Pennsylvania - A state trooper was arrested Thursday night and charged with drunken driving while behind the wheel of his police cruiser, police said.

Kevin Daniel Wackley, 47, of Tamaqua, was on duty at the time of his arrest at 8 p.m. on old state Route 22 near Reservoir Road in Windsor Township, Berks County, a news release states.

Police said they received information that Wackley may be intoxicated and determined that he had been drinking, the release states.

Police did not provide Wackley's blood-alcohol level.

Wackley has been suspended pending the disposition of the investigation, state police said.

Charges against Wackley will be filed via summons, police said.

Source: MCT Information Services

California - Police have clashed with crowds in downtown Los Angeles, where the monthly Art Walk event was being held. Officials say 4 policemen were treated for minor injuries.

The Los Angeles Times said 19 people have been arrested after a skirmish, according to local authorities.

The otherwise peaceful party night apparently turned violent, as police wearing riot gear tried to disperse members of the Occupy movement. Some 200 Occupiers joined the festivities and were writing protest slogans in chalk.

The ability to light up a cigarette in Santa Monica is about to go up in smoke for many residents of the coastal town outside of Los Angeles. The city's board voted this week to soon impose a ban inside the homes of local tenants.

If you rent or lease your residence in Santa Monica, things could soon be very different. Tuesday's 4-2 vote means that a smoking prohibition across the city will be extended to include all newly condos and apartments for new tenants. Additionally, the legislation includes a provision that will force property owners to designate their homes as either smoking or non-, letting them decide if even their current residents - even those who have spent their life in certain properties - can continue to smoke.

"Under the proposed law, current occupants of apartments and condominiums would be able to choose either smoking or non-smoking status for their dwelling unit," city officials explain. "If a unit is designated non-smoking, then smoking would thereafter be prohibited in that unit. If a unit is vacated (including a smoking unit), the unit's designation would be non-smoking for the next occupant and thereafter."

Salem, Indiana - A father is dead after police said he was shot by his 3-year-old son.

According to Indiana State Police, around 9:55 p.m. Friday Michael Bayless, 33, was found dead in a home in the 3600 block of Vincennes Trail.

Bayless' wife, his three children and another child related to the family were home when investigators found his body.


Detectives and crime scene investigators stated after a preliminary investigation they believe Bayless was watching television with two of the children when the 3-year-old found Bayless' loaded handgun and accidentally shot him.

Indiana State Police Sergeant Jerry Goodin said, "There's a lot of things we're still asking questions about and we've still go to get some answers. But, right now, really the only thing that we know is the child was able to gain access to [sic] the handgun. The handgun did discharge. It did strike Michael Bayless causing a fatal wound to him."

A Florida woman has learned that being a TSA agent isn't all just fun, games and genital grabbing - it can actually be quite costly. For demonstrating on an agent just how invasive those pat downs are, Carol Jean Price has been convicted of battery.

Price, 59, was charged earlier this year after she used a hand-on approach to show a Transportation Security Administration supervisor just how intrusive the screening she had just received was. Now a jury has convicted her of battery and she is being forced to pay $500 and has received six months of probation.

According to Price, she was stopped while attempting to fly to Cleveland, Ohio on April 20 to attend her brother's funeral when she was forced to undergo a bit too rigorous of a screening. Price says of all people, she should know - she used to work for the TSA.

"(The screener) dug into my bra strap coming down," Price told the jury. "She also swiped the palm of her hand down the front of my breast."

A survey of Japanese fertility clinics found about 30 percent of information on sperm donors has been destroyed, officials said.

Under the Medical Practitioners Law, such clinics are required to keep donor records for five years, The Yomiuri Shimbun reported.

However, the Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology advises fertility clinics keep records a longer period of time, as children conceived via artificial insemination by a donor, or AID, may try to find their biological fathers when they are older.

A survey conducted by the newspaper in June of 23 registered medical institutions found 12 clinics that provide AID said they keep all clinical records of the couples who have done the procedure, including information on the sperm donors.

Six other institutions said they do not keep clinical records that contained information to identify donors. One clinic said it disposes of the records, but keeps other relevant documents. Four clinics surveyed said they did not do AID.

Chinese company emails US company about buying a few million dollars of the US company's product. The terms of the deal are quickly worked out and the Chinese company suggests the American company go to China to sign the contract and celebrate the consummation of the deal.

