3 more Secret Service agents ousted in scandal

3 more Secret Service agents ousted in scandal

WASHINGTON

Three more Secret Service employees have been forced out of the government, bringing to nine the number of people who have lost their jobs in the prostitution scandal roiling the agency. President Barack Obama said the employees at the center of the sordid episode were “knuckleheads” but not representative of the agency that protects his family in the glare of public life.

Two employees have resigned, and a third is having his national security clearance revoked, the Secret Service said Tuesday. The employee whose clearance is being revoked can appeal the decision.

Obama woos students with low-rate loans

CHAPEL HILL, N.C.

President Barack Obama went after the college vote Tuesday, pitching cheaper student loans as he courted the one age group with whom he has a decided advantage over Republican rival Mitt Romney. The twist? Romney, too, has endorsed the idea, though it’s unclear whether deficit-leery Republicans in Congress will go along.

In the race for the White House, both the Obama and Romney campaigns see huge opportunities to court younger voters. This week, their efforts are focused on the millions of students — and their parents — who are grappling with college costs at a time when such debt has grown so staggering it exceeds the totals for credit cards or auto loans.

Ex-BP engineer faces charges in oil-spill case

NEW ORLEANS

Federal prosecutors brought the first criminal charges Tuesday in the Gulf oil spill, accusing a former BP engineer of deleting more than 300 text messages that indicated the blown-out well was spewing far more crude than the company was telling the public at the time.

Two years and four days after the drilling-rig explosion that set off the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, Kurt Mix, 50, of Katy, Texas, was arrested and charged with two counts of obstruction of justice for reportedly destroying evidence.

870K NYC photos online

NEW YORK

The two men were discovered dead at the bottom of an elevator shaft in a 12-story Manhattan building, as if dumped there, one man sprawled on top of the other.

The rare crime-scene photograph from Nov. 24, 1915, is one of 870,000 images of New York City and its municipal operations now available to the public on the Internet for the first time.

The city Department of Records officially announced the debut of the photo database Tuesday.

Culled from the Municipal Archives collection of more than 2.2 million images going back to the mid-1800s, the photographs feature all manner of city oversight — from stately ports and bridges to grisly gangland killings.

Associated Press