Holder out of hospital after feeling faint

Holder out of hospital after feeling faint

WASHINGTON

Attorney General Eric Holder was hospitalized for several hours Thursday and treated for an elevated heart rate after experiencing lightheadedness and shortness of breath, the Justice Department said.

Holder arrived as a precaution at a Washington hospital about 10:30 a.m. and was given medicine to restore his heart rate to a normal level. He was discharged less than three hours later after completing a series of tests. He walked out of the hospital on his own and was sent home to rest Thursday afternoon, according to a Justice Department statement that described him as “alert and in good spirits.” A heart attack was ruled out.

Holder, a trim 63-year-old, is known inside the department for bypassing the elevator and taking the stairs at a brisk pace to reach his fifth-floor office. He also plays basketball.

California court: Drivers can read cellphone maps

FRESNO, Calif.

Drivers in California can legally read a map on their hand-held cellphones while behind the wheel, a state appeals court ruled Thursday.

The 5th District Court of Appeal reversed the case of a Fresno man who was ticketed in January 2012 for looking at a map on his iPhone 4 while stuck in traffic. The driver, Steven Spriggs, challenged the $165 fine and won.

Spriggs was caught up by road work and grabbed his cellphone to find an alternate route when a California Highway Patrol officer on a motorcycle spotted him and stopped him to write the ticket.

In their 18-page ruling, the appellate judges said California’s law prohibiting people from talking on their cellphones without a hands-free device could have been written more clearly, but it doesn’t apply to looking at maps on cellphones.

Same-sex marriage recognized in Ky.

LOUISVILLE, Ky.

A federal judge on Thursday signed an order directing officials in Kentucky to immediately recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states and countries.

U.S. District Judge John G. Heyburn II issued a final order throwing out part of the state’s ban on gay marriages. It makes official his Feb. 12 ruling that Kentucky’s ban on same-sex marriages treated “gay and lesbian persons differently in a way that demeans them.”

Older dad’s kids at risk for disorders

A child born to a father 45 or older is 31/2 times more likely to be diagnosed with autism, more than 13 times more likely to have attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, and almost 25 times more likely to suffer from bipolar disorder than a child born to a man in his early twenties, says a study out this week.

Suicide attempts and substance-use problems also were found to be more than twice as common in children born to older fathers than those with younger dads, and rates of academic failure — staying back a grade — and low educational attainment were higher in those with older fathers than in those with younger ones.

The new research, published online first in JAMA Psychiatry, used a Swedish database that tracked more than 2.6 million children born between 1973 and 2001 to flesh out the effects of advanced paternal age on the mental health and academic success of those men’s children.

Combined dispatches