Gunman takes two women hostage
An armed man took two women hostage inside their apartment building early Thursday, sparking a police standoff that dragged into the night.
Police do not know what precipitated the standoff but said they have been negotiating by phone with the man, who they believe to be in his 20s or 30s, said police spokeswoman Monique Bond.
Neighbors in this South Shore neighborhood and relatives of the hostages, who have not been identified, stood anxiously outside a police cordon of yellow tape.
The standoff began about 2:30 a.m. after a 911 call about gunshots in the building.
No injuries have been reported, Bond said. She described the female hostages as young adults but did not know their ages or relationship to the gunman.
STRAWBERRY RESERVOIR, Utah
Sonar search finds long-missing bodies
For more than a decade, the remains of several boaters have been hidden in the depths of this 26-square-mile lake high in the Uinta National Forest.
Then, in a span of just two weeks, Strawberry Reservoir gave up six of its dead during a search for a couple whose boat capsized in mid-November.
What led to the discoveries was sonar, which transmits high-frequency waves through water and registers vibrations that bounce off an object.
When Steven Roundy, 28, and his wife, Catheryn, 23, disappeared from their overturned aluminum fishing boat Nov. 8, authorities searched for the bodies with recently acquired sonar equipment.
Searchers thought they had located one of the Roundys on Nov. 11. But video from the lake bottom indicated otherwise. It was the body of Drake McMillan, a 46-year-old Salt Lake City man who disappeared while swimming Aug. 31, 2001.
A few days later, the sonar picked up two more bodies, believed to be two of three men missing since a 1995 fishing trip.
Searchers found the Roundy bodies on Nov. 17, and on Monday they turned up a body that could be that of the third member of the 1995 fishing party.
NEW YORK
Wind, rain don’t stop Macy’s parade
It was hard to be thankful for the dreary weather, but tourists and New Yorkers alike had something to celebrate Thursday: The famed balloons of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade were allowed to fly despite cold rain and gusty winds.
The New York Police Department permitted the iconic balloons to travel down Broadway – but at a lower height than usual to keep them out of the winds.
“I can almost reach out and touch Big Bird,” said 6-year-old Karen Rhames, from the upstate New York town of Purchase, as she stood on her mother’s shoulders in Times Square and extended her arm.
Some of the giant balloons’ limbs dangled awfully close to the rain-slicked streets – Snoopy, in particular, was dragging a leg – but they still wowed the crowd that braved the elements.