Using ‘GO’ app to register Ohio voters

Using ‘GO’ app to register Ohio voters

COLUMBUS

A political group in swing-state Ohio is using the game “Pokemon GO” for a purpose beyond catching cute Pikachu: registering voters.

NextGen Climate Ohio, a group drawing attention to climate change, says the rollout – coming days before the two political conventions get underway – is just one of the creative ways it’s trying to engage millennial voters.

The Democrat-backed NextGen is dropping “lures,” which draw the cartoon monsters hunted by “Pokemon GO” players, at game locations called Pokestops in Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus and Toledo, state director Joanne Pickrell said.

Sheriff: Bomber is dead, family is OK

LAS VEGAS

A man with two powerful bombs killed himself detonating a vehicle outside and an explosive inside a home after a woman and two girls fled for their lives in a quiet Nevada town, officials said Thursday.

“There were people in the home. But before the explosion they were able to get out,” said Kerry Lee, the sheriff of rural Lincoln County who was outside his nearby home in Panaca when the first blast erupted about 8 p.m. Wednesday.

The sheriff said investigators believe they know who the bomber was, and that he knew the family. Lee declined to immediately identify the man or say more about his relationship with the family.

Ex-dentist gets house arrest for bilking Medicaid

TULSA, OKLA.

A former Oklahoma oral surgeon whose filthy clinics led to thousands of patients being tested for HIV and hepatitis was sentenced Thursday to six months’ house arrest for fraudulently billing Medicaid for anesthesia services that were performed by unlicensed dental assistants.

W. Scott Harrington pleaded guilty in April to money laundering and agreed to pay nearly $30,000 in restitution under an agreement with federal prosecutors. He was also sentenced Thursday to two years’ probation and ordered to pay a $20,000 fine within a month. He must begin his house arrest within three days.

Harrington’s two Tulsa-area clinics were shuttered in 2013. State health officials urged about 7,000 of his current and former patients to get tested for diseases because of unsanitary conditions that included rusty equipment and reused needles.

Some in South Sudan not allowed to leave

JUBA, South Sudan

Some South Sudanese, including those with dual U.S. citizenship, are not being allowed to leave war-torn South Sudan, even as the United States, India and others continued Thursday to evacuate their citizens while a fragile cease-fire appeared to hold.

The reports that South Sudan’s government is checking the political ties of people, especially of men, who are seeking safety have raised fears of further violence in a country trying to heal from civil war.

Google adds emojis for women’s careers

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIF.

Female professionals will soon be better represented in emoji form.

Google says Thursday that the Unicode Consortium, which controls emoji standards, has agreed to add 11 new emojis in response to Google’s proposal in May to create a set of emojis “with a goal of highlighting the diversity of women’s careers and empowering girls everywhere.”

Among the new emoji characters is a doctor, a scientist, a farmer and a welder. The characters are available in male forms as well and can be customized for skin tone.

Associated Press