In accepting a plea offer from prosecutors, Pauline Morse agreed Friday to plead guilty to three misdemeanor counts of endangering the welfare of a child and to cooperate with prosecutors and testify against Dr. Melvin Morse.
Melvin Morse, 59, has written a best-selling book and achieved national recognition for his research into near-death experiences involving children. Police suggested in an affidavit that he may have been experimenting on the girl last year, a claim he denies.
A trial for Melvin Morse is scheduled to start June 10. Morse and his attorney, Joe Hurley, did not immediately return telephone messages seeking comment Friday.
A spokesman for the attorney general’s office had no immediate comment.
]]>Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said five people were critically injured and one was very critically hurt in Friday evening’s crash on the Metro-North Railroad, which serves the northern suburbs of New York City.
Passengers described a chaotic, terrifying scene of crunching metal and flying bodies when the two trains, carrying about 700 people, collided shortly after 6 p.m.
Amtrak, which uses the same rails, suspended service indefinitely between New York and Boston.
Malloy said there was no reason to believe it was anything other than an accident.
The National Transportation Safety Board was sending a team to investigate.
]]>Less than a week later, Nassau County police announced that Rebello, who was with her twin sister Jessica and several other college students inside an off-campus house, had been shot and killed during an early morning break-in Friday that also left the armed intruder dead.
The shooting, which took place just steps from the Long Island campus, has cast a pall over the university community gearing up for commencement ceremonies this weekend. Police are still investigating.
“Today is the last day of finals and this should be a happy day on campus; but it’s not,” said Hofstra freshman Scott Aharoni of Great Neck, as he passed through the area rife with yellow crime-scene tape Friday. “It’s really sad.”
Police said a press conference was scheduled for Saturday morning, when more details may be released about the shooting.
It wasn’t clear who fired the fatal shots or how many rounds were fired, but authorities said police were involved in the shooting, which happened at about 2:30 a.m. A weapon was found inside the house, police said. The gunman has not yet been identified.
Rebello’s father, Fernando, was too distraught to discuss the incident in detail outside the family’s Tarrytown, N.Y., home Friday.
“It’s my daughter, my baby daughter,” he told the Journal News through tears. “She was so beautiful. I’m so confused.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said.
The two sisters, another woman and another man were inside the two-story rental house when the gunman, wearing a ski mask, forced his way in, according to Nassau County Inspector Kenneth Lack. The intruder allowed the third unidentified woman to leave, and
]]>The new fire burned very close to I-5 during some of the busiest hours of the week for the heavily traveled route in and out of Los Angeles. The freeway has seen wildfire activity in its surrounding hills all week.
But some 350 firefighters were able to get the edge on the blaze as quickly as it arose. The fire was 60 percent contained by nightfall and residents of some 19 homes advised to evacuate were told they could safely return, the Los Angeles County Fire Department said.
Crews were helped by relatively mild temperatures, but challenged by unpredictable winds and very difficult terrain.
With air and ground attacks, firefighters were able to douse the flames closest to Northlake Hills Elementary School and stop a looming threat.
The school had a large defensible space around it, so it was easy to protect, Los Angeles County Fire Inspector Scott Miller said.
The campus was put on lockdown and buses were put on standby for a time in case hundreds of kindergarten through fifth-grade students needed to be evacuated.
After the flames were redirected, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sgt. Brian Allen said the students were released to their parents without incident.
The fire was moving toward Castaic Lake.
The earlier fire that broke out Wednesday near Frazier Park was 55 percent contained Friday after consuming some 4,300 acres.
That blaze was not threatening any homes or buildings but fire officials said containing it would be
]]>By Caren Bohan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The technology industry and organized labor are locked in a fight that threatens to complicate the U.S. Senate‘s immigration bill.
At the heart of the debate is whether there is a shortage of Americans with the math and science skills needed for work at technology firms like Facebook Inc, Google Inc and Microsoft Corp.
Labor is brandishing research that says the scarcity of workers is a myth while the tech industry is pointing to other studies that say the shortage is very real and is a threat to U.S. competitiveness.
In behind-the-scenes maneuvering that has created a quandary for Senate supporters of a broad immigration bill, lobbyists say Silicon Valley is pulling out all the stops to fight restrictions on a foreign-worker visa program known as H-1B that is aimed at making sure Americans get the first crack at any job openings.
Talks are expected to be ongoing this weekend to try to resolve the dispute over the high-skilled visa program that has proved to be a stumbling block for the Senate Judiciary Committee, which aims to vote on the immigration legislation by the end of the month.
If a deal can’t be reached, it could alienate tech companies that have told lawmakers they might
]]>By Michelle McLoughlin
FAIRFIELD, Connecticut (Reuters) – A commuter train traveling eastbound from New York City derailed near the Connecticut suburb of Fairfield during the evening rush hour on Friday and collided with a westbound commuter train, injuring up to 60 people, three critically, officials said.
The collision of the two Metro North trains forced Amtrak to shut down service indefinitely between New York and Boston, the national railroad said.
Three people were critically injured and 60 people were transported to area hospitals, police said.
“It’s pretty devastating damage to a number of cars,” Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy told a news conference. “These cars came into contact (and the impact) ripped open the siding of one of the cars. There is extensive damage in the front and the wheels.”
The accident occurred shortly after 6 p.m. EDT (2200 GMT), authorities said.
“All of a sudden the train started to shake a little bit … like something was bumping into it,” passenger Rowana Shepherd told CBS television. “One entire compartment from the other train was completely ripped open. The whole side was gone and people were lying in between the trains.”
