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Stepmom, grandmother charged in Ala. girl's death
The grandmother and stepmother of a 9-year-old Alabama girl who died after witnesses said she was forced to run for three hours as punishment for lying have been charged with murder and are being held in jail.
Witnesses told police that Savannah Hardin was told to run and not allowed to stop for three hours on Friday Feb. 17, an Etowah County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman said. The girl's stepmother, 27-year-old Jessica Mae Hardin, called police at 6:45 p.m., telling authorities that Savannah was having a seizure and was unresponsive.
Authorities are still trying to determine whether Savannah was forced to run by physical coercion or by verbal commands only.
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Mayor's office: Top cop didn't mention spy program
A spokesperson for Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel says the former Newark police chief didn't talk about a secret NYPD operation to spy on Muslims in New Jersey's largest city before he was hired to lead the Chicago force.
Emanuel hired Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy last year. McCarthy was a former senior NYPD officer before leading the Newark department.
Emanuel spokesperson Sarah Hamilton discussed McCarthy's conversations with the mayor on Wednesday, after The Associated Press reported NYPD officers took photographs and eavesdropped on conversations inside Muslim businesses in Newark while McCarthy was chief there.
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Obama proposes cutting corporate tax rate, ending breaks
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration unveiled Wednesday its framework for overhauling the corporate tax code, offering an election-year proposal that would pay for a sharp reduction in the broad rate — from 35 percent to 28 percent — by taking away tax breaks enjoyed by the energy sector and big corporations.
Because prospects are slim for any comprehensive tax legislation before November's presidential election, the plan put forth by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was as much about political choices as policy ones.
"The last time we fundamentally reformed the business tax code was more than 25 years ago. That was before the Internet, before cellphones, before the rise of China and other emerging markets ... and before a global trend to lower the corporate tax rates around the world," Geithner said at a news conference. The U.S. tax code was last overhauled in 1986 and has been tinkered with constantly ever since.
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Union suing to block Indiana right-to-work law
Union members went to federal court Wednesday to ask a judge to block Indiana's new right-to-work law from being enforced, the first lawsuit and latest conflict over the divisive legislation.
The International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150 said filed the lawsuit Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Hammond, said Marc Poulos, an attorney representing the union. The suit names Gov. Mitch Daniels, Attorney General Greg Zoeller and Labor Commissioner Lori Torres.
The right-to-work lawsuit is the latest filed over a wave of conservative legislation pushed through the Indiana General Assembly over the last two years. Indiana also faces lawsuits over 2011 legislation that cut Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood clinics because the group provides abortions, and the state is in court over tougher illegal immigration laws and the nation's broadest use of school vouchers.
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Police say Wash. school shooting leaves 1 injured
Authorities say a shooting at a Washington state elementary school appears to have left a third-grade student with a gunshot wound in her abdomen.
Police say the injured girl has been airlifted to Seattle's Harborview Medical Center and that a third-grade boy has been detained.
Bremerton police and emergency crews were dispatched to the school at around 1:30 p.m. in response to a call that a student was shot and injured by another student. Authorities say a firearm was found in a classroom.
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Teenage girl dies after inhaling helium at party
Last weekend, 14-year-old Ashley Long told her parents she was going to a slumber party. But instead of spending the night watching videos and eating popcorn two blocks away, she piled into a car with a bunch of her friends and rode to a condo in Medford, Ore., where police say the big sister of one of her friends was throwing a party with booze and marijuana.
After drinking on the drive, and downing more drinks in the condo, it came time for Ashley to take her turn on a tank of helium that everyone else was inhaling to make their voices sound funny.
"That helium tank got going around," said Ashley's stepfather, Justin Earp, who learned what happened from talking to Ashley's friends at the party. "It got to my daughter. My daughter didn't want to do it. It was peer pressure. They put a mask up to her face. They said it would be OK. 'It's not gonna hurt you. It'll just make you laugh and talk funny.'"
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Immigration chief seeks to reassure Silicon Valley
The Obama administration's top immigration official said Wednesday he wants to keep more foreign-born high-tech entrepreneurs in the U.S. But to make that happen, he said he needs those entrepreneurs to turn their creativity to immigration itself.
Members of Silicon Valley's startup community met with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service Director Alejandro Mayorkas for what the agency billed as a summit to officially launch its unusual "Entrepreneurs in Residence" program.
The event held on the campus of the NASA Ames Research Center sought to address a common tech industry complaint: Non-citizens who come to the U.S. to study end up starting companies in their home countries because they say the immigration process has become too daunting.
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DC police official in celeb escort flap to sue
A former District of Columbia police commander whose division provided a police escort to actor Charlie Sheen has given notice that he intends to file a whistleblower lawsuit against the city.
Hilton Burton alleges that he was demoted after he testified before the D.C. Council in June that such escorts for celebrities were commonplace. Police escorted Sheen in April from an airport to a performance in D.C.
His statements contradicted the testimony of Police Chief Cathy Lanier, who appeared at the same hearing and has said the Sheen escort violated department policy.
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Russia warns against 'hasty conclusions' over Iran
Russia said Wednesday the world should not draw "hasty conclusions" over Iran's most recent rebuff of U.N. attempts to investigate allegations the Islamic Republic hid secret work on atomic arms, but the U.S. and its allies accused Tehran of nuclear defiance.
Under international pressure to show restraint, Israel, which has warned repeatedly that it may strike Iran's nuclear facilities, pointedly urged major world powers to mind their own business, saying it alone would decide what to do to protect the Jewish state's security.
France said Iran's continued stonewalling of the International Atomic Energy Agency "is contrary to the intentions" expressed by Tehran in its recent offer to restart talks over its nuclear activities.
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