(AP)-Authorities in Tennessee have found the body of a man who was thrown from an experimental aircraft while an instructor was teaching him to fly.

Bradley County Interim Fire Chief Troy Spence says search crews located the deceased student pilot at about 11:45 a.m. Saturday. He declined to release the man’s name.

Collegedale Municipal Airport employee Lowell Sterchi told the Chattanooga Times Free Press that the man was being trained by an instructor in his Zodiac 601 aircraft on Friday when the canopy came off. The instructor also was not identified.

The man’s seat belt was not fastened and he was thrown out of the plane.

Sterchi said the instructor landed the plane and was not physically hurt. He says the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board have been notified.

A Lincoln woman who ordered her 11-year-old son to steal from a local store has been sentenced to jail.

The incident occurred last October, when employees at SuperSaver in Lincoln watched a young boy fill a cart with groceries and push it out the front door, without paying.

Police say the boy filled his cart with nearly $200 worth of Hot Pockets, shredded cheese, bread, dog treats, soda and toilet paper.

What’s was even more surprising, was the fact that the boy told police his mother had directed him to do it.

According to a police report, store security confronted the boy in the parking lot on October 18.  The boy told security that his mother, Batrina Perez,  had given him a shopping list, then told him to go into the store and steal everything on the list.

The boy stated that his mother was supposed to wait for him in front of a nearby store.

When police contacted Perez the next day, she told them that the boy was lying.  However, a security camera had captured her driving off in her SUV when she saw security officer confront the boy.

She pleaded no contest to negligent child abuse, and on Friday, Lancaster County Judge Gale Pokorny, sentenced her to six months in jail.

The boy was not charged with the crime.

(AP) — Authorities in a Charlotte suburb say a man suspected of shooting two neighbors has committed suicide after a six-hour police standoff.

The Charlotte Observer is reporting that Cabarrus County sheriff’s deputies said late Friday that the suspected shooter shot himself as deputies and SWAT team members surrounded the house where he was hiding.

Late Friday afternoon, deputies responded to a report of a man shooting a gun at a house. They said the suspect shot two neighbors in what was described as a neighborhood feud. Neighbors told the newspaper that the two victims were adult males.

WBTV-TV reports that a woman and her young children were able to escape the home where the initial shootings occurred.

Sheriff Brad Riley couldn’t immediately be reached for comment by the Associated Press.

(AP) — A northeast Washington judge has found two boys, ages 10 and 11, competent to stand trial in juvenile court on a murder conspiracy charge.

Stevens County Prosecutor Tim Rasmussen says the fifth-graders had a handwritten plan listing seven steps leading up to the planned killing of a female classmate. That list was submitted as evidence at their mental capacity hearing Friday.

A county judge ruled that the boys understood the nature and consequences of their actions. They pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to commit murder, witness tampering and juvenile possession of a firearm.

The boys were arrested Feb. 7 at Fort Colville Elementary School after a fourth-grader saw one playing with a knife on a school bus and told a school employee. A backpack search also turned up a .45-caliber semi-automatic pistol and ammunition.

The boys are being held on $100,000 bond each. Both a defense psychiatrist and a state psychologist say they present a danger to the community.

Police were alerted after officials at an Omaha elementary found what appeared to be marijuana in a third-grader’s backpack, but officers determined the substance was catnip.

Omaha Public Schools spokesman David Patton says administrators at Miller Park Elementary called police Friday to report the substance found in a bag.

Officer Michael Pecha says when police arrived, they determined it was catnip, not marijuana.

The school principal says the student told authorities he found the bag on his way to school.

An FBI report of “flying saucers” in New Mexico sent to then-Director J. Edgar Hoover in 1950 has become the most popular file in the bureau’s electronic reading room.

The memo sent by FBI Washington, D.C.- field office chief Guy Hottel has been viewed nearly a million times.

The document is about a report of three flying saucers allegedly recovered in New Mexico, each occupied by three small human-shaped bodies. It says an informant told officials that the UFOs had ended up there because a government radar in the area interfered with their controlling mechanisms.

The FBI never followed up on the report.

The memo is available in the “The Vault,” an electronic reading room launched by the FBI in 2011 that contains around 6,700 public documents.

See the file here:

https://vault.fbi.gov/hottel_guy/Guy%20Hottel%20Part%201%20of%201/view

The Omaha zoo will announce the names of five African lion cubs selected through a contest on the group’s Facebook page.

The Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium will announce the names of the two males and three females Friday morning.

Visitors to the zoo’s Facebook page were asked to suggest names, and zoo workers selected 20 names from more than 5,000 submissions.

Those names were then posted on Facebook for a final vote.

Those who submitted the winning names will be given an annual zoo membership or renewal and other gifts.

The cubs were born Dec. 29.

Construction will begin soon on a new 650-seat Catholic church at the campus of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

The St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church will replace the existing church at the site on 16th and Q streets in Lincoln.

The church says in an announcement Thursday that the new church represents a $12 million construction investment and that two-thirds of donations came from outside the city of Lincoln.

Completion of the church is expected in fall 2014.

The new church is the second phase of an expansion that included construction of the Phi Kappa Theta Catholic fraternity house. A sorority house and new Newman Center also are planned.

 

A 28-year-old Columbus woman has made a deal with prosecutors and pleaded no contest in an arson case.

Ebtihal Albaiaty had been charged with arson, accused of setting fire on April 30 last year to a house she had been renting. Prosecutors lowered the charge to attempted second-degree arson and dismissed a drug charge in exchange for her plea.

Authorities say Albaiaty had received an eviction notice only days before the fire. No injuries from the fire were reported.

She faces up to five years in prison at sentencing, which is scheduled for April 19.

Prosecutors say they are not ready to accept an offer from Colorado theater shooting suspect James Holmes to plead guilty in exchange for avoiding the death penalty.

In a court filing Thursday, prosecutors criticized defense attorneys for publicizing Holmes’ offer to plead guilty.

They say the defense hasn’t provided key details they need to consider a plea.

Legal experts say the case pivots on whether Holmes was legally insane when he opened fire in a packed theater in Aurora, killing 12 people.

Defense lawyers said Wednesday that Holmes told the district attorney’s office he would plead guilty if prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty.

In their response, prosecutors said the disclosure of the offer by the defense was a publicity ploy that violated the judge’s gag order.