(AP) — An analysis of state and federal data suggests that cellphone use by drivers involved in fatal crashes is seriously under reported.
The National Safety Council, an advocacy group, said the under reporting makes the distracted-driving problem appear less significant than it actually is, and impedes efforts to win passage of tougher laws.
The council reviewed 180 fatal crashes from 2009 to 2011 in which there was strong evidence the driver had been using a cellphone. But only half the 2011 crashes were coded in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s accident database as involving cellphone use. In 2009, 8 percent of the crashes examined were coded as involving cellphones. In 2010 the figure was 35 percent.
The study was paid for in part by Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company.
The discovery of three women in a Cleveland home who all had gone missing separately about a decade ago brings to mind cases of abductions elsewhere. A list of some prominent cases:
JAYCEE DUGARD
Dugard was abducted in June 1991 on her way to school in South Lake Tahoe, California. Then 11, she was held for 18 years by Phillip and Nancy Garrido. She was raped repeatedly by Garrido and gave birth to two daughters. Dugard was freed in 2009 after she and her two children appeared in public with him and a police interrogation revealed her identity. Convicted of kidnapping and rape, Garrido was sentenced to 431 years in prison. His wife received a sentence of 36 years to life.
ELISABETH FRITZL
Fritzl disappeared from her town of Amstetten, Austria, in 1984 at age 18. In 2008, she re-emerged 24 years later from the dungeon-like basement chamber where her father, Josef, had kept her captive. He raped her thousands of times. She bore him seven children, one of which died in captivity after Josef Fritzl refused to allow medical treatment. Josef Fritzl was sentenced to life in a prison psychiatric ward in March 2009. Elisabeth Fritzl and her children were given new identities.
SHAWN HORNBECK
In October 2002, Hornbeck — then 11 — was kidnapped while riding his bike to a friend’s house in Washington County, Missouri. In January 2007, authorities found Hornbeck and another kidnapped boy, Ben Ownby, in the suburban St. Louis apartment of Michael Devlin. Ownby, 13, had been abducted four days earlier. Devlin was sentenced to life in prison for kidnapping and abusing the boys.
NATASCHA KAMPUSCH
Kampusch was kidnapped in 1998 off the street in Vienna at age 10. She managed to escape in 2006 but only after spending eight years as a captive, mostly in a tiny basement enclosure. She was abused by her abductor, Wolfgang Priklopil, who committed suicide soon after Kampusch freed herself.
ELIZABETH SMART
At age 14, Smart was snatched from her bedroom in Salt Lake City in June 2002 by Brian David Mitchell, who did odd jobs for the family. Tormented over nine months by Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Barzee, Smart was freed after she was recognized in March 2003 while in public with both of them. He is serving a life sentence and Barzee is serving 16 years in prison.
Aged between 8 and 19 when snatched between mid-1995 and August 1996, the six victims were abducted, tortured and abused by Belgian Marc Dutroux. Only Dardenne, 12, and Delhez, 14, escaped alive after being found near the southern Belgian town of Charleroi a few days after Dutroux’s arrest in August 1996. He is serving a life sentence. His wife, Michelle Martin, is now in a convent after serving 16 years of a 30-year prison term.
STEVEN STAYNER
The 7-year-old boy was kidnapped in 1972 while walking home from school in Merced, California. After Stayner escaped captivity in 1980, Kenneth Eugene Parnell was convicted of kidnapping him and a second boy, 5-year-old Timmy White, and sentenced to seven years in prison. Stayner died in a motorcycle accident in 1989 at age 24.
(AP) — Authorities have released the names of all five women killed when a limousine burst into flames on a San Francisco Bay bridge.
The San Mateo County Coroner’s Office identified the victims on Tuesday as 35-year-old Michelle Estrera, of Fresno, 46-year-old Anna Alcantara and 43-year-old Felomina Geronga, both of Alameda, 31-year-old Neriza Fojas of Monterey and 39-year-old Jennifer Balon, also of Alameda.
The cause of deaths and toxicology reports are still pending. The Coroner’s Office says a final report could take another three to four weeks to complete.
The victims were among nine women celebrating Fojas’ recent wedding when the limo they were in caught fire on the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge on Saturday night. Four of the women managed to escape.
Fojas and Balon had previously been identified by family. Estrera was identified by her employer.
(AP) — President Barack Obama says military personnel who engage in sexual assault are betraying the uniform they are wearing. He says he has directed Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to “step up our game exponentially” to halt such assaults.
