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Conn. neighbor: Wyoming killer was upset with dad
VERNON, Conn. (AP) — A man who police say killed his father, a woman and himself in Wyoming on Friday told a neighbor in Connecticut weeks before the killings that he believed his father gave him Asperger’s syndrome and said his dad should be “castrated” to prevent him from having more children. Neighbor Matt DiPinto of Vernon, Conn., told local reporters that Christopher Krumm made the comments while giving him a ride home a few weeks ago. “He’s like, ‘So my dad gave me Asperger’s ... and my dad should have never had any kids. He should have never had me and passed it on to me, and the government shouldn’t have let him have kids,’” DiPinto told Fox affiliate WTIC-TV. “It was just out of nowhere ... but he seemed pretty livid about it.” Police in Casper, Wyo., say Krumm shot an arrow into the head of his father, James Krumm, with a high-powered bow Friday while
Conn. to increase class time in some schools
WASHINGTON (AP) — Open your notebooks and sharpen your pencils. School for thousands of public school students is about to get quite a bit longer. Five states were to announce Monday that they will add at least 300 hours of learning time to the calendar in some schools starting in 2013. Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York and Tennessee will take part in the initiative, which is intended to boost student achievement and make U.S. schools more competitive on a global level. The three-year pilot program will affect almost 20,000 students in 40 schools, with long-term hopes of expanding the program to include additional schools — especially those that serve low-income communities. Schools, working in concert with districts, parents and teachers, will decide whether to make the school day longer, add more days to the school year or both.
Capitol staffers find route to elected office
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Before Rep. Bryan Hurlburt, a Democrat from Tolland, was elected to the state House in 2006, he worked as an aide to House Speaker James Amann. The job led to what he calls his “first bill,” an effort to promote biofuel, a type of diesel fuel that is made from recycled vegetable oil and animal fat. Here’s how Hurlburt tells the story: He was a representative-elect in December 2006, and was eating lunch in Amann’s office when somebody showed up an hour early for a meeting. It was Richard Parnas, a biofuel advocate and director of the Biofuel Consortium at the University of Connecticut. Parnas and Hurlburt hit it off. And Amann liked Parnas’ pitch for subsidies for people to use biofuels. The measure became law in 2007. Hurlburt was an early backer of the proposal who helped shepherd it through the legislature.
NC driver dead, 2 injured in Fairfield crash
FAIRFIELD, Conn. (AP) — State police say a driver has lost control of his car, rolled over and catapulted off a Connecticut highway before crashing into a truck at a Fairfield rest stop, killing a North Carolina driver who was sleeping in the tractor-trailer. The Hartford Courant (http://cour.at/TBkg5q) reports that 52-year-old Mitchell Blankenship of Boomer, N.C., suffered fatal injuries and was trapped in the truck Saturday morning. The two people in the car that crashed into his tractor-trailer, Kevin Rojas of Stamford and Esther Gonzales of Bronx, N.Y., also were trapped in their vehicle. Firefighters used hydraulic rescue tools to pull the three from their vehicles. Blankenship was pronounced dead at St. Vincent’s Hospital.
Bridgeport mayor backs proposed marijuana farm
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Some Venezuelan pensioners are telling U.S. prosecutors they have not been able to get back money put at risk by a massive Connecticut-based fraud scheme, which has exposed investors to losses totaling potentially hundreds of millions of dollars. The biggest investment client of Venezuelan-American financier Francisco Illarramendi was a pension fund for state oil workers in the South American country. In a statement sent to federal prosecutors in October, a number of people wrote that they have not been compensated for their losses by their former employer or the Venezuelan government, according to a court filing. Illarramendi, who ran unregistered hedge funds out of offices in Stamford, Conn., pleaded guilty last year to several counts of fraud and conspiracy to obstruct justice in a scheme to conceal huge losses. He is under house arrest in New Canaan while awaiting sentencing in January.
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News
Monday December 3, 2012
U.S.-Afghan base attacked in eastern Afghanistan
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Taliban suicide bombers attacked a joint U.S.-Afghan air base in eastern Afghanistan early Sunday, detonating explosives at the gate and sparking a gunbattle that lasted at least two hours with American helicopters firing down on the militants. The attackers and at least five Afghans were killed, officials said. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the assault. It was the largest attack on the Jalalabad air base since February, when a suicide car bombing at the gate triggered an explosion that killed nine Afghans, six of them civilians. In Sunday’s attack, two vehicles packed with explosives barreled toward the main gate of the base around 6 a.m. local time. The first vehicle, a fourwheel-drive car, blew up at the gate, said Hazrat Hussain Mashreqiwal, a spokesman for the provincial police chief. Guards started shooting at the second vehicle before it too exploded, he added. It was unclear whether the explosives were detonated by the attackers themselves or by shooting from the guards. Two Afghan students from a private medical school were caught up in the attack and killed, as were three other Afghans working at the base, Mashreqiwal said. He did not know whether the base workers were private guards, members of the security forces or civilian
Men’s soccer season comes to an end from BLUEJAYS, page 1
AP
Afghan security forces block the road where Taliban suicide bombers attacked a joint U.S.Afghan air base in Jalalabad, east of Kabul, Afghanistan on Sunday, Dec. 2.
employees. Nine attackers took part in the assault in total, he said, three of whom were killed in the suicide blasts and another six gunmen who died in the ensuing fighting that lasted a few hours. Maj. Martyn Crighton, a spokesman for the international military force in Afghanistan, said that helicopters “were deployed and used.” The NATO military coalition described the attack as a failure. “We can confirm insurgents, including multiple suicide bombers, attacked Jalalabad Airfield this morning. None of the attackers succeeded in breaching the perimeter,” Lt.
