Police are seeking the sick vandals who painted a half-dozen swastikas found this morning in a Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn.

The swastikas were found at a synagogue, a Jewish bath house and several businesses around 16th Avenue in Borough Park.

Cops are investigating the vandalism as a hate crime, and are reviewing surveillance video from the area. No arrests have been made.

Surveillance video from Fischman's Food Center at 4421 16th Ave., one of the vandalized businesses, shows two men in hoodies walking up to the store at about 2:45 a.m.

One of the men spray-painted the store's front roll down gate, and then drew a swastika on the front plastic window panel.

Portland's bureaus of Police and Parks will join forces this weekend to increase security in Laurelhurst Park after reports of two large-scale fights there Wednesday and Thursday nights.

According to those who reported the incidents to police, both assaults involved a large group of teenage boys who attacked either an individual or a small group.

Police say they learned of the first incident Wednesday evening when called to the Southeast Portland park about 10:36 p.m. to investigate a report of 150 drunken teens. When they arrived, they told the teens they found to leave. But they were then flagged down by a young woman who told them that a 14-year-old boy had been beaten up and was lying on a picnic table at the west end of the park.

Officers found the boy, who said he'd been with a friend when he was attacked by five to 10 other boys who seemed to be randomly attacking others, including at least one transient. The boy said the group also stole his cell phone, his iPod, his headphones and a hat.

Police in Dorchester County, S.C., used a Taser on a nude 80-year-old woman after she allegedly attempted to attack police with her walking stick. WCSC reports that when police answered a complaint of someone making loud noises in the area, they were met by an elderly woman wearing no clothes on her porch, reportedly hitting the steps of her porch with her cane.

According to police, the woman, who spoke "confusingly," began to swing her cane at the officers when police tried to take it away from the nude woman. As police continued to talk the woman out of swinging her cane at them, another officer used his Taser on the woman's back. The woman was immediately transported to a nearby medical facility for treatment.

When police investigated the area, they discovered that the woman, a former tenant, had broken three windows at the property after the owner attempted to give the deposit back to the woman.

WCSC reports that no charges were filed against the woman despite the $250 worth of property damage.

Edmonton, Alberta - Police were searching Friday for a security company employee charged with murder in the attempted robbery of an armored truck at a western Canada university that left three armed guards dead, police said.

Police said Travis Baumgartner, a 21-year-old employee of G4S Cash Services, was wanted on three counts of first-degree murder and attempted murder for critically injuring a fourth employee. Canadian authorities said U.S border officials had been notified as well.

Baumgartner's mother issued a statement pleading for her son to surrender and apologizing for an argument they had.

The armored truck was found abandoned but running not far from the security company's offices. Police believe Baumgartner was working alongside his co-workers when they were shot.

"We now believe this is the person that is responsible for this horrific and terrible crime," Police Supt. Bob Hassel said.

Police said no University of Alberta students were involved. The university was quickly put on lockdown, but that was later lifted.

G4S Cash Services spokeswoman Robin Steinberg confirmed that two male employees and a female employee were among the dead. She said the guards were armed, but she did not have further details.

Steinberg said the company, which operates in more than 100 countries, had never had a fatality in Canada. "It's horrible to lose this many," she said.

The Transportation Security Administration on Friday dismissed seven employees at Philadelphia International Airport for paying bribes to an instructor in exchange for passing annual proficiency exams.

TSA management at the Philadelphia airport removed 10 employees from security duties in November pending results of an investigation of bribery by the Homeland Security Department's Office of Inspector General.

Since then, three of the employees have resigned. The seven others were notified Friday of the TSA's intent to terminate their employment for professional misconduct. The TSA did not disclose their identities.

"A TSA training instructor responsible for administering annual proficiency exams was found to have accepted payment from TSA security officers to ensure passing grades," the TSA said in a statement.

The training manager, Shannon Gilliam, 29, of Sharon Hill, pleaded guilty Feb. 28 in U.S. District Court to a single count of bribery. Prosecutors said Gilliam was responsible for training TSA officers and administering mandatory certification to officers who handle passenger and baggage screening at the airport.

A Tulsa woman is suing the city's code enforcement officers after she said they cut down her garden with no cause.

Denise Morrison said she has more than 100 plant varieties in her front and back yards and all of them are edible and have a purpose.

She knows which ones will treat arthritis, which will make your food spicy, which ones keep mosquitoes away and treat bug bites, but she said none of that matter to city inspectors.

