80 passengers quarantined after woman falls ill on flight

Denver Eighty passengers on a Frontier Airlines plane coming from Philadelphia were quarantined Tuesday for more than 90 minutes at Denver International Airport after a woman became ill on the flight.

An in-flight medical consulting firm used by the airline was unable to determine the woman’s ailment and a medical team that met the plane on the tarmac kept passengers on Flight 449 as a precaution, airline spokesman Joe Hodas said.

Passengers were allowed off the Airbus A319 at 9:55 p.m. after it was determined the woman was not contagious.

Hodas said passengers told him the woman had developed an unknown rash.

Woman, 70, accused of killing elderly neighbor with hammer

Bath, Pa. A 70-year-old woman was charged with criminal homicide Tuesday, accused of bludgeoning her 84-year-old neighbor to death with a hammer.

Police declined to say if they had ascertained a motive.

Killed was Marguerite “Tutti” Eyer; her alleged assailant, Kathy MacClellan, was being held without bail in the Northampton County Prison.

Eyer’s personal medical alert device was activated Monday evening, sending police to her home. They asked the gravely wounded Eyer who had struck her. She replied: “Kathy Mc … she did it with a hammer,” according to court records.

Eyer died at a hospital.

Appeals court sued for seal, mosaic containing Ten Commandments

San Francisco The federal appeals court that ruled the Pledge of Allegiance was an unconstitutional endorsement of religion is being sued for allegedly displaying the Ten Commandments on its seal and courthouses.

The case was brought by an attorney who was admitted to practice before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in June. In his lawsuit against the San Francisco-based court, Ryan Donlon said the certificate admitting him contains the court’s seal which unlawfully contains what he believes is a tablet object representing the Ten Commandments.

Cathy Catterson, the court’s clerk, said the seal highlights a woman, known as “the Majesty of the Law” who is reading a large book. At her feet is a tablet with 10 unreadable lines on it – what Donlon believes is the Ten Commandments.

Catterson said the tablet has “the same shape” of the Ten Commandments but “you can’t read the text of it.”

She said the drawing became the court’s seal decades ago, and is a depiction of a tile mosaic in one of the century-old courthouse’s ornate courtrooms.

In 2002, the appeals court sided with an atheist father who challenged the words “under God” in the pledge, ruling that the pledge that public school children recite each day was an unconstitutional endorsement of religion. The U.S. Supreme Court later dismissed the case.

Justice briefly detained at airport for hiding pocketknife in carry-on

Harrisburg, Pa. A Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice was briefly detained after airport screeners found a pocketknife hidden in his carry-on bag. Earlier, the screeners had told him the knife could not be taken onto the plane, officials said.

Justice Thomas G. Saylor Jr., 58, and his wife were headed to Philadelphia on Friday when screeners at Harrisburg International Airport found a small blue Swiss Army-style pocketknife attached to a key chain.

“The justice was presented with a number of alternatives, and concealing the item in his carry-on bag was not one of them,” said Ann Davis, a Transportation Security Administration spokeswoman.

When Saylor returned for a second screening, an X-ray machine detected the knife inside his carry-on, police said.

Saylor said the knife was a gift from a friend and he did not want to lose it, police said. The knife was seized and he was detained for about an hour. He left the airport without boarding his flight.

American Airlines pilot reports laser beam as plane nears airport

Grapevine, Texas The captain of an American Airlines jet reported a laser beam penetrated the cockpit as the plane prepared to land at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

The pilot was examined after Sunday night’s incident and doctors found no permanent damage to his eyes. His first officer was flying the plane, which landed safely.

The bright lasers – usually green – can temporarily blind pilots.

The jet was on approach to DFW on a flight from San Antonio when the pilot noted the laser beam for a second or two, Gregg Overman, a member of the Allied Pilots Association, told television station KXAS on Tuesday.

An American Airlines spokesman said the airline is working with the Federal Aviation Administration and air traffic control to investigate.

Overman said the association would urge prosecution if the laser beam incident was intentional.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta announced in January that the government was requiring pilots to immediately report lasers being beamed at airplanes – a response to a rash of such incidents.

The new Federal Aviation Administration guidelines are meant to speed word of such incidents to air traffic controllers, who would then repeatedly broadcast warnings and quickly notify law officers.

Newspaper: Alcohol offenses increase at Air Force Academy

Air Force Academy, Colo. Alcohol offenses at the Air Force Academy jumped 57 percent last semester, largely because of an incident in which 15 underage cadets were drinking at a retreat, a newspaper reported Tuesday.

The Gazette of Colorado Springs, citing academy officials, said there were 74 alcohol offenses between June and December, compared with 47 in the same period in 2003.

“While the number of incidents is down, there is a trend in having more people involved in each incident,” said academy spokesman Johnny Whitaker.

Alcohol is a crucial issue at the school near Colorado Springs: Forty percent of sexual assaults in which two cadets were involved in the past 10 years also involved drinking, according to a 2003 Air Force investigation.

The school has overhauled its alcohol policy as part of reforms put in place after scores of female cadets complained their sexual assault cases were mishandled.

Whitaker blamed last semester’s increase on an October incident in which 21 cadets were involved in a party at an academy-approved, but unsupervised retreat. The incident involved 15 underage cadets.

Roosters used for cockfighting seized from basement of N.Y. home

New York Twenty-five roosters were seized from the basement of a home where they were being kept for cockfighting, animal protection authorities said Tuesday.

The birds were discovered after a police officer saw a man carrying one of them outside. The officer questioned the man, who then led him to the basement, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said.

Fifteen of the birds carried scars typical of cockfighting, ASPCA spokesman Joe Pentangelo said. Those birds, which were missing their combs and had shaved chests and sharpened spurs, were taken to an ASPCA facility to be euthanized. The others were taken to an animal care center.

The ASPCA said it also found syringes, vitamins and antibiotics, which often are used to treat the cocks after they have been injured in fights.

Cockfighting is illegal but not rare in New York, Pentangelo said. The ASPCA was investigating, but no arrests had been made.