Bond set for driver in Ohio officer’s hit-and-run death

Bond set for driver in Ohio officer’s hit-and-run death

CLEVELAND

The driver accused in the fatal hit-and-run of a Cleveland patrolman kept his hands clasped in front of his face Thursday while a judge set a $500,000 bond in Cleveland Municipal Court.

Israel Alvarez, 44, of Lorain, is charged with aggravated vehicular homicide and failing to stop after a fatal accident in the death of Patrolman David Fahey. Fahey was struck Tuesday while setting down flares to close lanes on Interstate 90 after an earlier fatal accident. Alvarez did not enter a plea Thursday.

Doomsday Clock is moved closer to ‘midnight’

WASHINGTON

President Donald Trump’s comments about the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal have for months rattled arms-control advocates about how his administration might change half a century of policy and posture.

On Thursday, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists weighed in with its annual Doomsday Clock assessment. The metaphorical clock shows how close the world is to “midnight,” or a worldwide catastrophe.

The group, started by physicists who built the atomic bomb as part of the Manhattan Project, took the “unprecedented” step of moving the clock ahead by 30 seconds, to just 2 minutes before midnight. It’s the closest the clock has been to midnight since 1953, when the U.S. and Soviet Union were in the early days of above-ground hydrogen-bomb testing.

Feds cite lax safety culture in Amtrak crash that killed 2

PHILADELPHIA

The engineer of an Amtrak train that slammed into a backhoe near Philadelphia last April, killing two workers, tested positive for marijuana after the crash, according to investigative documents released Thursday that pointed to a lax safety culture at the railroad.

Investigators found that the maintenance crew had failed to follow safety procedures designed to keep workers safe and that Amtrak management was wrong to let the work go on without a detailed plan identifying hazards and ways to mitigate them.

Amtrak’s assertions that the work was part of an ongoing, routine maintenance project that didn’t require a detailed plan “are simply a post-accident circling of the wagons to deny supervisory or management involvement in the review of a project gone bad,” investigators wrote.

Suspect in lottery scam pleads not guilty in US

BISMARCK, N.D.

A Jamaican man accused of being the kingpin of a multimillion-dollar lottery scam that victimized dozens of people across the U.S. pleaded not guilty Thursday.

Lavrick Willocks entered his pleas to charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, mail fraud and money laundering in U.S. District Court in North Dakota. He and defense attorney John Goff also waived his right to a detention hearing, and U.S. Magistrate Judge Charles Miller said Willocks would remain jailed pending trial, scheduled for late March.

Authorities allege the sophisticated schemes that Willocks masterminded bilked more than 70 mostly elderly Americans out of more than $5.6 million. He was initially charged in October 2012, but he evaded police until being arrested in a hotel in the Jamaican city of Kingston on Nov. 5. Authorities said they found more than $10,000 in U.S. cash in his room.

Combines dispatches