Tropical storm Emily heads east, weakens
Compiled from news services
FORTLAUDERDALE, Fla. — Emily has been downgraded from a tropical storm to a tropical depression.
The depression was moving eastward over Central Florida on Monday afternoon and wasn’t going to hit South Florida directly.
Forecasters said, however, that South Florida could see about 1 to 2 inches of rain through Monday night.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott had declared a state of emergency for 31 Florida counties including Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade.
In a statement released just before 6 p.m. Monday, the governor said residents should still be prepared.
After an area of storms and clouds became Tropical Depression #6 in the Gulf of Mexico near the Tampa Bay area on Monday morning before 6 a.m., the depression became the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season’s fifth named storm before 8 a.m.
Peanut butter prison break
WALKERCOUNTY, Ala. — A dozen inmates escaped from an Alabama jail not by cutting through steel bars, drilling through walls, or ripping off a toilet from a wall. They used peanut butter. Walker County Sheriff Jim Underwood told reporters Monday that the inmates used peanut butter to make the number of a door leading outside look like the number of one of the internal cell doors. They then asked an unsuspecting jail guard, who was in the control room keeping count of inmates through a camera, to open the door. He did, thinking he was letting the inmates back into their cell.
Eleven have since been recaptured and are now in custody. One, Brady Andrew Kilpatrick, who was in jail on drug possession charges, remains at large.
Texas bathroom bill conflict
AUSTIN, Texas — The nation’s largest oil, gas and chemical companies are the latest big businesses to publicly oppose the so-called Texas bathroom bill.
In a letter sent Monday to Gov. Greg Abbott, 50, Houston-area businesses said the bill would harm their ability to recruit and retain top talent. CEOs from BP America, Chevron North America E&P, Dow Chemical Co., Exxon Mobil Global Services and Halliburton were among the signers.
Abbott called lawmakers back to Austin this summer for a special session and included the bathroom legislation on his list of priorities. Three bills that would restrict the bathrooms available for use to transgender men, women and children have been filed.
Niagara Falls turned black
NIAGARAFALLS, N.Y. — The water near the base of Niagara Falls turned an alarming shade of black before tourists’ eyes following a foul-smelling discharge from a wastewater treatment plant.
The water board for the city of Niagara Falls, New York, said Saturday’s discharge was part of routine maintenance of one of its basins.
Also in the nation ...
John Cramsey, a Pennsylvania man arrested last year outside New York with a vehicle full of weapons on a self-described mission to rescue a teenager from a drug den, pleaded guilty Monday to weapons charges, but said he would continue his battle against the scourge of drug addiction. ... The first day of jury deliberations at the federal securities fraud trial of Martin Shkreli ended Monday without a verdict for the former biotech CEO best known for hiking up the price of a life-saving drug and for trolling his critics on social media.