The prosecutor's offices for two Washington counties - including the one that contains Seattle - announced today they will dismiss 175 misdemeanor marijuana possession charges, days after the state's voters legalized the drug.
The dropped cases all involve arrests of individuals age 21 and older for possessing one ounce or less of marijuana.
Where have all the heroes gone? That question popped into my mind Friday when I learned that Carroll Shelby had died at age 89.
To automotive fanatics like myself, Shelby was the hero of performance cars, starting in the mid-1960s when the Mustang, Camaro and Barracuda dominated our imaginations. Shelby took the Ford Mustang to a level never even considered with the Cobra and Cobra GT models.
While most of his fame came from his modifications of Mustangs, Shelby also shared some of his genius with Chrysler for a few years. While there he took an Omni and converted it from a commuter car to a fire-breathing monster that nearly went airborne when pushed to the limit.
Shelby was more than a gearhead and racer. He was a visionary who put an American-designed, American-built muscle car on a global platform. His appeal was more than mere mechanics and was clearly demonstrated a few years ago when Ford unveiled the latest version of the Mustang on the eve of the Los Angeles Auto show. FULL POST
A small plane with five people on board crashed in Lincolnshire, Illinois, on Monday night, authorities said.
Two people are believed dead, said Elizabeth Isham Corey of the Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman. The others were hospitalized, she said.
The Piper Navajo plane left Jessup, Georgia, and was five miles away from Chicago Executive Air Park when the pilot reported fuel problems, Corey said.
It crashed in the Riverwood neighborhood in Lincolnshire.
FULL STORYAs many as eight people were wounded in a shooting at a low-rider car show outside a Kent, Washington, strip mall late Saturday afternoon, according to a King County fire and rescue dispatcher.
"We have a ton of medical staff on the scene and are transporting people to local hospitals," the dispatcher said.
A witness who works at a business near the shooting site told CNN affiliate KOMO that she heard about 10 shots.
"I saw a lot of people running everywhere, running across the street, then the cops showed up," the witness, Trish Harvey, said.
The site, near Pacific Highway, is a few miles south of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.
Rescue teams responded to a tour bus crash on an interstate highway in upstate New York Sunday afternoon, a fire official said.
Noyes Memorial Hospital in Dansville, New York, had received at least eight patients from the crash by Sunday night, said Kelly Sylvester of the hospital's administration unit.
FULL STORYThe bodies of three of four children who were swept away in a creek swollen by storm waters were recovered early Friday morning, authorities in Kentucky said.
The children were traveling with their family in a horse-drawn carriage on a flooded street in Graves County when the carriage flipped over Thursday evening, said Jerry Beasley, a Kentucky State Police spokesman.
The Trans Alaska pipeline is expected to return to full service this week after a leak near Prudhoe Bay brought the flow of oil to a stop this month, a company spokeswoman said.
"We are in the final stages of the bypass line," said Alyeska Pipeline Service Company spokeswoman Megan Egan.
The 800-mile line was shut down January 8 when a leak was found during an inspection of a pump house. The pipeline was then reopened from January 11-15 to flush remaining oil from the line.
When the pumping resumes, the flow will start at about 500,000 barrels of oil a day - about three-quarters of normal flow - and then move to its full capacity, Egan said.
The pipeline's daily average output is about 642,000 barrels, according to the company website.
A sprinkler system in a California mall was turned off for more than an hour during a fire that devastated a California mall, a new report states.
The huge blaze occurred at the Westfield Galleria in Roseville, California, on October 21.
Roseville police and fire officials released a report Friday about the incident, which began when a man walked into a video game store and announced he had a weapon and was carrying a backpack that smelled of kerosene. The man was later identified as 23-year-old Alexander Piggee.
Roseville police and fire departments rushed to the scene, but both stalled in entering the mall because of the possibility that the suspect may have had a bomb, the report said.
The report also said a maintenance worker at the mall shut off the sprinkler system in the section of the mall where the fire started for 71 minutes.
FULL STORYSecurity officials found ammunition in the carry-on luggage of boxing promoter Don King as he headed out of Cleveland, Ohio, after attending his wife's funeral, an airport spokeswoman said Monday.
The incident took place at Cleveland's Hopkins International Airport Sunday night, said spokeswoman Jackie Mayo.
"He was stopped at a security checkpoint and ammunition was found in his carry-on luggage," she said.
FULL STORYU.S. authorities say they have discovered another extensive drug tunnel that stretches from a home in Tijuana, Mexico, to San Diego, California.
The half-mile tunnel, discovered Thursday morning in a warehouse in the Otay Mesa area of San Diego, is close to a similar one federal agents found earlier this month, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency said.
In that case, authorities seized about 30 tons of marijuana in what federal agents say is one of the largest marijuana seizures in U.S. history.
Agents have made several arrests in connection with Thursday's tunnel discovery, said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for the customs agency.
Federal agents with the San Diego Tunnel Task Force also seized an undetermined amount of marijuana from a tractor-trailer in the area and have found more of the drug in the tunnel, Kice said.
Authorities said they will release more details about the incident at a news conference Friday afternoon.
FedEx could learn Friday what happened to a package containing radioactive materials that went missing a day before.
The company said it is searching in the Tennessee area and that the item is safe as long as nobody tampers with the protective packaging around it.
The item is a cylinder containing rods used for hospital machinery that were being sent to a person in Knoxville, Tennessee, said Sandra Munoz, a company spokeswoman.
"The rods are used for quality control calibration," Munoz said. "We have lots of experience in handling this kind of shipment."
Munoz said the company may learn more Friday morning when two employees who handled the shipment return to work.
Authorities arrested a man at Denver International Airport after he said there was a bomb in his luggage, a United Airlines spokesman said.
Luxury automaker Mercedes-Benz is recalling about 85,000 vehicles from certain 2010 and 2011 models due to potential steering problems.
Toyota has reached a settlement with two families over product liability claims, a spokesman for the automaker said Friday night.
A Mormon bishop was shot and killed in Visalia, California, on Sunday, police said.
Emergency officials were attempting Tuesday to assess the damage caused by an apparent tornado that touched down in southern Wisconsin, flattening the local fire chief's house as he tried to help others.
A brush fire in Corrales, New Mexico, forced a few hundred people to evacuate their homes late Sunday night, police said.
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