Officials step aside

Officials step aside

SANFORD, Fla.

The police chief and prosecutor who have been bitterly criticized for not arresting a neighborhood-watch volunteer in the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager both left the case Thursday, with the chief saying that he is temporarily leaving his job to let passions cool.

Sanford Police Chief Bill Lee’s decision came less than a day after city commissioners gave him a “no confidence” vote and after protests and uproar on social-media websites. Gov. Rick Scott also announced that the local state attorney, Norman Wolfinger, had recused himself from the case.

US OKs Egypt aid

WASHINGTON

The Obama administration told Congress on Thursday it will waive democracy requirements to release up to $1.5 billion in aid to Egypt despite concerns that the country is backsliding on commitments it made to democratic governance and rule of law. U.S. officials and lawmakers said Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has determined that it was in the U.S. national interest to allow $1.3 billion in military assistance to flow.

Chips track students

S ÉO PAULO

Grade-school students in a Brazilian city are using uniforms embedded with locator chips that help alert parents if they’re cutting classes, the city’s education secretary said Thursday.

Twenty thousand students in 25 of Vitoria da Conquista’s 213 public schools started using T-shirts with chips this week, secretary Coriolano Moraes said.

By 2013, all of the city’s 43,000 public-school students will be using the chip-embedded T-shirts, he added.

Radio-frequency chips in the shirts tell a computer when children enter school and it sends a text message to their cellphones. Parents also are alerted if kids don’t show up 20 minutes after classes begin.

Associated Press