After spending months in a Mexican prison for attempting to carry his great-grandfather’s shotgun into the country, a former Marine has been released and is back in the United States.

Jon Hammar, 27, a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, had been incarcerated in the border city of Matamoros since August. He reportedly was beaten by inmates who also tried to extort money from his family in Florida.

“This is a great day for the Hammar family,” Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) said in a statement late Friday. “I have spoken with the family and can confirm that Jon has been released from Matamoros prison and is back safely in the United States.”

A defense lawyer said Mexican authorities determined Hammar did not intend to break the law, according to the office of Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.).

Patrick Ventrell, acting deputy spokesman for the State Department, said Hammar was reunited with his family at the border after officials with the U.S. Consulate...

In the wake of the deadly school shootings in Newtown, Conn., a newspaper publisher on the other side of the country — in Idaho of all places, where gun ownership is up there with life and liberty as a solemn human right — found himself with a disturbing sense of déjà vu.

John Pfeifer, publisher of the Times-News in Twin Falls, had been publisher of the Daily Chronicle in DeKalb, Ill., in 2008 when five students were shot to death at Northern Illinois University there. In the clamor for new gun-control laws then, he’d opined in a column: “This is a local tragedy in which students from our own university were murdered. Now is not the time to turn the shootings into a political debate.”

Last week, Pfeifer figured he needed urgently to tell his readers something else. For Friday’s paper, he and Editor Autumn Agar cleared the front page. Instead of the usual headlines, stories and photos, they ran simply a column by Pfeifer, along with the names of the...

Sarah Childs might be getting a lump of coal for Christmas. But she's also gotten the gift of a temporary restraining order, which means she can continue giving her neighbors an eyeful.

U.S. District Judge James Brady of the middle district court of Louisiana has ordered Denham Springs, La., officials to leave Childs alone about her home's Christmas display,  the Associated Press reports.

Childs has been fighting with her neighbors, and on Nov. 27 -- as the American Civil Liberties Union put it in a complaint against the city -- "installed on the roof of her house a string of holiday lights in the shape of a human hand with an extended middle finger."

The ACLU included a photo of Childs' one-finger salute, glowing righteously in the night.

The neighbors did not take so kindly to this gesture, and several complained directly to the town's mayor, Jimmy Durbin, the ACLU said. An officer then came by and said Childs would have to take down the lights because she was violating a city...

An Oregon man faces misdemeanor charges of reckless endangerment  after leaving his loaded semi-automatic handgun in a movie theater, where a 12-year-old boy found it.

Tillamook Police Chief Terry Wright said Gary Quackenbush, 61, of Tillamook County left his Beretta at the Coliseum Theatre on Tuesday night, putting people in danger when he failed to call police after noticing it was missing from his holster. 

The next morning, about 150 junior high school students — ages 11 and 12 — sat down to watch "The Hobbit" at the Coliseum. It was a treat for those with good grades on the last day of school before Christmas break, Wright said.

A 12-year-old spotted the gun and alerted a teacher, who secured the weapon and called 911, Wright said. The theater was evacuated and searched before the children were let back in to watch the movie, he said.

“It could have been really tragic,” Wright told the Los Angeles Times. “He placed all those kids in harm’s way.&...

Brody the dog is dead, despite his owner's desperate two-year legal battle to save his life. 

“The dog was euthanized today,” Police Chief John Swenson of Lino Lakes, Minn., said in an email to the Los Angeles Times on Friday.

The Minnesota Supreme Court had ruled this week that Lino Lakes could euthanize Brody, overturning a state appeals court. The city said Brody bit multiple people unprovoked and posed an ongoing danger to the community.

Lino Lakes tried to euthanize Brody two years ago, but the death sentence was on hold pending an appeal by the dog’s owner, Mitchell Sawh.

Sawh told The Times that he visited Brody on Thursday, told him goodbye and said he would see him in heaven. He called the retriever-Rottweiler mix a lovable, peaceful dog that had been misunderstood.

After being informed that Brody was dead, Sawh said, “I don’t know what to do now.”

Sawh had held out hope that the city would allow Brody to go to a special shelter or...

The woman who owns the house that exploded last month in Indianapolis,  leveling much of the neighborhood and leaving two people dead, was arrested Friday along with two others, authorities said, and all three were charged with murder.

Monserrate Shirley, 47, her boyfriend, Mark Leonard, 43, and his brother, Bob Leonard Jr., 54, are accused of intentionally leaking natural gas into the house and then using the kitchen's programmable microwave to trigger the blast.

