SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — A former nuclear engineer has been convicted of murder for poisoning his wife with nicotine in Southern California in 1994.

City News Service reported Tuesday that jurors in Orange County Superior Court found 57-year-old Paul Curry guilty of first-degree murder.

Prosecutors say Curry killed his 50-year-old wife, Linda, to collect more than half a million dollars in life insurance and benefits after she died. Prosecutor Ebrahim Baytieh said during the trial that Curry sedated his wife before injecting her with nicotine to kill her.

Curry’s lawyer, Lisa Kopelman, has said Curry’s wife suffered from a series of health issues.

Curry was arrested in 2010 in Salina, Kansas, where he had rebuilt his life and worked as a building official.

ELMIRA, N.Y. (AP) — A descendant of a Confederate soldier who died in a Civil War prison camp in New York says the wrong name is on his gravestone, and the Department of Veterans Affairs won’t fix it.

Tom Fagart of Concord, North Carolina, said his great-great-grandfather Pvt. Franklin Cauble was buried with the last name Cooper engraved on his gravestone at Woodlawn National Cemetery.

Fagart says Cauble and a soldier named Cooper were friends who enlisted on the same day, served in the same regiment and were captured on the same day in Petersburg, Virginia.

Fagart says both men were sent to Elmira’s prison camp, where Cauble died in 1864. Cooper was released after the war ended in 1865.

The VA says it doesn’t correct historic gravestones.

ALBEMARLE, N.C. (AP) — Police say a student was shot after an argument at a central North Carolina high school just before school began.

Albemarle Police Chief William Halliburton said at a news conference the wounded student was shot in the lower extremities around 7:40 a.m. Tuesday at Albemarle High School. His condition wasn’t released.

Halliburton says the student who fired the shots put down his gun and waited for police. The names and grades of the students haven’t been released.

The chief says the shooting happened in a campus courtyard minutes before classes started. Investigators don’t know what the argument was about. Police don’t think any other students were involved but they are still interviewing witnesses.

Albemarle is in Stanley County, about 35 miles east of Charlotte.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Secret Service Director Julia Pierson vows that a security breach like the Sept. 19 incident in which a man scaled the White House fence and made his way well into the executive mansion will never happen again.

Pierson told the House Oversight and Government Operations Committee on Tuesday that the breach was unacceptable.

Omar J. Gonzalez, an Army veteran who was armed with a knife, jumped the fence and made it much further into the White House than officials previously disclosed, according to lawmakers.

Pierson said she will make sure such a thing “never happens again.”

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A central Pennsylvania man and woman have been charged with homicide in the death of their 9-year-old son, whose decomposing body was found in their Harrisburg home last summer.

Dauphin County District Attorney Ed Marsico said Monday that Jarrod Tutko Jr. was in what he called “horrible condition” at the time of his death in July.

An autopsy concluded that the child, who had a genetic disorder with autism-like symptoms, weighed less than 17 pounds and died of malnutrition and neglect.

Thirty-nine-year-old Kimberly Tutko was arrested Monday and charged with criminal homicide and child endangerment.

Thirty-eight-year-old Jarrod Tutko Sr., charged earlier with child endangerment and abuse of a corpse, is now also charged with homicide.

Authorities allege that they failed to provide “even the most basic needs” of the child.

SCOTT, Ark. (AP) — Authorities say the body of an Arkansas real estate agent who disappeared Thursday has been found in a shallow grave at a concrete company.

Pulaski County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Carl Minden says Beverly Carter’s body was found early Tuesday in a rural area about 25 miles northeast of Little Rock.

Arron Michael Lewis is being held in the Pulaski County jail on $1 million bail on suspicion of capital murder, robbery and kidnapping in connection with Carter’s death. Formal charges are pending.

Police say Lewis admitted to kidnapping Carter.

Lewis told reporters Tuesday as he was being taken from the jail to the sheriff’s office that he didn’t kill Carter, and described her as “a woman that worked alone — a rich broker.”

DETROIT (AP) — At least 23 people have died and 16 people have been seriously injured in crashes involving General Motors cars with defective ignition switches.

Attorney Kenneth Feinberg, who was hired by GM to compensate victims, updated the totals in an Internet posting Monday.

Feinberg says he has received 153 death claims since August. Of those, 23 have been deemed eligible for compensation payments, up from 21 last week.

Sixteen of the 714 injury claimants have also received compensation.

GM has acknowledged that it knew about faulty ignition switches in Chevrolet Cobalts and other small cars for more than a decade. The switches can slip out of the “on” position, which causes the cars to stall and turns off the air bags.

Claims are being accepted through Dec. 31.

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Gambling officials say the industry paid out a jackpot-worthy $38 billion in federal, state and local taxes in 2013.

It’s the first time the American Gaming Association has added tribal casinos and casino game makers into the mix for its annual study of the industry’s impact in the U.S. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the report’s tax revenue figures before its release Tuesday.

Of that total tax revenue, $10 billion came directly from gambling. Worker income and Social Security taxes as well as casino property taxes, and more, accounted for the rest.

Gaming association president Geoff Freeman is expected to reveal gambling’s total economic impact at a Tuesday press conference. The announcement comes as the association’s annual G2E conference and trade show kicks off at the Sands Expo and Convention Center off the Las Vegas Strip.

PROVO, Utah (AP) — A group of Brigham Young University students is protesting the Mormon church-owned school’s ban on something its namesake once sported: a beard.

About 50 students biked, skateboarded or rollerbladed their way from the Provo City Library to campus during the “Bike for Beards” protest on Friday night.

Protest organizer Shane Pittson says he loves being a Brigham Young student but finds the ban on facial hair other than mustaches outdated.

The 23-year-old international studies major and other students have launched a petition drive to get the school to lift the ban.

University spokeswoman Carri Jenkins says students agree to its grooming standards before their first day of class and the beard ban was set in place by students.

Many early Mormon church leaders, including Brigham Young, grew beards as they aged.

WENATCHEE, Wash. (AP) — A 14-year-old Washington state high school student accused of sexually assaulting three other students on a football team bus trip pleaded not guilty to rape Thursday.

Police say the boy penetrated three other boys with his finger Sept. 6 on the bus ride back from a Wenatchee High School freshman football game in Spokane. The boy’s parents and their attorney, Brandon Redal, say the incident was horseplay and not criminal.

A trial would be heard by a Chelan County Superior Court judge. If convicted of second-degree rape, the teen could face a year or more in detention.

The boy has been held in juvenile detention since his Sept. 10 arrest with bail set at $50,000.