ABERDEEN, Wash. (AP) — A hospital in Washington says a woman gave birth this month a baby weighing nearly 15 pounds.
Grays Harbor Community Hospital says the average newborn weighs about 7 ½ pounds at birth. Yessica Ortiz Delgado delivered a boy named Francisco Leon Ortiz who weighed 14 pounds and 11 ounces.
Delgado’s two other children were about 12 pounds each at birth but the mother didn’t expect her newest to be so large.
Both mother and son are doing well.
NEW YORK (AP) — McDonald’s is planning to simplify its menu and maybe even the number of ingredients it uses in its food as it fights to hold onto customers.
CEO Don Thompson sought to reassure investors Wednesday that changes will help strengthen the chain’s appeal.
The discussion in Oak Brook, Illinois, came after the company earlier this week reported yet another monthly decline in U.S. sales at established locations. In November, the company said the figure fell 4.6 percent.
Thompson has conceded McDonald’s Corp. has failed to keep up with changing tastes, with people increasingly moving toward foods they feel are fresh or wholesome.
Executives said eight menu items and five Extra Value Meals could disappear, but did not specify which.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Hallmark Cards Inc. has removed blue and silver gift wrap from circulation after a customer complained that she saw a swastika embedded in the design.
The Kansas City, Missouri-based company alerted retailers to the problem Monday after receiving a complaint Sunday night from a Walgreen’s customer in Northridge, California. The disputed wrap was featured in a Hanukkah display but Hallmark spokeswoman Julie Elliott says the gift wrap wasn’t intended for the Jewish holiday.
The gift wrap was distributed by Walgreen’s, which is no longer selling it.
Elliott said in a news release that Hallmark didn’t intend to offend anyone.
She said it was an oversight that no one at Hallmark noticed that intersecting lines in the paper could be seen as a swastika pattern.
DENVER (AP) — A group of faith-based religious organizations that object to covering birth control in their employee health plans told a panel of federal judges that they should be treated like religions and not be required to even file papers saying they don’t want to cover contraceptives.
But a lawyer for the federal government said Monday that would require officials to set up sort of a “detective agency” to determine whether employers aren’t meeting health insurance mandates because of religious beliefs.
The cases before the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver are the latest challenge the birth-control mandate in the federal health care law.
The religious groups aren’t required to cover contraception. But they say a government requirement that they affirm their religious objection makes them complicit in providing the coverage.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Protesters carrying signs bearing names of black Americans killed by police have marched outside the U.S. Capitol to demand a human rights investigation.
About two dozen protesters were met by a line of police who stopped them from advancing toward the building Monday morning. The protesters stood side by side to mourn black Americans killed by police. They said they were seeking an international investigation of U.S. police violence.
A number of protests have been staged around the country following recent grand jury decisions not to indict white police officers in New York and Ferguson, Missouri, over the deaths of unarmed blacks.
Zoe Spencer, a Virginia State University associate professor and protest organizer, said the names and characters of victims have been dragged through the mud “to justify their own murders.”
Shouts of “Hands up, don’t shoot” began as protesters marched away from the Capitol but quickly changed to chants of “Fists up, fight back.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration is issuing guidelines that ban federal law enforcement from profiling on the basis of religion, national origin and other characteristics.
The Justice Department says it hopes the new policy being announced Monday can be a model for local police departments.
The policy expands upon decade-old guidelines that banned routine racial profiling.
Besides religion and national origin, the new rules will ban profiling on the basis of gender, gender identity and sexual orientation.
But they also contain major exemptions, including exemptions for Homeland Security agents responsible for screening for security at airports and at the nation’s borders.
The guidelines have been contemplated for weeks. But they’re being released amid a national conversation about race and policing brought on the Ferguson, Missouri, shooting and other cases.
JACKSON, Wyo. (AP) — A proposal to double the cost to enter Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks in northwest Wyoming is drawing resistance.
The town of Jackson, fishing guides and wildlife safari companies are among those speaking out against a plan that calls for increasing entrance fees for the two neighboring parks.
Under the National Park Service plan, a 7-day pass good for both Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks would increase from $25 to $50. An annual $50 pass good for both parks would be discontinued in favor of each park having its own $60 annual pass.
The Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce and National Parks Conservation Association support the fee increases.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1” claimed the top spot at the box office for the third weekend in a row with an estimated $21.6 million.
The penultimate chapter in the massively successful franchise has now earned $257.7 million domestically. “Mockingjay – Part 1” is still about $78 million shy of where the previous installment, “Catching Fire,” was in its third weekend just last year.
Post-Thanksgiving is generally one of the year’s slowest box office weekends, with no new, wide releases.
In the specialty box office world, awards hopeful “Wild,” starring Reese Witherspoon, opened in 21 theaters Wednesday, earning an estimated $630,000 over the three-day.
The R-rated horror pic “The Pyramid” debuted in 589 theaters to a less impressive $1.35 million.
EASTON, Pa. (AP) — Prosecutors say necrophilia motivated a Pennsylvania man to fatally shoot his stepdaughter last month.
Gregory Graf was charged after police found 33-year-old Jessica Padgett’s body buried on his property in Northampton County.
District Attorney John Morganelli said Friday that Graf videotaped himself sexually abusing the body. Authorities say they found the video on Graf’s computer on Thursday.
Morganelli says the 53-year-old fencing company owner confessed to killing Padgett, a mother who worked at a day care. Padgett’s mother was in Florida at the time of the slaying.
Graf is being held without bail on a homicide charge. Morganelli says he will also be charged with abuse of a corpse.
Graf doesn’t have a lawyer.
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Gas has dropped below $2 a gallon at a handful of stations in Oklahoma and Texas this week, a level that a price-watching group says is the lowest in the nation and a bargain that’s proven irresistible to some long lines of drivers coming from miles away to fill up.
Patrick DeHaan with GasBuddy.com said early Friday that three Oklahoma City stations were the only ones in the United States with sub-$2 gas. A Texas station also later dropped its price below that level.
OnCue Express in Oklahoma City lowered its price to $1.99 earlier this week. Nearby stations followed suit.
The nationwide average for a gallon of gas is $2.71, nearly $1 below this year’s peak of $3.70 in June. Gas hasn’t been this cheap since October 2010.
