Police: ‘Probability’ exists man is N.Y. boy who vanished in 1955

Police said Wednesday that a private DNA test indicates a "probability" that a Michigan man was a 2-year-old Long Island child who disappeared in 1955. The Michigan man, John Robert Barnes, approached Nassau County police twice in March claiming he is Steven Damman, the toddler who disappeared 54 years ago, Detective Lt.

Share

Court gives would-be assassin John Hinckley more freedom

The man who tried to kill President Ronald Reagan is now allowed to visit his mother more, to get a driver’s license and spend more time away from the mental hospital where he lives, a federal judge ruled. The ruling, released Tuesday, expands the freedoms of John Hinckley Jr

Share

N. Korea: U.S. journalists were creating ‘smear campaign’

North Korea’s state media released a "detailed report" Tuesday claiming that American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee entered the country illegally in order to record material for a "smear campaign" against the reclusive communist state. It added that the two women “admitted that what they did were criminal acts … prompted by the political motive to isolate and stifle the socialist system of the DPRK by faking up moving images aimed at falsifying its human rights performance and hurling slanders and calumnies at it.” Ling and Lee were sentenced this month to 12 years of hard labor in North Korea

Share

Cancun drug cartel suspect arrested

The Mexican military has arrested a suspect identified as the head of a drug cartel in the Yucatan Peninsula, federal defense ministry officials said. Tyler Hayes Weinman, 18, also is charged with 19 counts of improper disposal of dead animals and four counts of burglary, police said. Weinman lives in Cutler Bay and has lived with his parents in Palmetto Bay, the two towns where police said 19 cats were mutilated and killed.

Share

Man charged in museum shooting expected to survive, feds say

The man charged with killing a security officer at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is expected to survive his subsequent shooting by other security officers, the FBI said in a statement released Saturday. The statement was based on a Thursday court session in which a public defender was appointed for James von Brunn, charged with first-degree murder in the death of Stephen Tyrone Johns, 39, a security officer who police say opened a museum door Wednesday for the 88-year-old reputed white supremacist

Share

U.S. student ‘not at home’ night roommate died

American student Amanda Knox was on the stand Saturday for a second day, this time facing questions from the public prosecutor in her trial on charges of murdering her housemate about two years ago. Knox, 21, is charged in the death of British student Meredith Kercher, who was her housemate in this university town north of Rome. Kercher, 20, died in what prosecutors say was a “drug-fueled sex game” after suffering a sexual assault

Share

Rifle used in museum shooting too old to trace, official says

It is not possible for authorities to trace the rifle used in this week’s shooting at the Holocaust Memorial Museum to the original purchaser, a law enforcement source said Friday. The source, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the investigation, said the weapon is a Winchester Model 6, .22 caliber rifle — a type of gun manufactured between 1908 and 1928 — long before records were kept on gun purchases. Authorities also were checking to see if the weapon had been used in any other crime, the source said.

Share