Col. Hagen Messer, a spokesman for the international military coalition, said in an email. He said that the fighting had ended by midmorning and that reports showed one member of the Afghan security forces was killed. Several foreign troops were wounded, but Messer did not give any numbers or details. “The final assessment of what happened this morning is not yet complete, but initial reports indicate there were three suicide bombers,” Messer said. In the south, meanwhile, a NATO service member was killed in an insurgent attack, the international coalition said in a statement. It did not provide further details.
Strategy key to pot legalization
SEATTLE (AP) — In the late1980s heyday of the anti-drug “Just Say No” campaign, a man calling himself “Jerry” appeared on a Seattle talk radio show to criticize U.S. marijuana laws. An esteemed businessman, he hid his identity because he didn’t want to offend customers who — like so many in those days — viewed marijuana as a villain in the ever-raging “war on drugs.” Now, a quarter century later, “Jerry” is one of the main forces behind Washington state’s successful initiative to legalize pot for adults over 21. And he no longer fears putting his name to the cause: He’s Rick Steves, the travel guru known for his popular guidebooks. “It’s amazing where we’ve come,” says Steves of the legalization measures Washington state and Colorado voters approved last month. “It’s almost counterculture to oppose us.” A once-unfathomable notion, the lawful possession and private use of pot, becomes an American reality this week when this state’s law goes into effect. Thursday is “Legalization Day” here, with a tote-your-own-ounce celebration scheduled beneath Seattle’s Space Needle — a nod to the measure allowing adults to possess up to an ounce (28 grams) of pot. Colorado’s law is set to take effect by Jan. 5. How did people change their opinions from “say no” to “yes” in not one but two states? The answer goes beyond society’s evolving views, and growing acceptance, of marijuana as
AP
In this Monday, Nov. 26, 2012 photo, travel guide author and marijuana legalization supporter Rick Steves holds a campaign sign in his office in Edmonds, Wash next to a door covered with marijuana leaf-shaped notes from his staff congratulating him on the passage of a referendum legalizing marijuana in the state.
a drug of choice. In Washington state — and, advocates hope, coming soon to other states — there was a wellfunded and cleverly orchestrated campaign that took advantage of deep-pocketed backers, a tweaked pro-pot message and improbable big-name supporters. Good timing and a growing national weariness over failed drug laws didn’t hurt, either. “Maybe ... the dominoes fell the way they did because they were waiting for somebody to push them in that direction,” says Alison Holcomb, the campaign manager for Washington state’s measure. Washington state and Colorado, both culturally and politically, offered fertile ground for legalization advocates — Washington for its lib-
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eral politics, Colorado for its libertarian streak, and both for their Western independence. Both also have a history with marijuana law reform. More than a decade ago, they were among the first states to approve medical marijuana. Still, when it came to full legalization, activists hit a wall. Colorado’s voters rejected a measure to legalize up to an ounce of marijuana in 2006. In Washington state, organizers in 2010 couldn’t make the ballot with a measure that would have removed criminal penalties for marijuana. Since the 1970 founding of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, reform efforts had centered on the unfairness of marijuana laws to the recreational user — hardly a sympathetic character, Holcomb notes.
forward as his legs laid in the goal and he managed to keep the ball inches outside the goal line. Less than a minute later, Alvarez’s shot was denied thanks to an incredible diving save made by Gal but UConn was awarded a corner kick. Wasserman sent in a useful ball to freshman Nick Zuniga. Zuniga fired a shot that was blocked by a Creighton defender then another amazing save by Gal denied George Fochive his first goal of the season. With less than two minutes remaining and both coaches preparing for overtime, Gomez capitalized on a broken play in the UConn end. Gomez crossed to Blandon who darted towards the Connecticut net and scored the game-winning goal, sending Creighton to the College Cup for the second consecutive season.
Daniel.Maher@UConn.edu
JK Rowling ‘dismayed’ by response to press report
LONDON (AP) — Victims of press intrusion including writer J.K. Rowling on Friday urged Britain’s political leaders to fully implement a judge’s recommendations on regulating the country’s often unruly newspapers. Rowling, who was one of dozens of people who gave evidence about press intrusion last year during a media ethics inquiry, said that she was “alarmed and dismayed” by Prime Minister David Cameron’s lukewarm response to Lord Justice Brian Leveson’s report, published Thursday to conclude the probe. Leveson’s 2,000-page report concluded that Britain’s press sometimes “wreaked havoc with the lives of innocent people,” and recommended the print media be regulated by a new body enshrined in law. Cameron said he welcomed the proposal, but was reluctant to set down new laws to back a press regulator because such a move could threaten freedom of the press. Rowling wrote on the website of the Hacked Off group, which campaigns for victims of press intrusion, that she feared nothing will change to hold the press to account. “Having taken David Cameron’s assurances in good faith at the outset of the inquiry he set up, I am merely one among many who feel duped and angry in its wake,” she wrote. The 47-year-old writer had told of how journalists had driven her out of her home and targeted her 5-year-old daughter at school during the inquiry, triggered by a scandal over tabloid phone hacking that expanded to engulf senior figures in politics, the police and Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. Hacked Off on Friday launched an online petition urging Cameron and other politicians to implement Leveson’s recommendations in full.
Corrections and clarifications
Monday, December 3, 2012 Copy Editors: Katherine Tibedo, Olivia Balsinger, Tyler McCarthy, Joe O’Leary News Designer: Kim Wilson Focus Designer: Loumarie Rodriguez Sports Designer: Digital Production: Jon Kulakofsky
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