They were arrested six weeks after the fiery blast rocked the Richmond Hill subdivision, damaging 33 houses so severely that the city ordered them razed.

Killed in the blast were Jennifer Longworth, 36, and her husband, John “Dion” Longworth, 34, who lived next door to Shirley. The explosion injured 12 other people and caused an estimated $4 million in damage.

Marion County Prosecutor Terry Curry said Friday that investigators believe the Nov. 10 explosion at Shirley’s home, which blew from the inside out,...

Four people died on a rural Pennsylvania highway Friday when a gunman killed three people and later died in a shootout with police, authorities said. Three state troopers were injured, one of whom was saved from worse wounds by the bulletproof vest he wore.

The incident comes as the nation remained on edge a week after a gunman invaded a western Connecticut elementary school, killing 20 children and six adults before committing suicide in the building.

It also comes as gun control remains a major topic on the political agenda with the Obama administration and some Democrats seeking to craft tougher federal proposals while the National Rifle Assn., the lobbying group, vowed it would continue to fight new restrictions and insisted the better path was to increase armed security.

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” NRA chief Wayne LaPierre said at a televised Washington news conference.

Authorities were still sorting through the events...

The first major winter storm of the season continued to pound its way through the Midwest across the Great Lakes on Friday, creating travel chaos just in time for the holiday travel weekend.

More than 1,000 airline flights have been canceled in the past days and roads have been made hazardous by snow, ice and winds. At least eight people have died because of storm-related conditions.

The storm, working its way eastward, first made an impact in the Rockies and then plowed through the nation, dropping more than a foot of snow on Iowa, Wisconsin and Michigan.

“Blizzard and winter storm warnings remain in effect through Friday night or Saturday for the Great Lakes and central Appalachians, where heavy snow will combine with strong winds to produce dangerous travel conditions. Meanwhile, low temperatures Friday night will drop into the single digits or slightly below zero for the north central U.S.,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.

The National Weather...

Indiana prosecutors on Friday charged three people with murder, alleging they intentionally blew up an Indianapolis house -- a massive explosion that tore through the neighborhood and killed a couple living next door.

Monserrate Shirley, who owned the house, her boyfriend, Mark Leonard, and his brother, Bob Leonard, were arrested Friday morning, six weeks after the blast rocked the Richmond Hill subdivision, leaving 33 houses so damaged that they had to be razed.

Marion County Prosecutor Terry Curry told reporters Friday that investigators believe the Nov. 10 explosion at Shirley’s home was started in a microwave oven. He said the house had been filling with gas for hours.

The blast damaged most of the homes in the subdivision, blowing open doors and forcing residents in the 126-house neighborhood to evacuate. Killed were Dion and Jennifer Longworth, who lived next door. The explosion also injured 12 people and caused an estimated $4 million in damage.

The trio has also been...

NEWTOWN, Conn. -- Exactly one week ago, a gunman forced his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School, killing 20 children and six adults. On Friday, this grief-wrenched town and the nation stopped to commemorate the precise moment of the attack that has shaken a country to its core.

To the sound of tolling bells, 26 mournful peals, officials gathered in the cold and wet to remember the tragedy. Outside Town Hall, Newtown residents and visitors huddled next to local and state officials and police as church bells began sounding.

After the echoes rang across Main Street, silence engulfed the porch of Town Hall. All that could be heard was the pelting rain, a weeping woman and a few cars gliding slowly past.

The inclement weather drenched mountains of teddy bears, flowers and candles across the city. Joe Saleem struggled with a friend to protect the ad hoc memorials with plastic tarps.

“I’ve been through divorce. I’ve had a great friend commit suicide. But honestly. I've...

WASHINGTON -- Hail to the 51st state.

Statehood for the District of Columbia is a long way off, but retiring Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) has introduced the New Columbia Admissions Act to put the issue on the front burner on Capitol Hill.

"It is long past time to give these American citizens who have chosen Washington as their home full participation in our democracy," Lieberman said in introducing the bill this week.

The District’s lack of a vote in Congress has long been a sore point in the city, which features "Taxation without representation" on its license plates. D.C. residents pay federal taxes and can vote for president but have no senator, and only a nonvoting delegate in the House.

In 1993, the House  rejected a bill to make the district a state. The idea faced resistance from a number of Republicans because the strongly Democratic district would probably elect two Democratic senators and a Democratic member of the House if it became a state.

A bill that would have...