LITTLE ROCK — QUOTE OF THE DAY
“She must have had a direct line to God, because shortly after she left, they heard the news.”
Melissa Nighton, the city clerk in Midland City, Ala., who said she saw a woman praying in the town center just before she heard that officers rescued a boy who had been held hostage since last week Article, 2A
Stamp marks Rosa Parks’ 100th birthday
DEARBORN, Mich. - Hundreds of people gathered Monday to celebrate the late Rosa Parks on what would have been her 100th birthday by unveiling a postage stamp in her honor.
The ceremony took place at The Henry Ford Museum, just steps from the Alabama bus on which she stared down segregation nearly 60 years ago. The museum purchased the bus in 2001.
Parks, who died in 2005, became one of the enduring figures of the Civil-Rights movement when she refused to cede her seat in the colored section of the Montgomery, Ala., bus to a white man after the whites-only section filled up. Her defiance and the ensuing black boycott of the city bus system helped the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. rise to national prominence.
Shooting suspect has hospital history
FORT WORTH - The Iraq war veteran charged with killing a former Navy SEAL sniper and his friend on a Texas shooting range had been taken to a mental hospital twice in the past five months and told authorities he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, police records show.
Eddie Ray Routh, 25, also told his sister and brother-in law after the shootings that he “traded his soul for a new truck,” according to an Erath County arrest warrant affidavit obtained by WFAA-TV. Police said Routh was driving the truck of victim and ex-Navy SEAL Chris Kyle at the time of his arrest.
Routh is charged with one count of capital murder and two counts of murder in the shooting deaths of Kyle, author of the best-selling book American Sniper, and his friend Chad Littlefield at a shooting range Saturday in Glen Rose.
He is on suicide watch in the Erath County jail, where he’s being held in lieu of $3 million bond, Sheriff Tommy Bryant said.
Routh, a member of the Marine Corps Reserve, had to be shocked with a stun gun and restrained in his jail cell overnight after becoming aggressive, Bryant said Monday.
Officers in May responded to a burglary reported by Routh’s mother that included nine pill bottles, according to police records in Lancaster, where Routh lives. Police said Routh was involved but no other details were available.
Ohio governor for expanding Medicaid
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Ohio’s Republican governor announced Monday he will push for expanding Medicaid under the federal health-care law.
The state anticipates more than 365,000 Ohioans will be eligible for coverage beginning in 2014 by expanding Medicaid, the health program for the poor that already provides care for one of every five residents in the state.
Gov. John Kasich, who last summer called the federal health overhaul a “massive new tax on the middle class,” proposed the Medicaid expansion in his two-year budget plan released Monday. He now must persuade Republican state lawmakers to back the plan despite the fact that many dislike the law’s mandated coverage and campaigned against it just a few months ago.
Supersonic skydiver’s speed tops estimate
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Supersonic skydiver Felix Baumgartner was faster than he or anyone else thought during his record-setting jump last October from 24 miles up.
The Austrian parachutist reached 843.6 mph, according to official numbers released Monday. That’s equivalent to Mach 1.25, or 1.25 times the speed of sound.
His top speed initially was estimated at 10 mph slower at 834 mph, or Mach 1.24.
Either way, he became the first human to break the sound barrier with only his body. He wore a pressurized suit and hopped from a capsule hoisted by a giant helium balloon over New Mexico.
Baumgartner was supersonic for a half-minute - “quite remarkable,” according to Brian Utley, the record-keeping official who was present for the Oct. 14 feat.
The leap was from an altitude of 127,852 feet. That’s 248 feet lower than original estimates, but still stratospheric.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 02/05/2013