Last August, Morrison's front and back yards were filled with flowers in bloom, lemon, stevia, garlic chives, grapes, strawberries, apple mint, spearmint, peppermint, an apple tree, walnut tree, pecan trees and much more.

She got a letter from the city saying there had been a complaint about her yard.

She said she took pictures to meet with city inspectors, but they wouldn't listen, so she invited them to her home so they could point out the problem areas.

"Everything, everything needs to go," Morrison said they told her.

The Black Death, a strain of bubonic plague that destroyed nearly a third of Europe's entire population between 1347 and 1369, has been found in Oregon. Health officials in Portland have confirmed that a man contracted the plague after getting bitten by a cat. The unidentified man, who is currently in his 50s, had tried to pry a dead mouse from a stray cat's mouth on June 2 when the cat attacked him.
A few days after getting bitten, the resident from the rural town of Prineville in Crook County developed a fever. By June 8, the man was so sick that he checked himself into St. Charles Medical Center in Redmond, Ore. He has since been transferred to the larger St. Charles facility in Bend. He was believed to be suffering from septicemic plague -- meaning the bacteria was spreading into his bloodstream -- and he is currently in critical condition.

"This can be a serious illness," said Emilio DeBess, Oregon's public health veterinarian. "But it is treatable with antibiotics, and it's also preventable."

The Black Death originated in rats -- black rats in particular -- but the bacteria thrives in forests, grasslands and any wooded areas inhabited by rats and squirrels. Even though rats were carriers, the disease was spread by the fleas that infested their bodies. Fleas would bite the rat, and the plague bacterium -- later identified as Pasteurella pestis, and renamed Yersinia pestis -- would stay in the intestinal track of the flea until the insect regurgitated it on its next victim; rodent populations can carry the plague bacteria without it killing them off, and the bacteria can travel back and forth from rats to fleas, also known as the sylvatic or enzootic cycle. When the fleas bit humans during this period, humans became exposed to the bacteria -- and became likely to die. Without the help of modern medicine, Europeans in the Middle Ages could do little to combat the plague.

An 81-year-old Paynes Creek man died today after hitting his head during a fight with another man in the parking lot of the Redding Costco, police said.

Just before 11 a.m. Monday police responded to a report of the fight in the Costco parking lot at 1300 Dana Drive.

There, officers found Robert Leonard Mix lying on the sidewalk in front of the store. He was conscious and speaking with medics, Redding police Sgt. Al Mellon said.

Witnesses told police Mix was sitting in his Dodge pickup waiting for a parking space, which was causing congestion in the parking lot.

The holy city of Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, thought to be the birthplace of Jesus, may become the first World Heritage Site in the Palestinian territories, according to UNESCO.

In its 36th yearly session, the World Heritage Committee - consisting of representatives from 21 of the States Parties to the Convention - will consider 36 possible World Heritage sites, from June 24 to July 6 in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

The list currently includes more than 900 properties deemed by the committee as having "outstanding universal value" as part of the world's natural and cultural heritage.

Palestine, which became a member of UNESCO in October 2011, will be presenting the church and the surrounding route used for religious pilgrimages as its first site for inscription on the World Heritage List.

That vote, to accept the Palestinians into UNESCO, proved controversial, according to a CNN news report, suggesting the United States held the view that a peace deal should be reached with Israel before the Palestinian territories were granted full UNESCO membership.

Located in the holy city of Bethlehem, the Church of the Nativity, a Byzantine basilica, is built on top of the cave where, according to a tradition first documented in the second century, Jesus was born, UNESCO notes. Helena, mother of Christian Emperor Constantine, is said to have intended the basilica to commemorate Jesus' birth.

Girl, 16, appears in court Friday afternoon on several charges

Canada - Police in Gatineau, Que., have arrested the third suspect in a human trafficking case where three teenage girls are accused in the prostitution of three other teenage girls in Ottawa.

The youth, 16, was apprehended Thursday at about 8 p.m. and returned to Ottawa, police say. She appears in an Ottawa courtroom Friday afternoon on charges of human trafficking, procuring for prostitution, forcible confinement, robbery, assault and uttering threats.

The search for the third suspect was made more difficult, police say, because they could not release info about her due to provisions of the Youth Criminal Justice Act. Police had also originally said she was 17 years old.

Police said the three accused allegedly used social media to lure a trio of other girls, who are between 13 and 17 years old, to a home at a Walkley Road community housing project in southeast Ottawa. That is also where the accused live, neighbours say.