The American gets to China (usually some fairly out of the way city in China) and is treated to what appears to the American to be a really expensive meal at which the contract is signed. At which point, the American company is told that Chinese custom requires that it buy the Chinese CEO an expensive gift and pay the notarization fee.

The American is then either taken to purchase a nice piece of jade and requested to pay a couple of thousand dollars for the notarization fee. Sometimes the American just gives the Chinese company people cash to go off and buy the gift on the American company's behalf.

It isn't until weeks later that the American learns that there is no deal and, in fact, there is no Chinese company either. The big lure of this scam is that nobody wants to fly all the way to China, have a great meal at someone else's expense, and then be too cheap to spend less than $10,000 more to seal the deal.

This China business scam was really popular four or five years ago, but it seemed to have really declined since then, presumably because word had spread among American manufacturers.

It appears China has found a new set of victims.

Parents who refuse to vaccinate their children are pocketing thousands of dollars in Federal Government immunisation incentives.

Opponents to childhood vaccines say it is unfair to be denied Federal Government cash because of their beliefs, and are exploiting a loophole to claim more than $2000 a child after registering as "conscientious objectors".

In July, the Gillard Government scrapped the $129 Maternity Immunisation Allowance, a specific payment to encourage parents to have their children immunised.

In an attempt to boost immunisation rates, it has now linked vaccination incentives to Family Tax Benefit A $2100 to be paid over three immunisation "check points" once children are fully immunised at ages one, two and five.

While parents have been warned they will lose their payment and the childcare benefit if they do not fully immunise their children, they are also being told exemptions will be given to objectors.

All they have to do to still receive the money is fill out a form supplied by the Federal Government.

The Federal Government's Department of Human Services website outlines the immunisation requirements.

It reads: "To meet the immunisation requirements, children will need to be fully immunised, be on a recognised immunisation catch-up schedule, or have an approved exemption."

The exemption forms are available from the Department of Human Services website.They require signatures of the parent/guardian of the child and recognised immunisation provider a GP or family doctor.

Independent Senator Nick Xenophon said it was a bizarre policy.

"This is a case of everyone wins a prize. It's a bit like getting the Baby Bonus without having a baby," Senator Xenophon said.

"Anti-vaxers", as they call themselves, are now joining parenting forums to encourage others not to be bullied by the Government and to give tips on how to get objection forms lodged quickly.

Residents of the mainly black South Side want stop-and-search tactics brought back as gang murders plague President Barack Obama's home city.

The cluster of young men hanging out on the porch of the run-down brick home cast menacing stares at the unknown car as a "spotter", a teen on a bicycle, talked into a mobile phone.

Beneath a tree across the street, burned red candle wax was the last remnant of an impromptu shrine for a 13-year-old boy, Tyquan Tyler, shot dead two weeks earlier by a killer just a few years older than him.

The assailant had run through an alleyway past a boarded-up home, mown down his victim and then disappeared back down the same route into a neighbouring street before the "ATM boys" could respond with their Glock pistols.

In the killing zones of Chicago's predominantly black and poor South Side, turf warfare is no longer waged for control of districts but street to street.

A splintering of traditional gangs into smaller factions - known as crews or cliques - with ever-younger members desperate to prove their tough-guy credentials is fuelling a murder rate that makes swathes of Chicago more lethal than Afghanistan.

Even as violent crime has decreased in cities such as New York and Los Angeles, the murder rate soared here by 38 per cent in the first six months of the year. There were 259 murders in that period, with another 18 so far in July.

Police have began an inquiry into a poverty-stricken woman in Bihar's Araria district selling her four-month-old son for just Rs 62 to a Nepalese couple, sources Sunday said.

"I was informed that a poor woman sold her child to a Nepalese couple. Police have now begun investigation into it," Araria police chief Shivdeep W. Lande told IANS on the telephone.

Shannu Khatun, in her mid-30s, who is struggling for survival, sold her son to a Nepalese couple at Forbesganj railway station, near the Indo-Nepal border in Araria, about 350 km from here, Saturday.

Khatun, along with her children, had left her village a few days ago and taken shelter at the Forbesganj railway station. She refuted that she had sold her child but admitted to giving away her child for his own sake.

But her eight-year-old elder daughter Sabina told some local residents that her mother sold her younger brother for a mere Nepalese Rs 100 (Indian Rs 62).

Syed Ahsan Ali, of the Railway Protection Force said Khatun had donated her child to a Nepalese couple. "She told us that she had not received any money for it."