Empty chairs honor 168 victims of 1995 Oklahoma bombing

Empty chairs honor 168 victims of 1995 Oklahoma bombing

OKLAHOMA CITY

Every day when Dr. Rosslyn Biggs goes to work as a federal government veterinarian she is reminded of her mother, one of 168 people killed in the Oklahoma City bombing and honored Sunday on the 20th anniversary of the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil until Sept. 11, 2001.

Biggs has the same job once held by her mother, Dr. Margaret L. “Peggy” Clark, as a food-safety veterinarian at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“I remember her spirit and her dedication,” Biggs said as she and family members gathered around an empty chair adorned with flowers in a field of empty chairs designed to memorialize the victims of the April 19, 1995, bombing.

Former President Bill Clinton, who was president when the attack occurred, spoke at Sunday’s service at the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum, where the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building once stood. Memorial officials estimated that 2,500 people attended.

Gyrocopter pilot: They miss message

RUSKIN, FLA.

The letter carrier who caused a full-scale security review in Washington when he violated national airspace by landing his gyrocopter on Capitol Hill expressed frustration Sunday that his message wasn’t getting through.

Doug Hughes had hoped to raise awareness about the influence of big money in politics by deliberately breaking the law to deliver 535 letters, one for each member of Congress. Instead, the overwhelming focus of news coverage has been about the gaps he exposed in national security.

“We’ve got bigger problems in this country than worrying about whether the security around DC is ironclad,” Hughes told The Associated Press. “We need to be worried about the piles of money that are going into Congress.”

Hughes, 61, spoke as he returned to his home in Florida to await prosecution on charges of violating national airspace and operating an unregistered aircraft. He said his house arrest begins Monday, and he will wear an electronic-monitoring ankle bracelet until a May 8 court hearing in Washington.

Dozens of citations issued at pot events

Denver

Denver police said there were no major problems as marijuana celebrations continued for a second day Sunday, but police tweeted a reminder that though recreational use of marijuana is legal in Colorado, people still can’t use it in public.

On Saturday, police issued about 60 citations. Police said most were for public consumption. No information was available on any arrests Sunday.

Sperm bank is sued

atlanta

He was good on paper: Eloquent, mature, healthy and smart to boot. That’s why Angela Collins and Margaret Elizabeth Hanson say they chose Donor 9623 to be the biological father of their child.

Then last June, almost seven years after Collins gave birth to a son conceived with his sperm, they got a batch of emails from the sperm bank that unexpectedly — and perhaps mistakenly — included the donor’s name. That set them on a sleuthing mission that revealed he is schizophrenic, dropped out of college and was arrested in a burglary, they said in a lawsuit filed March 31 in Atlanta. Collins and Hanson said the Atlanta sperm bank promoted the donor’s sperm.

The women, who live in Ontario, Canada, sued Xytex Corp., its parent company, sperm-bank employees and the man they say was the misrepresented donor — the biological father of at least three dozen children, according to the suit.

Associated Press