IS leader raped hostage, U.S. says
WASHINGTON – American hostage Kayla Mueller was repeatedly forced to have sex with Abu Bakr Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State group, according to accounts provided to U.S. intelligence officials.
Mueller, whose death was reported in February, was held for a time by Islamic State financier Abu Sayyaf and his wife, known as Umm Sayyaf. Al-Baghdadi took Mueller as a “wife,” repeatedly raping her when he visited, according to a Yazidi teenager who was held with Mueller and escaped. The 14-year-old talked to U.S. officials, who corroborated her account with other intelligence and passed it on to her parents, Carl and Marsha Mueller, in June, according to a family spokeswoman, Emily Lenzner.
A U.S. official confirmed the account, first reported by London’s Independent newspaper. The official was not authorized to be quoted by name and spoke on condition of anonymity.
N.Y. prison manhunt cost $1M per day
ALBANY, N.Y. – Payroll records suggest the hunt for two escaped killers in northern New York cost more than $1 million a day, with overtime alone for state troopers and corrections officers $22 million higher than last year.
State comptroller records obtained Friday by The Associated Press for June and July show overtime totaled $41 million for the corrections department and $17.6 million for state police.
Those two agencies led the 23-day manhunt by more than 1,100 officers for Richard Matt and David Sweat, who escaped June 6 from Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora after cutting their way through the metal wall of their cells with hacksaw blades smuggled to them.
State forest rangers, federal authorities and Vermont police joined the search that ended with Matt shot dead June 27 and Sweat wounded and caught two days later.
EPA issues new rules for landfill emissions
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has tightened standards for the nation’s landfills to reduce emissions of methane and other harmful air pollutants.
EPA estimates the new rules announced Friday as part of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan will reduce methane from decomposing household waste by about 480,000 tons a year by 2025.
EPA says implementing the new standards will cost about $55 million over the next decade.
Yosemite camp shut after plague cases
YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. – Officials at Yosemite National Park say they are temporarily shutting a popular campsite after two squirrels died of plague in the area.
Park officials said Friday that Tuolumne Meadows Campground will close from noon Monday through noon Friday so authorities can treat the area with a flea-killing insecticide.
An unidentified child fell ill with the plague after camping with his family at Yosemite’s Crane Flat Campground in mid-July.
Associated Press
