in a move apparently aimed to ensure his grip as his loyalists and opponents wage urban warfare in the capital.

Hours after his return, fighting intensified as government forces in armored vehicles closed in on the thousands of opposition activists in the capital’s main protest camp, which already had been under heavy bombardment by mortar shells throughout the day. The bloodshed reinforced fears that Saleh’s return signaled an escalation of fighting into a full-fledged attempt to crush his rivals.

NY governor OKs wire walk over falls

NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has signed on to daredevil Nik Wallenda’s bid to walk a tightrope across Niagara Falls.

Cuomo signed a bill Friday that would permit Wallenda to attempt a feat that otherwise would be illegal.

He wants to walk over the falls between the U.S. and Canada on a wire 2 inches in diameter and about 1,800 feet long. It would be the first wire walk in more than a century.

Canadian parks officials have yet to support the idea, though.

Repeal of Facebook limits moves ahead

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo.

Missouri lawmakers passed and sent to the governor Friday a bill designed to refriend Facebook and other electronic media for thousands of Missouri’s teachers and students.

Not everyone, however, has decided to “like” it — including Gov. Jay Nixon, who wants to hear what teachers and school boards think.

The Missouri House overwhelmingly passed a repeal of an earlier law barring most private electronic contact between teachers and students, including exchanges on social media websites such as Facebook.

But the new bill does more than just repeal the so-called Facebook law. It also requires local school districts to adopt their own policies by next March.

Daughter: Gadhafi is well, fighting

TRIPOLI, Libya

Moammar Gadhafi’s firebrand daughter said in an audio recording broadcast Friday that her father is in high spirits and fighting alongside his supporters against the revolutionary forces who swept his regime from power.

In her first public remarks since the fall of Tripoli a month ago, Aisha Gadhafi accused the country’s new leaders of being traitors, noting that some of them were members of Gadhafi’s regime before defecting in the civil war.

The prerecorded four- minute message was broadcast on the Syrian-based Al-Rai TV, which has become Gadhafi’s main mouthpiece.

Associated Press