Police: Package bomb targeted man

Police: Package bomb targeted man

PHILADELPHIA

A bomb stuffed inside a padded envelope exploded in a downtown apartment Tuesday when a man opened the package, apparently thinking it contained medicine, police said. The victim was hospitalized with hand and chest injuries.

Federal agents and the city bomb squad were investigating the blast that injured a man in his 60s at about 4 a.m. The man’s name has not been released. Authorities said he had arrived home at that hour after being out of town, and was opening his mail.

The package was “target- specific,” Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross said. Authorities do not believe the envelope was sent in the mail, because it had an old barcode on it, he said.

Late-season storm Otto becomes hurricane; 3 dead

PANAMA CITY

Late-season storm Otto strengthened into a hurricane Tuesday as civil defense officials reported three deaths in Panama amid heavy rain and Costa Rica ordered the evacuation of 4,000 people from its Caribbean coast.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Otto was likely to gain strength as it headed for an expected Thursday afternoon landfall around the Nicaragua-Costa Rica border. It could become the first hurricane to make landfall in Costa Rica since reliable record-keeping began in 1851.

The storm caused heavy rains in Panama as it moved off that nation’s northern coast, and officials blamed Otto for three deaths.

Jose Donderis, Panama’s civil defense director, said a landslide just west of Panama City early Tuesday trapped nine people. Seven were rescued but two were pulled from the mud dead. In the capital, a child was killed when a tree fell on a car outside a school.

Education secretary: Stop paddling students

BUFFALO, N.Y.

Education Secretary John B. King Jr. is urging governors and school leaders in states that allow student paddling to end a practice he said would be considered “criminal assault or battery” against an adult.

King released a letter Tuesday asking leaders to replace corporal punishment with less punitive, more supportive disciplinary practices that he said work better against bad behavior.

More than 110,000 students, including disproportionate numbers of black and disabled students, were subjected to paddling or a similar punishment in the 2013-14 school year, said King, citing the Education Department’s Civil Rights Data Collection.

Corporal punishment is legal in 22 states.

Associated Press