POLICE: PA. MAN THROWS FIT OVER CHEESE ON BURGER: DOVER, Pa. (AP) — A Pennsylvania man who spent some good cheddar on a burger faces charges after allegedly throwing a tantrum because his order included cheese.
Police in York County say 35-year-old Sean Varone knocked over a trash can, threw a high chair and assaulted an employee at a Springettsbury Township McDonald's last week.
The York Dispatch reports that Varone, of Dover Township, is also accused of grabbing an employee's cellphone as she tried to call 911 and chucking it across the parking lot before fleeing.
A criminal complaint was filed against Varone on Tuesday. Court records don't list an attorney for him and a phone listing couldn't immediately be located Wednesday.
BORK, WHOSE FAILED NOMINATION MADE HISTORY, DIES: MCLEAN, Va. (AP) — Robert H. Bork, who stepped in to fire the Watergate prosecutor at Richard Nixon's behest and whose failed 1987 nomination to the Supreme Court helped draw the modern boundaries of cultural fights over abortion, civil rights and other issues, has died. He was 85.
Robert H. Bork Jr. confirmed his father died Wednesday at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, Va. The son said Bork died from complications of heart ailments.
Brilliant, blunt and piercingly witty, Robert Heron Bork had a long career in the law that took him from respected academic to a totem of conservative grievance.
Along the way, Bork was accused of being a partisan hatchet man for Nixon when, as the third-ranking official at the Justice Department, he fired Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox in the Saturday Night Massacre of 1973. Attorney General Elliot Richardson had resigned rather than fire Cox. The next in line, William Ruckelshaus, refused to fire Cox and was himself fired.
Bork's drubbing during his Senate nomination hearings made him a hero to the right and a rallying cry for younger conservatives.
OHIO COACH'S SENTENCE INCLUDES MONEY FOR NEWTOWN: CANTON, Ohio (AP) — A former Ohio high school basketball coach who pleaded guilty to videotaping boys in a locker room shower for years has been sentenced to 15 years in prison — and must give $5,000 to the Connecticut community where a gunman killed 26 people.
Scott Studer pleaded guilty Wednesday morning to an eight-count indictment.
In addition to prison, Judge Frank Forchione in Canton ordered that Studer's fine be directed to Newtown, Conn., scene of last week's school shooting rampage. The judge didn't specify the fund that should get the 46-year-old's fine.
At least 74 boys have been identified on the secretly recorded videotapes made over the span of eight years at Jackson High School near Canton. The judge ordered the tapes destroyed.
ASPERGER'S REFERENCED IN WYO. COLLEGE KILLING NOTE: CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — A bizarre, rambling suicide note left behind by a man who police say killed his father in front of a handful of students in a Wyoming community college classroom extols eugenics and blames his father for the genes he said caused him to have Asperger's syndrome.
Christopher Krumm, 25, wrote that he was unable to keep a job, never had a love life and "always had to subsist as a sort of bottom feeder,"
The note confirmed a motive suggested by people close to Krumm in the immediate aftermath of the slayings.
"I am extremely bitter and frothing with hatred toward my father. I am resentful that my country did not castrate him," Krumm wrote.
The two-page, closely-spaced suicide note was entitled, "Tired of Having Asperger Syndrome; America Should Look to China."
FBI: ESCAPED INMATES TOOK CAB NEAR CHICAGO JAIL: CHICAGO (AP) — Two convicted bank robbers who pulled off a daring overnight escape from a high-rise Chicago jail had changed from their prison garb by the time they hopped into a cab near the lock-up, investigators said Wednesday as they expanded their manhunt for the men.
Authorities were raiding houses and combing through records looking for anybody with ties to the inmates who climbed out a jail window and descended 20 stories using a makeshift rope.
The FBI said surveillance footage from a camera near the Metropolitan Correctional Center shows Kenneth Conley and Joseph Banks getting into a cab at about 2:45 a.m. Tuesday — about two hours before guards were supposed to do a bed check and four hours before workers spotted the rope dangling from the federal jail. The pair had changed from their orange jail-issued jumpsuits into light-colored pants and shirts, the FBI said.
JUDGE: MASS. SEX CHANGE INMATE'S LAWYERS GET $700K: BOSTON (AP) — A federal judge says he'll order Massachusetts to pay more than $700,000 in legal fees for a convicted murderer who successfully sued for a state-funded sex change.
Judge Mark Wolf said Wednesday he'll decide the specific amount later.
The judge ruled in September sex reassignment surgery is the "only adequate treatment" for Michelle Kosilek's gender-identity disorder and awarded legal fees.
It was the first time a judge has ordered prison officials to provide sex reassignment surgery to an inmate. The state is appealing and won't comment.
The judge says the state has paid large legal fees in other prisoner rights cases. He notes Kosilek's lawyers have offered to dismiss their request if the state drops its appeal.
Kosilek was named Robert when convicted of his wife's 1990 murder.
1 DEAD, 17 INJURED IN TEXAS DUST STORM ACCIDENTS: LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) — A dust storm in West Texas triggered a series of accidents Wednesday that killed one person, injured at least 17 others and led authorities to close part of Interstate 27 north of Lubbock, a spokesman with the Texas Department of Public Safety said.
Cpl. John Gonzalez said 23 vehicles were involved in a series of chain-reaction crashes south of Abernathy as sand and dust from nearby fields were whipped by winds gusting up to 55 mph.
"It was like a white-out, only this would be black," Gonzalez said. "You couldn't see past the hood of your vehicle."
