Judge denies request in trooper ambush

Judge denies request in trooper ambush

MILFORD, PA.

A Pennsylvania judge has denied a pair of defense requests that sought to prevent prosecutors from seeking the death penalty against a man charged with fatally ambushing a state police trooper near a rural barracks.

Attorneys for Eric Frein had said the death-penalty option was unconstitutional. A Pike County judge rejected the claims.

Frein is charged with fatally shooting Cpl. Bryon Dickson II and wounding another trooper in September 2014. He led police on a tense 48-day manhunt before U.S. marshals caught him about 30 miles from the shooting scene. Frein has pleaded not guilty.

Feds: Filtered tap water is safe in Flint

DETROIT

Filtered tap water is safe for everyone in Flint, Mich., the federal government said Thursday, lifting a recommendation that pregnant women, nursing mothers and children under 6 drink only bottled water to avoid lead exposure.

The announcement was based on tests of filters that have been distributed for months for free by the state of Michigan. The Environmental Protection Agency said the filters remove or reduce lead to well below the action level of 15 parts per billion, although no lead is considered safe. Some samples from high-risk areas in Flint have been coming back at less than 1 part per billion.

Bob Kaplan, the EPA’s Midwest acting regional administrator, said water quality is improving but it’s not known when Flint can drink unfiltered tap water.

Tornado kills 78

BEIJING

A tornado and hailstorm struck the outskirts of an eastern Chinese city Thursday, killing at least 78 people and destroying buildings, smashing trees and flipping vehicles on their roofs.

The tornado hit a densely populated area of farms and factories near the city of Yancheng in Jiangsu province, about 500 miles south of Beijing. Nearly 500 people were injured, 200 of them critically, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

Germany: Suspect in cinema incident dead

BERLIN

A masked man was shot dead Thursday after entering a movie theater in southwestern Germany with what appeared to be a rifle and taking hostages, authorities said. No one else was hurt.

The armed man, whose identity and motives were unclear, entered the Kinopolis movie theater in the town of Viernheim in the early afternoon and apparently fired a gun. The man held several people, police spokeswoman Christiane Kobus said, but she didn’t have a precise number.

Officers “successively entered the cinema and were able to locate the man and the people he was holding,” Kobus told The Associated Press. “There was a threat situation and the man was then shot dead by a colleague.”

Ark. court upholds execution protocol

LITTLE ROCK, ARK.

Arkansas can execute eight death-row inmates, a split state Supreme Court ruled Thursday in upholding a state law that keeps information about its lethal injection drugs confidential.

It has only seven days, however, before one of the drugs needed for the three-drug protocol expires, and it isn’t clear when Arkansas will be able to resume its first executions since 2005.

Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge said she would request new execution dates once the stays are lifted on the eight inmate executions.

Generally, a ruling goes into effect 18 days after it is issued. A paralytic drug, vecuronium bromide, expires Thursday, and the supplier has said it will not sell the state more.

Associated Press