The eastbound train was headed to New Haven, Connecticut,
]]>Key parts of the expert panel’s report, obtained Friday by the Associated Press, provide further information on North Korea’s attempts to evade four rounds of increasingly tough U.N. sanctions aimed at reining in its development of nuclear weapons and the ballistic missiles to deliver them.
While the imposition of sanctions has not halted these programs, the panel said, “it has in all likelihood considerably delayed the (North’s) timetable, and through the imposition of financial sanctions and the bans on the trade in weapons, has choked off significant funding which would have been channeled into prohibited activities.”
The report to the U.N. Security Council committee monitoring sanctions against North Korea recommended imposing sanctions on four additional North Korean companies and 11 individuals.
The council discussed the experts’ report on Thursday and it will be up to members to decide whether they are added to the sanctions blacklist.
To increase pressure on Kim Jong Un’s regime, the United States and the European Union have gone beyond U.N. sanctions and imposed even tougher financial measures against North Korea.
China, which is Pyongyang’s closest ally and economic lifeline, supported the U.N. sanctions. In a sign of growing discontent with the North, the state-run Bank of China Ltd., one of the country’s largest, halted business earlier this month with a North Korean bank accused by the U.S. of financing Pyongyang’s missile and nuclear programs.
The panel said North Korea “has continued to defy the international community in a series of actions which has heightened concerns about its intentions.” It cited the North’s ballistic missile launch on Dec.
]]>An employee at a Starbucks in Philadelphia is credited with recognizing 24-year-old Caleb “Kai” McGillvary, whose fledgling celebrity took a turn toward notoriety when authorities announced this week that he was wanted in the beating death of a New Jersey lawyer three times his age.
The unlikely pair met amid the neon lights of New York City’s Times Square over the weekend and headed back to the squat brick home of 73-year-old Joseph Galfy Jr. on a quiet cul-de-sac in suburban Clark, N.J., authorities say. On Monday, Galfy was found beaten to death in his bedroom, wearing only his socks and underwear. McGillvary was arrested Thursday shortly after leaving the Starbucks and charged with killing Galfy.
McGillvary gained a measure of fame in February after intervening in an attack on a California utility worker. In an interview viewed millions of times online, he described using a hatchet he was carrying to repeatedly hit a man who had struck a worker with his car, fending off a further attack, and thus became known as “Kai the hatchet-wielding hitchhiker.”
Galfy’s funeral was held Friday in a small stone chapel in Warren, N.J. He was buried in East Hanover.
Galfy was an “excellent land use attorney,” said friend Robert Ellenport. He said Galfy loved to travel and was a fan of the New York Giants and the Seton Hall University basketball team. Galfy would fly to warmer climes to watch Seton Hall play its first games of the season and was urging Ellenport and his partner to travel to Bali, one of Galfy’s favorite vacation spots.
The victim’s sister-in-law, Diane Galfy, said at her home that “he was a very
]]>About 250 people were on board the Metro-North trains when one heading east from New York City’s Grand Central Station to New Haven derailed about 6:10 p.m. just outside Bridgeport, MTA and Bridgeport officials said.
The train was hit by a train heading west from New Haven to Grand Central on an adjacent track, MTA spokesman Aaron Donovan said. Some cars on the second train also derailed as a result of the collision.
Lola Oliver, 49, of Bridgeport, was on one of the trains when she suddenly found herself in mid-air.
“Finally I came to a stop on one of the seats. And I just gripped it because I felt the train sliding. It happened so fast I had no idea what was going on. All I know is we crashed,” she told The Associated Press in a hospital interview.
Investigators Friday night did not know what caused the first train to derail. Malloy said there was no reason to believe it was anything other than an accident.
“We’re most concerned about the injured and ultimately reopening the system,” Malloy said from the scene about three hours after the crash.
The governor said that most people were not seriously hurt. Among those critically injured, he said, one’s injuries were “very critical.”
The Metro-North Railroad, a commuter line serving the northern suburbs, described it as a “major derailment.” Photos showed a train car askew on the rails, with its end smashed up and brushing against another train. Amtrak suspended service indefinitely between New York and Boston.
Malloy said there was extensive damage to the train cars
]]>The Metro-North Railroad, a commuter line serving the northern suburbs, referred in a news release to a “major derailment” near Fairfield, just outside Bridgeport. It said emergency workers were at the scene of the accident, which came shortly after 6 p.m.
Bill Kaempffer, a spokesman for Bridgeport public safety, told The Associated Press approximately 49 people were injured, including four with serious injuries. About 250 people were on board the two trains, he said.
Photos taken at the scene showed a train car askew on the rails, with its end smashed up and brushing against another train. Amtrak suspended service indefinitely between New York and Boston.
“At this stage, we don’t know if this is a mechanical failure, an accident or something deliberate,” Fairfield police spokesman Lt. James Perez told the Connecticut Post.
The railroad said a train that departed New York City’s Grand Central station en route to New Haven derailed. A westbound train on an adjacent track then struck the derailed train. Some cars on the second train also derailed as a result of the collision.
Bridgeport Police Chief Joseph Gaudett said everybody who needed treatment had been attended to, and authorities were beginning to turn their attention to investigating the cause.
“Everybody seemed pretty calm,” he said. “Everybody was thankful they didn’t get seriously hurt. They were anxious to get home to their families.”
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority operates the Metro-North Railroad, the second-largest commuter railroad in the nation.
The Metro-North main lines — the Hudson, Harlem, and New Haven — run northward from New York City’s Grand Central Terminal into suburban New York and Connecticut.
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