NEWS OF THE DAY
From Across the Nation
1 Refugees can stay:
Nearly 7,000 Syrians granted temporary permission to live and work in the U.S. while a civil war devoured their country will be allowed to stay for at least another 18 months, the Trump administration announced this week. During the past year, the administration has ended Temporary Protected Status, as the humanitarian program is known, for Salvadorans, Haitians and Nicaraguans, decisions that will collectively expose more than 326,000 people to deportation when they formally lose their status.
2 “Cocaine cowboy”:
After 26 years as a fugitive, a man investigators called the last of the “Miami Vice” era’s “cocaine cowboys” pleaded guilty Thursday to a drug charge, closing a notorious chapter in the city’s colorful criminal history. Gustavo Falcon, who was caught while biking through a quiet Florida suburb, pleaded guilty to a single cocaine distribution conspiracy charge. Falcon, 56, could get a prison sentence of no more than 14 years if U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno agrees to the plea deal. The maximum sentence is 20 years. Falcon vanished in 1991 when he was indicted along with his brother Augusto “Willie” Falcon, Salvador “Sal” Magluta and others. Prosecutors said the gang smuggled some 75 tons of cocaine into the U.S. and made some $2 billion in the 1980s.
3 Shooting accidental:
A shooting at a Los Angeles middle school classroom Thursday that left one boy in critical condition, injured four others and had panicked parents in tears was an accident, police said. The shooting was reported just before 9 a.m., and within minutes a 12-year-old girl was taken into custody without incident. Police interviewed her and by evening they announced that they would book her on a charge of negligent discharge of a firearm on school grounds.
4 Texas execution:
A former Dallas accountant condemned for fatally shooting his two young daughters while their mother listened helplessly on the phone was put to death Thursday night in Texas. John David Battaglia received lethal injection for the May 2001 killings of his 9-year-old daughter, Faith, and her 6year-old sister, Liberty. Battaglia and his wife had separated and the girls were killed at his Dallas apartment during a scheduled visit.
5 Topless case:
A lawyer for three women arrested for going topless on a New Hampshire beach has told the state’s highest court on Thursday that the municipal law they’re accused of violating is discriminatory and unconstitutional. Heidi Lilley, Kia Sinclair and Ginger Pierro are part of the Free the Nipple campaign. They were arrested in 2016 after taking off their tops at a beach in Laconia. The women, who appealed to the state Supreme Court after a lower court refused to dismiss the case, say there’s no state law forbidding female toplessness and call the case gender-based discrimination because men don’t have to cover their nipples.