Border wall finalists picked, not named
SAN DIEGO -- The federal government said Friday that it has settled on finalists to design President Donald Trump's proposed border wall with Mexico, but it won't identify them.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection said it will notify finalists over the next several days. It won't say how many there are, but it has said previously that it would pick up to 20 for contracts expected to be valued between $200,000 and $500,000.
An agency document released last month by Senate Democrats says authorities plan to select winners by June 14 to build prototypes in San Diego on a short stretch of land near the Otay Mesa border crossing with Mexico. It picked San Diego partly because the land is federally owned and to compare the prototypes to existing fencing nearby that was breached 800 times in a single year.
The prototypes should be about 30 feet long and 18 to 30 feet high. The agency says a wall design should be impossible to scale without help and should be impenetrable to sledgehammers and battery-operated tools for at least an hour. It should also be aesthetically pleasing from the U.S. side.
Tennessee expands free-tuition program
MEMPHIS -- Tennessee's General Assembly passed a bill to allow older adults without college degrees or certificates to attend community college free of charge.
Gov. Bill Haslam, who is expected to sign it into law, supported the measure's passing. The tuition program is an extension of Haslam's Tennessee Promise program that makes all new high school graduates eligible for free tuition at the state's community colleges and technical schools.
The initiative is part of Haslam's "Drive to 55" campaign to boost the percentage of Tennesseans with higher education degrees or certificates from the current 38 percent to 55 percent by 2025.
The program is expected to cost the state $11 million a year, paid for through lottery proceeds. Both full- and part-time students would be eligible to participate as early as fall 2018.
Amtrak engineer charged in '15 wreck
PHILADELPHIA -- The state's top prosecutor on Friday charged an Amtrak engineer with causing a catastrophe, involuntary manslaughter and other crimes in a deadly 2015 derailment that occurred after he accelerated to 106 mph on a 50 mph curve.
Prosecutors said they were in talks with engineer Brandon Bostian's attorney to have him surrender on the charges.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro expanded on charges a Philadelphia judge approved a day earlier. The judge's order came after the family of a woman killed in the crash sought a private criminal complaint when city prosecutors declined to press charges as Friday's two-year deadline approached.
The judge had signed off on two misdemeanor charges over Rachel Jacobs' death in the May 12, 2015, derailment. Shapiro approved a felony charge of risking or causing a catastrophe and a string of misdemeanors, including eight counts of involuntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment.
The crash killed eight people and injured about 200 others.
Parents sue Palestinian groups in U.S.
CHICAGO -- The parents of a 17-year-old student fatally shot in the West Bank by Hamas terrorists in 1996 filed a federal lawsuit Friday against two Chicago-area Palestinian-American groups to collect on a legal judgment stemming from the death.
Stanley and Joyce Boim filed the lawsuit in Chicago against American Muslims for Palestine and Americans for Justice in Palestine Educational Foundation.
The Boims initially filed a lawsuit in 2000, alleging the American Muslim Society, the Islamic Association for Palestine-National and the Quranic Literacy Institute gave to Palestinian charities that ultimately helped fund terrorism that led to the death of their son, David.
A federal jury entered a $52 million judgment against the charities in 2004, and the trial judge tripled the amount to $156 million. A federal appeals court upheld the judgment in 2008.
The Boims' attorney, Stephen Landes, said the defendants said they had no money to pay the judgment and shut down.
A Section on 05/14/2017