In the news
Robert Donchez, mayor of Bethlehem, Pa., proclaimed Friday as “Bob Born Day,” honoring the 94-yearold who joined his father’s candy business in 1946 and figured out a way to automate production of Peeps, the popular marshmallow chicks, which the mayor described as “an iconic symbol of Easter.”
Martha Lou Wheatley-Billeter, spokesman for Spokane County, Wash., said unusually heavy snow is prompting some snowplow rage after two drivers clearing streets were threatened by people angry after their driveways were blocked by mounds of snow.
Ekrem Uysaleer, a Philadelphia real estate investor, said he told his construction manager not to move when a co-worker spotted a thin line that turned out to be the trigger for a booby-trap featuring a large knife that swung down on anyone walking up a staircase.
Julie Edwards, 53, a white woman charged with drunken driving in Deland, Fla., faces additional charges of resisting and threatening an officer after a black deputy used his body camera to record her threatening to have the Ku Klux Klan burn crosses in his yard.
Arthur Reyes said he was walking by a vacant home in Houston around 4:30 a.m. when he heard cries for help from a woman who had gotten stuck in an air vent as she tried to enter the home and who had to be cut free by firefighters.
Christopher Hutchinson, 30, a Maine lobster boat captain who pleaded guilty to “seaman’s manslaughter” in the deaths of two crewmen who died when his boat capsized in rough seas in 2014, was sentenced to four years in federal prison, prosecutors said.
Troy German, an Oklahoma Highway Patrol captain charged with extortion, is denying accusations that he used cellphone audio recordings to try to blackmail the state’s public safety commissioner to further his career.
Eric McGinnis, 43, of Grand Prairie, Texas, convicted of possessing an unregistered rifle after police found him in 2017 with a partially 3-D printed AR15 rifle and a list of federal lawmakers’ addresses in his backpack, was sentenced to eight years in prison, federal prosecutors said.
Justin Koerner, a Newark, Del., musician who fell asleep in his car after spending the night playing music, first thought he was dreaming when someone jumped in and drove off but then the man bailed out when he saw Koerner, causing the car to crash into a bush.