Dog owner sent to prison for mauling

Dog owner sent to prison for mauling

LANCASTER, Calif.

A pit-bull owner whose dogs fatally mauled a woman taking her morning stroll was sentenced Friday to 15 years to life in prison for second-degree murder.

The case against Alex Donald Jackson was one of the few in which a dog owner has been charged with murder for failing to control pets they knew were dangerous. He will be eligible for parole after serving 15 years.

Pamela Devitt, a 63-year-old retiree, was on the home stretch of her daily walk in the high desert town of Littlerock in May 2013 when four of Jackson’s dogs leaped a fence and attacked her in the street.

She was alone, didn’t have a phone and no one was nearby. By the time help arrived, she had been bitten 150 to 200 times from head to toe and an arm was severed. She died from blood loss.

Baby born to woman who got new womb

LONDON

In a medical first, a woman in Sweden has given birth after receiving a womb transplant, the doctor who performed the pioneering procedure said Friday.

The 36-year-old mother received a uterus from a close family friend last year. Her baby boy was born prematurely but healthy last month, and mother and child are now at home and doing well. The identities of the woman and her husband were not disclosed.

“The baby is fantastic,” said Dr. Mats Brannstrom, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Gothenburg and Stockholm IVF who led the research and delivered the baby with the help of his wife, a midwife. “But it is even better to see the joy in the parents and how happy he made them.”

American nun to be beatified

NEWARK, N.J.

A half-century ago, a young boy’s eye disease mysteriously vanished, and today, the New Jersey nun credited with curing the boy will be beatified.

Sister Miriam Teresa Demjanovich, who died in 1927 at age 26, is scheduled to be beatified in a ceremony led by Cardinal Angelo Amato at the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark. The ceremony is the third in the four-step process to sainthood.

Sister Miriam Teresa is credited with curing a boy’s macular degeneration in the 1960s, according to the Archdiocese of Newark. The boy, Michael Mencer, was given a lock of the sister’s hair and prayed to her. The effects of the eye disease soon began to fade, church officials say.

“Within a period of six weeks, it was totally reversed,” said Sister Mary Canavan, of the Sisters of Charity.

Panetta: Obama waffled on Syria

WASHINGTON

Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is criticizing President Barack Obama for leaning toward, then deciding against military action against Syria for its use of chemical weapons.

“By failing to respond, it sent the wrong message to the world,” Panetta says in a new book in which he reveals his differences with the president over the decision to withdraw completely from Iraq in 2011.

Mo. judge sides with same-sex couples

KANSAS CITY, Mo.

A judge struck down part of Missouri’s gay-marriage ban for the first time Friday by ordering the state to recognize same-sex marriages legally performed in other states, saying state laws banning the unions single out gay couples “for no logical reason.”

The order means such couples will be eligible to sign up for a wide range of tax, health insurance, veterans and other benefits now afforded to opposite-sex married couples.

Associated Press