Police on high alert after women’s bodies found in park

Police on high alert after women’s bodies found in park

LOS ANGELES

Police were on high alert Thursday after the bodies of two young women were found in a popular Los Angeles park with sweeping views of the city.

The Los Angeles Police Department has added officers on foot inside Ernest E. Debs Regional Park and in patrol cars in the area after the discovery of the bodies Wednesday afternoon, said Capt. Patricia Sandoval of the department’s Hollenbeck’s station.

“We’re on high alert. We’re worried,” Sandoval said Thursday. “It’s very alarming, especially for anybody that’s a runner, a hiker or a walker who uses that park regularly and thinks, ‘Am I in harm’s way now?’”

State police use shotguns to deflate military blimp

MUNCY, Pa.

State police used shotguns Thursday to deflate a wayward military surveillance blimp that broke loose in Maryland and floated for hours before coming down into trees in the Pennsylvania countryside.

Curious residents trickled into a staging area as the military began gathering up some 6,000 feet of tether, the blimp’s huge hull and a smaller tail piece, a process expected to take at least through today.

The white behemoth still had helium in its nose when it went down in a steep ravine Wednesday afternoon, and the easiest way to drain the gas was to shoot it, U.S. Army Captain Matthew Villa said. State police troopers peppered the blimp with about 100 shots.

Prep school graduate gets a year in jail

CONCORD, N.H.

A graduate of an exclusive New England prep school was sentenced Thursday to a year in jail for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old freshman girl as part of a competition among upperclassmen to rack up sexual conquests.

Owen Labrie, 20, of Tunbridge, Vt., also was ordered to register as a sex offender, perhaps for the rest of his life, and serve five years of probation after he gets out of jail.

Ore. teen contracts bubonic plague

PORTLAND, Ore.

A teen girl from eastern Oregon has contracted the bubonic plague, health officials said.

The Crook County girl is believed to have acquired the disease from a flea bite during a hunting trip near Heppner in Morrow County, officials said. The trip started Oct. 16. She fell ill five days later and was hospitalized three days afterward.

The girl is recovering at a hospital intensive care unit. Her condition isn’t known.

State and federal epidemiologists are working with local health officials to investigate the illness. No other people are believed to have been infected, officials said.

Rockets hit former US base in Iraq

BAGHDAD

A barrage of rockets Thursday slammed into a former military base near Baghdad International Airport that houses an Iranian refugee group, killing three Iraqi soldiers, officials said. The Iranian exiles said at least 20 of their people died in the attack.

Iraqi police said 16 rockets hit Camp Liberty, a former U.S. base that now houses the exiled Iranian opposition group known as the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq. They said at least 16 soldiers guarding the camp also were wounded, and the Iranian group, known as MEK, said dozens of Iranian refugees were wounded as well.

Associated Press