NEWS OF THE DAY
From Across the Nation
Bomb plotter: A Florida man will be hospitalized in federal custody for psychiatric treatment and likely will serve 25 years in prison for plotting to bomb a synagogue and Jewish school center during Passover last year, a judge ruled Tuesday. James Medina, 41, pleaded guilty to a religious hate crime and attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction, which was actually a fake bomb provided by an FBI informant. Defense lawyer Hector Dopico said at a hearing that serious mental illness and brain damage from a 2007 car accident were the main factors behind Medina’s plot to blow up the Aventura Turnberry Jewish Center in Aventura, Fla.
Scaramucci resigns: Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci has resigned from an advisory board at Tufts University after the school postponed a speech he was scheduled to deliver. James Stavridis, dean of the Massachusetts university’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, said Scaramucci resigned Tuesday from the school’s board of advisers. Scaramucci threatened a lawsuit over what his lawyer called a defamatory opinion piece published in the student newspaper earlier this month that called him an “irresponsible, inconsistent, an unethical opportunist” and called for his removal from the board. Scaramucci is a 1986 graduate of Tufts.
“Hacker-for-hire”: A Canadian man pleaded guilty Tuesday in a San Francisco courtroom to charges stemming from a massive breach at Yahoo that authorities say was directed by two Russian intelligence agents and affected at least a half-billion user accounts. Karim Baratov appeared in a jail jumpsuit before a federal judge and entered the pleas to one count of conspiracy to commit computer fraud and abuse and eight counts of aggravated identity theft. U.S. law enforcement officials call 22-year-old Baratov a “hacker-for-hire” and say he was paid by members of the Russian Federal Security Service. Sentencing is Feb. 20.
WWII pilot: The Pentagon says the remains of an American pilot shot down in Europe during World War II are being returned to his New York family for burial 73 years after he died. U.S. military officials said Tuesday that Army Air Forces 1st Lt. Robert Mains, of Rochester, was the 27-yearold pilot of a B-24 Liberator taking part in a raid over Germany in April 1945. His plane was shot down near the German town of Ludwigslust. In 1997, a Pentagon team found aircraft wreckage. Other teams returned in recent years and found bone tissue that was identified as Mains’ using DNA samples. His remains will be buried Saturday in the Long Island hamlet of Wading River.
Cold War relic: As nuclear tensions between North Korea and the U.S. grow, Hawaii is set to bring back a statewide nuclear attack siren, a relic of the Cold War that will notify islanders that a missile is headed toward them. Officials will test the system for the first time on Dec. 1, according to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.