High-school stabber suspected of threats

High-school stabber suspected of threats

MURRYSVILLE, Pa.

Detectives believe a boy charged with stabbing 21 other students and a security guard at his Pittsburgh-area high school threatened two students by phone before the attack, according to a search warrant. Neither was one of the victims.

The warrant, obtained for the home of Alex Hribal hours after last Wednesday’s rampage, said two students received “threatening phone messages and completed calls” from someone believed to be Hribal.

Report: Health care costs to dip slightly

WASHINGTON

The Affordable Care Act’s health insurance subsidies will cost a little less than previously thought, according to a new report released Monday.

The Congressional Budget Office predicts that health insurance subsidies under the so-called “Obamacare” plan will total a little more than $1 trillion over the next 10 years, instead of almost $1.2 trillion initially estimated.

CBO said the 8 percent cut results largely from tighter cost controls by insurance companies offering plans on health care exchanges. Generally speaking, the plans offered on the exchanges pay health care providers less and have tighter management of patients’ treatment options, and that means lower premiums and taxpayer subsidies.

Jet-search area too deep for robotic sub

PERTH, Australia

The search area for the missing Malaysian jet has proved too deep for a robotic submarine, which was hauled back to the surface of the Indian Ocean less than halfway through its first seabed hunt for wreckage and the all-important black boxes, authorities said today.

Search crews sent the Bluefin 21 deep into the Indian Ocean on Monday to begin scouring the seabed for the missing Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 after failing for six days to detect any signals believed to be from its black boxes.

But after only six hours of its planned 16-hour mission on the sea bed, the autonomous underwater vehicle exceeded its maximum depth limit of 15,000 feet, and its built-in safety feature returned it to the surface, the search coordination center said in a statement today.

What if anything it might have discovered during the six-hour search still was being analyzed, the center said.

Police: Mom said she killed 6 babies

PLEASANT GROVE, Utah

Megan Huntsman was clear about what she did with six of her newborn babies.

Huntsman, 39, told police she either strangled or suffocated them immediately after they were born. She wrapped their bodies in a towel or a shirt, put them in plastic bags and then packed them inside boxes in the garage of her home south of Salt Lake City.

What’s not clear is why. A day after her arrest on charges of killing her six babies, investigators and her neighbors puzzled over the grisly discovery, including how she could have concealed a half-dozen pregnancies over a 10-year period.

Huntsman, who was arrested Sunday on six counts of murder, was ordered held on $6 million bail — $1 million for each baby. The remains of a seventh baby police found appears to have been stillborn, authorities said.

Fires rage in Chile

VALPARAISO, Chile

Helicopters and airplanes dumped water on wildfires and the smoldering wreckage of hilltop neighborhoods around Valparaiso for a third-straight day Monday as sailors in riot gear stood ready to evacuate 700 more families whose homes could be lost if the winds shifted.

Already 11,000 people were homeless as wildfires sent burning embers flying from hilltop to hilltop. A 15th body was found, and the toll of destroyed homes rose to more than 2,500.

Associated Press