JETBLUE PILOT NOT GUILTY BY REASON OF INSANITY: AMARILLO, Texas (AP) — A federal judge in Texas found a JetBlue Airways pilot who left the cockpit during a flight and screamed about religion and terrorists not guilty by reason of insanity Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge Mary Lou Robinson in Amarillo issued the ruling during a bench trial for Clayton F. Osbon, noting he suffered from a "severe mental disease or defect." Osbon's attorney, Dean Roper, declined to comment.
Osbon, who recently was found mentally competent to stand trial after a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation, will be sent to a federal mental health facility for further examination until another hearing on or before Aug. 6. The judge will decide then whether he can be released or should be committed to a mental facility.
POLICE: PA. INMATE TRIED TO HAIL CAB FROM HOSPITAL: BEAVER, Pa. (AP) — Sheriff's deputies say a western Pennsylvania county jail inmate wearing an orange-and-white striped uniform tried to hail a taxi to escape from a hospital where he was taken for medical treatment.
The Beaver County Times reports Tuesday that 23-year-old Holden Wooley was taken to Heritage Valley Beaver Hospital on Saturday night after a reported seizure. Deputies say at one point during his four-hour hospital visit, Wooley went outside to hail a cab — but the driver refused to pick him up.
When hospital security officers tried to grab him, Wooley ran into the woods. Police say he was arrested a couple hours later when officers used a dog and a stun gun to subdue him. He was treated for a dog bite at the hospital and returned to jail.
ICE CREAM USED AS EXCUSE IN CRASH: VAN BUREN, Ark. (AP) — A woman accused of leaving the scene of a minor traffic crash in western Arkansas told police she did it because she didn't want her ice cream to melt.
Van Buren police say one vehicle rear-ended another on Arkansas Highway 59 on Sunday evening, but that the driver of the second car didn't stop to check on the vehicle she had hit. The other driver called police and set off in pursuit.
Flora Burkhart told police she didn't think there was enough damage to merit stopping — and that she didn't want her ice cream to melt.
NC STATE REP PUSHES WRONG BUTTON, OVERRIDES VETO: RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A North Carolina state representative says she voted mistakenly to override the governor's veto of a bill to allow the shale gas exploration called "fracking" but was told she couldn't change it because this would have altered the outcome.
Democratic Rep. Becky Carney of Charlotte says she pushed the green "yes" button at her desk Monday night to override Democratic Gov. Beverly Perdue's veto of the measure before realizing she wanted to vote red, or "no."
Her "yes" vote made the tally 72-47 — just above the 60 percent required to override in the Republican-controlled Legislature. The chamber's rules prevent members from changing a vote if it affects the outcome.
Carney had voted earlier against fracking. She said Tuesday she feels terrible about her error but acknowledged the bill passed legally.
SEARCH TO FIND EARHART WRECKAGE BEGINS IN HAWAII: HONOLULU (AP) — A $2.2 million expedition is hoping to finally solve one of America's most enduring mysteries: What exactly happened to famed aviator Amelia Earhart when she went missing over the South Pacific 75 years ago?
A group of scientists, historians and salvagers think they have a good idea, and they're trekking from Honolulu to a remote island in the Pacific nation of Kiribati starting Tuesday in hopes of finding wreckage of Earhart's Lockheed Electra plane in nearby waters.
Their working theory is that Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan landed on a reef near the Kiribati atoll of Nikumaroro, then survived a short time.
Previous visits to the island have recovered artifacts that could have belonged to Earhart and Noonan, and experts say an October 1937 photo of the shoreline of the island could include a blurry image of the strut and wheel of a Lockheed Electra landing gear.
ONE L OF A NAME: LL BEAN'S INITIALS GET SCRUTINY: FREEPORT, Maine (AP) — He's arguably Maine's best-known native son, right up there with Civil War general Joshua Chamberlain, poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and horror writer Stephen King. To his customers, he was simply known as "L.L."
But as outdoors outfitter L.L. Bean celebrates its 100th anniversary, it's still not 100 percent clear what the famous founder's initials stood for. Was it Leon Leonwood Bean, as the company claimed for decades, or was it Leon Linwood Bean, as his grandson suggests?
The answer appears to be both.
Leon Gorman, L.L.'s grandson, said he was told that his grandfather was born Leon Linwood Bean and that it somehow morphed into Leon Leonwood Bean.
"There was some incident that happened years ago. I can't remember what it was. They misspelled Leon's name from Linwood to Leonwood," Gorman, the company's chairman, said. "L.L. was so taken by the new version of his middle name that he adopted it."
His grave marker sheds no light on his middle-name preference; it says simply, "Leon L. Bean." There's no birth certificate, either.
In his autobiography, L.L. Bean talked about having a birth certificate, but no one knows where it is. Kim Sparks, town manager in Greenwood, where Bean was born, said a birth certificate can't be located. And the state archives don't have a copy, either.
