Mich. governor to testify to Congress on Flint water crisis

Mich. governor to testify to Congress on Flint water crisis

WASHINGTON

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder said Friday he has agreed to testify to Congress about the water crisis in Flint, Mich., bowing to demands by Democrats that the Republican governor explain his role in a cost-cutting move that resulted in a public-health emergency caused by lead-contaminated water.

Snyder said he wants to explain how “the local, state and federal governments combined to fail the people of Flint” and actions he is recommending in Michigan and at the federal level to ensure a similar crisis does not happen again.

Woman convicted in running death dies

BIRMINGHAM, Ala.

An Alabama woman convicted of capital murder in the running death of her 9-year-old granddaughter died Friday less than a year into her life-without-parole sentence for the killing.

Joyce Hardin Garrard, 50, died five days after being stricken at the state’s women’s prison, prison spokesman Bob Horton said.

The cause of death wasn’t immediately available, but defense attorney Dani Bone said Garrard apparently suffered a heart attack Sunday minutes after visiting relatives at the state women’s prison.

Last year, an Etowah County jury convicted Garrard of killing 9-year-old Savannah Hardin by making her run as punishment for a lie about eating candy in 2012. Evidence during the trial showed that girl ran for hours outside Garrard’s home in rural northeastern Alabama.

Officials aim for Syria truce in week

BEIRUT

A diplomatic push for a temporary pause in Syria’s civil war and the delivery of humanitarian aid faced huge hurdles Friday, with Russia saying it would continue its airstrikes and government planes dropping leaflets urging rebels to surrender because “the belt is narrowing around you.”

A plan for the “cessation in violence” announced by the U.S. and Russia does not go into effect for a week, and while the Syrian opposition expressed “cautious optimism,” it also said more innocent civilians would be killed in that span.

2 girls, 15, die in murder-suicide

GLENDALE, Ariz.

Two 15-year-old girls died Friday in a shooting at a suburban Phoenix high school that initially caused panic among parents who could not reach their children but later emerged as a murder-suicide.

Police announced that a suicide note was found at the shooting scene near the cafeteria area of Independence High School in Glendale. They said the girls each were shot once, were declared dead at the scene, and a weapon was found near the bodies.

“Information gathered by detectives reveal the two girls were very close friends, appeared to also be in a relationship,” Glendale police spokeswoman Tracey Breeden said in a statement Friday afternoon.

Shooter’s mom: I think of victims daily

DENVER

The mother of Columbine High School shooter Dylan Klebold says she didn’t know anything was wrong with her son before the 1999 attack, and that she thinks about the victims and their families every day.

In an interview that aired on “20/20” late Friday, Sue Klebold told ABC News’ Diane Sawyer that before the attack, she considered herself a parent who would have known something was wrong.

“I think we like to believe that our love and our understanding is protective, and that ‘If anything were wrong with my kids, I would know.’ But I didn’t know, and it’s very hard to live with that,” she said.

Associated Press