National Roundup

New York
Officer helps deliver a baby, for second time
NEW YORK (AP) — When a New York City police officer helped a woman give birth in an apartment bathroom, it wasn’t the first time the officer helped deliver a baby on the job.

New York Police Department Officer Doris Vega and partner Timothy Canniff were called to a Bronx apartment around 3 a.m. Monday. They found a 30-year-old woman in the midst of giving birth, standing up.

Vega says they guided the woman to the floor and helped her complete the delivery safely, with emergency medical services workers advising by phone. Mother and baby were taken to a hospital and are doing well.

Vega recalls she also helped deliver a baby some years ago in a living room. She says she felt more confident this time, “and it was a beautiful experience.”

New York
Conservative publisher wants nothing more to do with Times
NEW YORK (AP) — A company that publishes books by Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin, Ann Coulter and other conservative authors says it wants nothing to do anymore with The New York Times and its best-seller list.

Regnery Publishing said on Monday it will no longer recognize the Times’ accounting of book sales, meaning its writers can no longer claim to be “New York Times best-selling authors.” That’s a big deal in the book business.

Regnery is annoyed that its book “The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left” was only No. 7 on the Times’ latest best-sellers list even though another organization that tracks sales ranked it No. 1. Regnery says another of its books, “No Go Zones: How Sharia Law is Coming to a Neighborhood Near You,” is also not ranked as highly by the Times as it deserves to be.

The Times noted that conservative authors have routinely ranked high and in great numbers on its best-sellers list.

“Our goal is that the lists reflect authentic best sellers,” Times spokesman Jordan Cohen said. “The political views of authors have no bearing on our rankings, and the notion that we would manipulate the lists to exclude books for political reasons is simply ludicrous.”

The newspaper is a frequent target of conservatives and Republicans, including President Donald Trump. But it’s unusual for a publisher to say, effectively, that it’s taking its ball and going home.

Regnery says the Times’ list gives priority to liberal books.

The publishing company’s writers, besides no longer being allowed to use the Times’ rankings to promote themselves, will no longer get bonuses tied to their books appearing on the newspaper’s list.

“I ask you to consider this: We are often told it’s foolish to bite the hand that feeds you,” Marji Ross, president and publisher of Regnery, said in a letter to its authors. “I say it’s just as foolish to feed the hand that bites you.”

Book sales are an inexact science. Nielsen BookScan, the measurement that Regnery cites as ranking its books higher, counts print sales in stores representing about 85 percent of the market. The Times says its list is based on surveys of thousands of booksellers.


Kansas
Small boy’s body found encased in concrete in house
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Police are investigating after the body of a small child was discovered encased in concrete inside a rental home in Wichita, Kansas.

The landlord was cleaning the house Saturday when he found a concrete structure and noticed an odor coming from it, the Wichita Eagle reported. Police removed the structure and discovered the remains of a 3-year-old boy inside.

Police have not named the child.

“We have a tentative identification on the child, but confirmation of the child’s identity is being coordinated through the Sedgwick County Medical Examiner,” officer Charley Davidson wrote in a news release on Sunday.

Neighbor Toni Freund told the Eagle that she saw police pull something concrete from the home. She and other neighbors said they had never seen a young child at the home.

“It’s definitely a tragedy,” she said.

An Associated Press reporter on Monday left phone and email messages Wichita police for information about the structure.

Police say a 40-year-old man and 36-year-old woman who lived at the home were arrested last week on separate charges associated with a child custody case. Both are being held in the Sedgwick County Jail. Police have not said if that man and woman are suspected in the death of the child.

A flyer recently passed out in the area around the home identifies a missing 3-year-old child. The flyers were shared on social media with people pleading for the child’s safe return.


Massachusetts
U.S. attorney who led marathon bombing case joins law firm
BOSTON (AP) — The former top prosecutor for Massachusetts who led such high-profile cases as that of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is joining a Boston law firm.

Anderson & Kreiger LLP said Tuesday that former U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz will focus on internal investigations and white-collar criminal defense, among other things.

Ortiz left her job as U.S. attorney in January. She was nominated by President Barack Obama in 2009.

Ortiz also led the prosecution against Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger, who was convicted in 2013 and is serving a life sentence.

Anderson & Kreiger says Ortiz is joining immediately but will stay on as a visiting professor at the Boston College Law School through the semester.

She’ll start full time at the firm at the beginning of next year.

Ohio
Photographer shot by deputy at traffic stop
NEW CARLISLE, Ohio (AP) — The photographer for a small news organization who says he was shot by a sheriff’s deputy who mistook his camera for a weapon is uninterested in seeing the officer punished, the newspaper said Tuesday.

Photographer Andy Grimm left the office Monday to photograph lightning when he saw a Clark County sheriff’s deputy performing a traffic stop in New Carlisle, north of Dayton, The New Carlisle News reports.

Grimm got out of his Jeep to take pictures of the traffic stop and started setting up his tripod and camera when he was shot in the side, the paper said.

“I turned around toward the cars and then ‘pop, pop,’” Grimm said in the paper’s story.

An update on the organization’s Facebook page says Grimm is “is very sore but otherwise is doing fine” after surgery and doesn’t want the deputy to lose his job.

Dale Grimm said it’s not clear what the deputy was thinking.