Grappling with increasingly crowded Southland freeways, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board on Thursday said it will seek to convert some of Los Angeles County’s most popular car-pool lanes to toll roads.
Under the plan, solo drivers could use the car-pool lanes if they pay a toll.
Vehicles with two or more occupants – which currently use the lanes for free – would also pay a toll, although less than solo drivers.
It’s unclear how the plan would apply to hybrids. . .
Sudanese protesters demand death for teddy teacher
KHARTOUM (Reuters) – Hundreds of Sudanese Muslims, waving green Islamic flags, took to the streets of Khartoum on Friday demanding death for the British teacher convicted of insulting Islam after her class named a teddy bear Mohammad.
“No one lives who insults the Prophet,” the protesters chanted, a day after school teacher Gillian Gibbons, 54, was sentenced to 15 days in jail and deportation from Sudan.
In a bid to secure her early release, Lord Ahmed, a Muslim peer from Britain’s ruling Labor party in the House of Lords upper house, left London on Friday. . .
Did kin aid disposal of Stacy Peterson’s body?
The night Stacy Peterson went missing, her police officer husband’s stepbrother confided to a close friend that he believed he had just helped dispose of the 23-year-old woman’s body, the friend said Friday on TODAY.
The stepbrother, Tom Morphey, so feared Drew Peterson and was so distraught that he might have helped Peterson remove his wife’s body from the couple’s Bolingbrook, Ill., home that he tried to take his own life two days later, according to Morphey’s friend, Kevin Martinek Jr.
“His eyes were sunken in the back of his head,” Martinek told TODAY co-host Meredith Vieira in describing Morphey’s appearance at his home shortly before 11 p.m. on Oct. 28. . .
Some Parents Complain About School’s Treatment Of Collapsed Boy
The 11-year-old boy, Austin Cook, became dizzy and collapsed during his physical education course while running laps at John Muir Elementary School. He was treated by paramedics and underwent surgery at a hospital, but died later in the day.
Complaining parents said the other children who were running with Cook were told to continue running around him, as he lay waiting for paramedics. They believe it was insensitive to compel the other children to continue running after they witnessed their schoolmate’s collapse. One child told KNBC that she felt the supervising physical education instructors were also insensitive to Cook when he slowed down prior to his collapse.
But the school said they were not insensitive and that once the paramedics arrived, the other children were led away from the scene. . .
