CHP: Officer may face beating charges

CHP: Officer may face beating charges

LOS ANGELES

A California Highway Patrol officer who was videotaped repeatedly striking a woman on the side of a Los Angeles freeway could face serious charges, the agency said Wednesday after forwarding its investigation to the district attorney.

Officer Daniel Andrew, who was put on a desk assignment after the incident, has been removed from duty and put on paid administrative leave, the CHP said.

The agency didn’t reveal if it made a recommendation to prosecutors but said in a news release that its report outlined potentially serious charges he could face. It didn’t specify possible charges.

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office confirmed the case is under review. A separate, internal CHP investigation is ongoing.

Liberian slum barricaded

MONROVIA, Liberia

Riot police and soldiers acting on their president’s orders used scrap wood and barbed wire to seal off 50,000 people inside their Liberian slum Wednesday, trying to contain the Ebola outbreak that has killed 1,350 people and counting across West Africa.

Hundreds of slum residents clashed with the gunmen, furious at being blamed and isolated by a government that has failed to quickly collect dead bodies from the streets. One 15-year-old boy was injured trying to cross the barbed wire as security forces fired into the air to disperse the crowd.

The World Health Organization said the death toll is rising most quickly in Liberia, which now accounts for at least 576 of the fatalities. At least 2,473 people have been sickened across West Africa, which is more than the case loads of all the previous two-dozen Ebola outbreaks combined.

Navy kicks out 34 in cheating scandal

WASHINGTON

At least 34 sailors are being kicked out of the Navy for their roles in a cheating ring that operated undetected for at least seven years at a nuclear-power training site, and 10 others are under criminal investigation, the admiral in charge of the Navy’s nuclear reactors program told The Associated Press.

The number of accused and the duration of cheating are greater than was known when the Navy announced in February that it had discovered cheating on qualification exams by an estimated 20 to 30 sailors seeking to be certified as instructors at the nuclear- training unit at Charleston, S.C. Students there are trained in nuclear-reactor operations to prepare for service on any of the Navy’s 83 nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers.

Neither the instructors nor the students are involved in handling nuclear weapons.

Teen birthrate hits all-time low

The birthrate for American teens hit an all-time low in 2013, and government statisticians attribute the decline to a reduction in teenage sexual activity and more widespread use of birth control among those who are having sex.

Preliminary birth certificate data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that 277,749 babies were born in 2013 to mothers who were under the age of 20. That is the lowest figure for any year going back to 1940, according to a report released Wednesday by researchers in the CDC’s Division of Vital Statistics. (In 1940, there were 304,004 births to American teens, the report says.)

Combined dispatches