KIMBALL, Neb. — Nebraska officials say a 14-year-old California boy has become the last child reported abandoned under the state’s safe-haven law before it was changed to limit such drop-offs to infants no more than 30 days old. Nebraska officials say the boy from California’s Yolo County was driven to Nebraska’s Kimball County Hospital on Friday by his mother. Authorities say the boy has been placed in a foster home while state officials contact agencies in California. That brings to 36 the number of children left at Nebraska hospitals since the state’s law went on the books in July.
Florida: Repairs by astronauts
Spacewalking astronauts completed almost all of the greasy repairs on a gummed-up joint at the international space station on Saturday, leaving just a few chores behind for another day. As spacewalk No. 3 was getting under way 225 miles up, a new recycling system for converting urine into drinking water broke down again. It was the third day in a row that the urine processor inexplicably shut down. The $154 million water recycling system is essential for allowing more astronauts to live on the space station next year.
D.C.: Obama’s press secretary
President-elect Barack Obama on Saturday named longtime spokesman Robert Gibbs as White House press secretary and reached outside his inner circle for the post of White House communications director. The director of communications will be Ellen Moran, who is currently executive director of the Washington group EMILY’s List. She will join a team of longtime close advisers who will work closely with Obama on a daily basis. Gibbs worked for several Southern Democrats before heading to Chicago to work in Obama’s U.S. Senate campaign in 2004.
Michigan: Bullet hits day care
Authorities said a hunter’s stray bullet has grazed two young boys at a day care near Cheboygan. The Cheboygan County sheriff’s department said a 43-year-old woman fired her rifle at a deer on Thursday but the bullet penetrated a wall and grazed the boys — ages 3 and 5 — inside Angie’s Country Kids Day Care in Benton Township. Authorities said the woman was hunting about 400 yards away, and may not have realized there was a day care in the area.
Arkansas: Slow-braiding slaying
An Arkansas man has been sentenced to prison for fatally shooting a stylist who was taking too long to braid his hair. Thirty-year-old Kerry Rendall Wilson of Little Rock was sentenced Friday to 24 years for second-degree murder. Wilson’s lawyer says his client was high on marijuana dipped in formaldehyde when 39-year-old Henrietta Jones was killed in November 2007.
Iran: ‘Israeli spy’ is executed
Iran executed an electronics salesman convicted of relaying information on the country’s nuclear program and other sensitive data to Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, a judiciary spokesman said Saturday. Ali Ashtari was hanged Nov. 17 after being sentenced to death on June 30 in Tehran, the spokesman said. It was the country’s first known conviction for espionage linked to Israel in almost a decade. Ashtari was found guilty of relaying information to Israel on military, defense and research centers that the 45-year-old electronics salesman supplied, he said.
Colombia: Deadly volcano eruption
Authorities said at least four people have died in landslides triggered by a volcanic eruption in southwestern Colombia. The Cauca state governor said the dead were found Saturday when rescuers reached the area about 177 miles southwest of Bogota. The Nevado del Huila volcano erupted late Thursday and loosed avalanches of mud and ash that injured nine, destroyed bridges and trapped people in their towns. He said rescuers evacuated some residents by helicopter Saturday.
Guatemala: Inmates decapitated
A prison riot in Guatemala has left seven inmates dead, including five who were decapitated. A prison spokesman said authorities found the five heads after a fight in the Pavoncito prison in Guatemala City. He said two other inmates died of gunshot wounds. Reporters saw a group of prisoners standing behind four heads lined up on rocks in a yard. The fifth head was on a wooden stake. The spokesman said the Saturday fight erupted because inmates were angry over the transfer of a group of alleged gang members from another prison.
China: Panda hug turns painful
A college student in southern China was bitten by a panda after he broke into the bear’s enclosure hoping to get a hug, state media and a park employee said Saturday. The student was visiting Qixing Park with classmates on Friday when he jumped the 6.5-foot-high fence around the panda’s habitat, the park employee said. He said the student was bitten in the arms and legs. “Yang Yang was so cute and I just wanted to cuddle him. I didn’t expect he would attack,” the 20-year-old student said in a local hospital, according to Xinhua News Agency.
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