National Roundup

New Mexico
Security official tries to take gun in purse on flight
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Albuquerque airport officials say the second-in-command of New Mexico’s domestic security agency was caught trying to bring a loaded gun through a security checkpoint.

State Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Anita Tallarico told Albuquerque Sunport police that she forgot to leave the weapon at home when TSA agents spotted it in her purse in a scanner Friday.

KOB-TV reports Tallarico told TSA officials she was distraught because she was going to a funeral. She was cited for unlawful carrying of a deadly weapon.

Airport police chief Marshall Katz says he’s not sure how a person of Tallarico’s position could make such a slip-up, but added that it happens frequently nationwide.
Tallarico’s gun was turned over to city police as evidence.

California
Jury hears chef say on tape he cooked his wife
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A chef on trial Tuesday for his wife’s murder told sheriff’s investigators that they couldn’t find his wife’s body because he had cooked it for four days in boiling water until little was left but her skull.

Los Angeles Superior Court jurors heard David Viens make the statements in a recorded interview with sheriff’s investigators that was played in court during his murder trial.

“I just slowly cooked it and I ended up cooking her for four days,” Viens could be heard saying on the recording, according to the Los Angeles Times .

Viens gave detectives the interview as he lay in a hospital bed in March 2011, after leaping off an 80-foot cliff in Rancho Palos Verdes when he learned he was a suspect in the late 2009 disappearance of his wife, Dawn Viens, 39, whose body was never found.

Viens, whose injuries from the leap have him attending his trial in a wheelchair, said in the interview that he stuffed his wife’s body in a 55-gallon drum of boiling water and kept it submerged with weights.

He said he mixed what remained after four days with other waste, dumping some of it in a grease pit at his restaurant in Lomita, and putting the rest in the trash.
He said the only significant thing left was his wife’s skull, which he stashed in his mother’s attic at her home in Torrance. But a search of the house turned up nothing, nor did an excavation of the restaurant.

California
City proclaims day to recognize bisexual pride
BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) — Berkeley on Tuesday became what is thought to be the nation’s first city to officially proclaim a day recognizing bisexuals, a sexual minority that often complains of being derided as sexually confused fence-sitters.

The City Council unanimously and without discussion declared Sept. 23 as Bisexual Pride and Bi Visibility Day. Since 1999, bisexual activists have claimed the date to celebrate their community, and bisexual pride events routinely are held in Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago and other cities across the nation.

Berkeley, however, is believed to be the first U.S. city where a government body has taken the extra step of to formally acknowledge the day, the San Francisco Chronicle reported . Other cities support and participate in gay pride parades held in June and July.

The Williams Institute, a think tank at the University of California, Los Angeles, devoted to the study of sexual orientation and the law, estimates that more than 4 million Americans identify as bisexual, more than the number of Americans who identify as gay, lesbian or transgender combined.

Alabama
Voters approve budget rescue by 2-to-1 margin
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama voters have decided by a 2-to-1 margin to avoid dramatic cuts in state government by withdrawing $437 million from a trust fund to help balance the General Fund budget for the next three years.

Republican Gov. Robert Bentley thanked voters Tuesday night for “this temporary funding bridge from the Alabama Trust Fund to maintain essential services as we continue to streamline and right-size government.”

The Legislature left it up to voters to decide whether to withdraw the money from the Alabama Trust Fund or require deep cuts of 12 percent or more from health care, social services and other areas in the $1.7 billion budget taking effect Oct. 1. The constitutional amendment shifts the money from a trust fund set up 30 years ago to receive the state’s royalties from natural gas wells drilled off the Alabama coast.

Arkansas
Dorm evacuated at college after bomb threat
JONESBORO, Ark. (AP) — A dormitory that was evacuated following a bomb threat at Arkansas State University has been deemed safe.

University spokeswoman Gina Bowman says the threat came in Tuesday afternoon targeting the University Hall dorm, which houses nearly 400 students. Residents were immediately evacuated, as was the nearby International Student Center.

She says campus police conducted a room-by-room search with bomb-sniffing dogs, though no evidence of a bomb was found. Students were allowed to return Tuesday evening.

Bowman says a 44-year-old local man accused of making the threat has been arrested.

School officials don’t believe the incident is related to bomb threats that sparked recent campus-wide evacuations at Louisiana State University, the University of Texas in Austin and the University of North Dakota in Fargo. No explosives were found on those campuses.

New Jersey
Police officer charged for assaulting woman
ROBBINSVILLE, N.J. (AP) — A New Jersey police officer is undergoing a psychiatric exam after he was accused of attacking a woman in a wheelchair and her 4-year-old son while on duty.

Authorities say Robbinsville Police Sgt. Mark Lee broke into the woman’s apartment at a home that serves people with disabilities on Monday evening.
The Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office says Lee assaulted the 45-year-old woman and her son in a bathroom.

Officials say the officer broke into a bedroom, where the woman and boy had fled with a caretaker. Officials say Lee knocked the woman from her wheelchair and again assaulted her.

Authorities say the 18-year veteran of the department kicked out a window to escape from a police vehicle before he was recaptured.

Lee is charged with aggravated assault and other charges.