In a tough statement, Obama said he wanted members of the armed services to hear directly from their commander in chief that such behavior is not only unacceptable, but illegal and unpatriotic.
Obama’s remarks came in response to a question about charges against Lt. Col. Jeffrey Krusinski, who led the Air Force’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response unit. He was charged with groping a woman in a northern Virginia parking lot on Sunday.
Obama made his remarks during a news conference Tuesday with South Korea’s president, Park Geun-hye (goon-hay).
The Nebraska State Board of Education has suspended the certificates of two teachers who tried to hide how a student with a peanut allergy tasted a peanut butter sandwich.
Board spokeswoman Betty Van Deventer says the board decided on Tuesday to suspend the certificates of Keri Watkins and Ann Gigstad for a year. The suspensions were dated back to late April last year, when the two resigned from the Millard school district. Thus, Van Deventer says, the teachers’ suspensions have been completed.
The teachers had lied to administrators and the mother of the boy who’d tasted a peanut butter sandwich in Watkins’ classroom earlier in April 2012.
Nebraska lawmakers who support an Omaha charter-schools bill launched a debate on a measure that was killed in committee this year.
Omaha Sen. Scott Lautenbaugh raised the issue Tuesday as lawmakers prepared to vote on an unrelated bill to fund teacher retirement plans.
The charter-schools bill was supported by the Platte Institute and Americans for Prosperity-Nebraska, but opposed by the state Department of Education, Omaha Public Schools and the Nebraska State Education Association.
The move came less than a week after supporters of a stalled Medicaid-expansion bill raised that issue during legislative debate on an unrelated proposal.
Supporters of the teacher-retirement bill warned that failing to pass it would blow a hole in the budget, because the state is legally obligated to fund the plans.
(AP) — Jury trial has been set in the case of a man who accuses Creighton University in a lawsuit of discriminating against him because he is deaf.
The trial is set for the week of Aug. 20 in Omaha’s federal court.
The trial comes after the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in March said a jury should be allowed to decide whether Creighton discriminated against medical school student Michael Argenyi’s (ar-GEN’-ee). The ruling reversed a lower court’s dismissal of Argenyi’s lawsuit.
Argenyi was accepted to Creighton’s medical school after disclosing that he was hearing-impaired and requesting accommodations for his disability to allow him to follow lectures and communicate with patients.
He sued in 2009, after he was forced out of the school when the university refused his requests for interpreters.
A Nebraska state lawmaker who suffered a mild heart attack has returned to the Legislature.
Sen. Ken Haar of Malcolm thanked his colleagues for their calls, prayers and letters during a brief floor speech on Tuesday. The well-known environmental advocate struck a humorous tone, noting that he suffered the heart attack while cutting down trees on Arbor Day.
Haar, a Democrat, joked about seeing a bright light, meeting his late father and promising to change parties if he could return to work.
Haar says he received a handful of “miracle drugs” to help treat his condition, but didn’t undergo surgery. He added that he spent less than 24 hours in the hospital, and received a $22,000 medical bill.
Haar was first elected to the Nebraska Legislature in 2008.
A frantic 911 call has led police to a house near downtown Cleveland, where three women who went missing a decade ago have been found.
Police Chief Michael McGrath says Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight were tied up at the house and held there since they were in their teens or early 20s. They were found on Monday, along with a 6-year-old child.
A 52-year-old man has been arrested in relation to the case. According to Brian Cummins, a councilman who represents the district where the women were found, the suspect’s name is Ariel Castro. He once worked for the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, a spokeswoman confirmed, but she didn’t have details about how long he was with the district or under what circumstances he left.
Two others also arrested are reportedly Castro’s brothers.
Neighbors say they heard someone screaming for help and kicking a door. They told the woman, Berry, how to get out and allowed her call police.
Berry told a 911 dispatcher, “I’ve been kidnapped.”
It was among the first states to legalize gay marriage and served as the 2008 campaign liftoff site for the first black president, but in other arenas Iowa isn’t quite so progressive. Iowa is also one of just two states to never elect a woman governor or member of Congress.
Senate and House seats are open in 2014, and many thought this could be the time for a woman to break through.
But after several women took themselves out of consideration, the prospects are unclear. Experts attribute the gender gap in part to the state’s small-town farming culture, which views politics as men’s work. They also cite the lack of term limits, which means there are few open seats for women to pursue.
(AP) — An analysis of state and federal data suggests that cellphone use by drivers involved in fatal crashes is seriously under reported.
