Ohio
Missing dad of 3 is found, met someone online
AKRON, Ohio (AP) - Police in Ohio say they've safely located a father of three whose mysterious disappearance from the San Antonio area spurred weeks of searching by his family and volunteers.
Police tell the Akron Beacon Journal that a tip led them to 44-year-old Lee Arms in a community near Bath Township. They say he tried to escape his life in Texas and ended up in Ohio after meeting someone online.
Police notified his family but declined to release further details because Arms wasn't charged with a crime.
The man from Falls City, Texas, had vanished Feb. 5. After he didn't show up for work, his car was found still running and abandoned with its lights flashing, with his wallet and other belongings still at the scene.
Illinois
Woman faces murder in baby's starvation death
CHICAGO (AP) - Authorities say a Chicago woman faces a first-degree murder charge accusing her of starving her 2-month-old son to death in 2014.
Court records show that 22-year-old Shawnquail Minnis' baby became so emaciated that medical workers could see facial bones and ribs through his skin.
Minnis was arrested Friday and ordered held on $2 million bond. Minnis is next scheduled to appear in court Tuesday.
Records show Jashawn McBride was born Sept. 13, 2014, weighing 8 pounds, 2 ounces. The baby was pronounced dead about seven weeks later, weighing 4 pounds, 13 ounces.
Assistant public defender Toya Harvey called the two years between Jashawn's death and charges "unusual." Harvey says Minnis wasn't questioned after the baby's death and the family didn't know charges were being considered until a few days ago.
Illinois
As same-sex marriage became
CHICAGO (AP) - Teen suicide attempts in the U.S. declined after same-sex marriage became legal and the biggest impact was among gay, lesbian and bisexual kids, a study found.
The research found declines in states that passed laws allowing gays to marry before the Supreme Court made it legal nationwide. The results don't prove there's a connection, but researchers said policymakers should be aware of the measures' potential benefits for youth mental health.
Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for all U.S. teens. Suicidal behavior is much more common among gay, lesbian and bisexual kids and adults; about 29 percent of these teens in the study reported attempting suicide, compared with just 6 percent of straight teens.
Laws that have the greatest impact on gay adults may make gay kids feel "more hopeful for the future," said lead author Julia Raifman, a researcher at Johns Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The measures also could create more tolerance and less bullying, making these teens feel less stigmatized. Those effects could also benefit straight teens but more research is needed to determine how the laws might influence teen behavior, Raifman said.
The study was published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics .
The researchers analyzed data on more than 700,000 public high school students who participated in government surveys on risky youth behavior from 1999 through 2015, the year the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage.
About 230,000 students reported being gay, lesbian or bisexual. The surveys didn't ask about transgender status. They included questions about suicide attempts, smoking and alcohol or drug use.
In 32 states that enacted same-sex marriage laws during the study, suicide attempts dropped 7 percent among all students and 14 percent among gay kids after the laws were passed. There was no change in suicide attempts in states without those laws.
The study only included suicide attempts, not deaths.
The new work makes an important contribution to identifying how laws limiting gay rights may affect psychological and physical health, said Columbia University public health researcher Mark Hatzenbuehler.
But more research is needed to determine which teens are most vulnerable to policies that limit gay rights, he wrote in an accompanying editorial.
Alaska
Environmental groups back feds over hunting ban
KENAI, Alaska (AP) - More than a dozen environmental groups are seeking to join lawsuits filed by the state of Alaska over a federal ban on certain hunting techniques in national refuges and preserves.
The two lawsuits filed in January claim the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service illegally pre-empted the state's authority to manage wildlife by banning state-approved hunting practices.
The federal regulations prohibit the killing of black bears in their dens with the aid of artificial light and shooting brown bears over bait stations.
A motion filed by environmental law firm Trustees for Alaska earlier this month on behalf of 15 Alaska organizations asks the court to admit the groups as a party in defense of the federal agencies, The Peninsula Clarion reported.
The environmental groups - which include Defenders of Wildlife, the Humane Society of the United States, the National Parks Conservation Association and the Alaska chapter of the Sierra Club - are opponents of the state's predator control efforts.
"You just have a conflicting wildlife management philosophy between refuge lands, which are managed for wildlife biological diversity, and the state's management philosophy, at least in predator control areas, of deliberately suppressing predator populations to try to increase prey populations," said Pat Lavin with the Alaska office of Defenders of Wildlife. "What the court should uphold is the FWS duty to manage refuge lands consistent with those refuge purposes."
The state and federal government have long been at odds over predator control on federal conservation lands where management goals can differ.
"We can't say that if we kill all the bears, it will cost us this much, but we can say that there's a lot at stake and that wildlife, bears, predators are very important part of Alaska," said Jim Adams, Alaska regional director of the National Parks Conservation Association.
The federal rules are also facing a challenge in Congress, as the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution nullifying the Fish and Wildlife regulations on national refuges on Thursday. The measure was authored by Alaska Rep. Don Young, who called the rules "a power grab."
"I'm thankful to all those that played a role in moving this important resolution of disapproval, including the countless state and local stakeholders that worked with me to fight a very serious and alarming overreach by the previous administration," Young said in a statement on the resolution's passage.
The Senate must still vote on the measure before it takes effect.
The resolution would not apply to National Park Service rules, which were passed too long ago to be repealed in the same way.
Published: Tue, Feb 21, 2017
