In the News

• Rick Perry, the Republican governor of Texas, alluded to comedian Joan Rivers' death while defending a law he signed that requires abortion clinics to meet hospital-level operating standards, questioning whether Rivers would still be alive if New York had enacted similar regulations for the outpatient surgical clinic where she was treated.

• Bolivar Vilchez, 35, a Marine Corps veteran, had to pull over on the shoulder of a California freeway and help his wife, Sandra, 29, deliver their daughter Savannah when Sandra's water broke during a drive to visit her mother.

• Bill Stiver, a biologist with Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee, said there have been fewer nuisance bears lately because of an abundant crop of wild cherries, which help tide them over in August and early September before they transition to acorns.

• Damon Evans, the transportation director for Lafayette Parish, La., schools, asked the School Board, which denied the request, to waive the requirement that bus drivers have high-school or General Educational Development diplomas for substitute drivers, saying he needs more drivers but can't hire them.

• Sgt. Gregory White of the El Paso County, Colo., sheriff's office said investigators could not seize living horses at a farm where a special unit found more than a dozen dead and malnourished horses in a barn because the animals were not in immediate danger.

• Gyanendra Shah, the last king of Nepal, who was forced to give up his rule in 2008, was in stable condition after suffering a heart attack and was being admitted to a hospital.

• Sarah Hays, a U.S. magistrate judge, recommended that Anthony Falco Jr., 50, a Pennsylvania man accused of creating a hoax that closed down a busy terminal at Kansas City International Airport on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, be released because he is not a risk to others or their property.

• John Kerry, the U.S. secretary of state, met for an hour with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to discuss Iran's nuclear program and the threat posed by Islamic State extremists, a State Department official said.

• Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president of France, said in an interview with France2 television that he was moved to return to politics by the "hopelessness, anger and lack of future" that he senses among the French.

A Section on 09/22/2014

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