NEWS OF THE DAY
From Across the Nation
1 Purge of voters: Georgia doesn’t have to put almost 100,000 voters back on its rolls, a federal judge ruled Friday. U.S. District Judge Steve C. Jones ruled that a voting rights advocacy group is improperly asking him to interpret state law. Jones also said the group hasn’t proved that people who have been removed had their constitutional rights violated. However, Jones also ordered Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to do more to warn people that they had been removed. At issue is a Georgia law that says that voters should be moved to inactive status if they have no contact with the state for a period of time.
2 Deadly fire: A fire tore through a Southern California apartment early Friday, killing two girls and their father, who got out of the apartment but went back inside to try to rescue his children, police said. A boy rescued from the blaze was seriously injured. Seven people were in the secondfloor unit in an apartment complex in the city of Hemet (Riverside County), police said. The girls who died were ages 4 and 12. The names of the victims were not immediately released. The cause of the fire is under investigation.
3 Student killed: A 14yearold boy suspected of fatally stabbing a Barnard College freshman was released from police custody Thursday, mere hours after New York City police said he had been located following a twoweek manhunt. Chief of Detectives Rodney Harrison did not say why the boy was released. The 14yearold is one of three youths police believe were involved in the stabbing of 18yearold Tessa Majors as she walked through Manhattan’s Morningside Park on Dec. 11. Police tracked him down after taking the unusual step last Friday of releasing photographs of him but not his name or any other identifying information. Of the two other suspects, only one has been charged.
4 Flight death: A young girl died Thursday night after she went into cardiac arrest on a flight out of Los Angeles International Airport, authorities said. The girl, believed to be about 10 years old, was on a Delta flight from LAX to Seattle when she had the medical problem. The plane returned to the airport. Paramedics “furiously worked to save her life. Sadly, all efforts were futile and the child was beyond medical help,” the Fire Department tweeted. The girl was pronounced dead at the scene. The official cause of the girl’s death will be determined by the Los Angeles County coroner’s office. There was no immediate indication of anything suspicious about the death, authorities said.
5 Family strife: A couple found fatally shot on Christmas Day in their home in Rio Rancho, N.M., with their two dead sons in what authorities called a murdersuicide was in the process of divorcing, police said in an affidavit. Police said the husband was a recent U.S. Army retiree who suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder. The bodies of Carlos and Marylyn Velasquez and their sons, 14yearold Adrian and 22yearold Roberto, were discovered by relatives. Roberto Velasquez was home on Christmas break from Stanford University.