Denver Zoo hatches 4 Komodo dragons

DENVER – The Denver Zoo says it's become the only zoo in the world to hatch endangered Komodo dragons for a third time.
The zoo said Thursday that in its latest feat, four dragons have hatched and four are still in the incubator.
Denver Zoo Curator of Reptiles and Fishes Rick Haeffner says the zoo is only the second one in North America to hatch the dragons this year.
The four should be on display in the nursery soon.
Komodo dragons are the world's largest species of lizard and can grow to be 10 feet long and more than 250 pounds. They have a vicious bite and have about 60 razor-sharp, serrated teeth up to 1 inch long.
Between 3,000 and 5,000 Komodo dragons are left in the wild.

McMurray upstages Chase drivers for Charlotte win

CONCORD, N.C. – Jamie McMurray has picked up another victory in his comeback season, beating all the championship contenders at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
McMurray is not eligible for the Chase for the Sprint Cup championship. But he blew past title contender Kyle Busch on a restart with 21 laps to go in Saturday night's race to earn his third win of the year.
McMurray also won the season-opening Daytona 500 and the Brickyard 400.
Busch had the most dominant car but settled for second after a late caution erased his lead and gave McMurray the opening he needed to take the win.
Four-time defending series champion Jimmie Johnson came back from an early spin that dropped him to 37th to finish third.

Swiss celebrate digging world's longest tunnel

More intellectually disabled youths go to college

WARRENSBURG, Mo. – Zach Neff is all high-fives as he walks through his college campus in western Missouri. The 27-year-old with Down syndrome hugs most everybody, repeatedly. He tells teachers he loves them.
"I told Zach we are putting him on a hug diet — one to say hello and one to say goodbye," said Joyce Downing, who helped start a new program at the University of Central Missouri that serves students with disabilities.

Discovery of GPS tracker becomes privacy issue

SAN FRANCISCO – Yasir Afifi, a 20-year-old computer salesman and community college student, took his car in for an oil change earlier this month and his mechanic spotted an odd wire hanging from the undercarriage.
The wire was attached to a strange magnetic device that puzzled Afifi and the mechanic. They freed it from the car and posted images of it online, asking for help in identifying it.
Two days later, FBI agents arrived at Afifi's Santa Clara apartment and demanded the return of their property — a global positioning system tracking device now at the center of a raging legal debate over privacy rights.
One federal judge wrote that the widespread use of the device was straight out of George Orwell's novel, "1984".

NC police: Missing girl seen alive in September

HICKORY, N.C. – A missing 10-year-old North Carolina girl was seen in public as recently as two weeks before she was reported missing, police said Saturday, narrowing an uncertain timeline that has hindered their investigation.
Investigators said previously they couldn't find anyone outside Zahra Clare Baker's household who had seen her alive in more than a month. That uncertainty has made it difficult for police to narrow places to search for the girl whose bone cancer left her with hearing aids and a prosthetic leg.
Zahra was reported missing Oct. 9, but investigators have said they don't believe the story given by her father and stepmother. Police believe the girl is dead.
A police news release said only that Zahra was seen in public on Sept. 25, and they declined to comment further.

Corbett, Onorato square off in 2nd Pa. gov debate

PITTSBURGH – Republican gubernatorial front-runner Tom Corbett broadened his no-new-taxes pledge Saturday during a televised debate with Democratic rival Dan Onorato, saying it also rules out increases in fees — such as motor-vehicle levies — or employee contributions to the state unemployment trust fund.
Corbett's shift in position came early in an hourlong debate in which the candidates also sparred over the question of taxing Pennsylvania's booming natural gas industry and disagreed on a bill that would expand Pennsylvanians' right to use deadly force against an attacker.

October 11-17: Alicia Keys Gives Birth To Baby Boy

Newlyweds Alicia Keys, 29, and husband Swizz Beatz, 32, are now the proud parents of their first child together, a baby boy, a spokesperson for Keys confirmed to usmagazine.com Friday. The child, Egypt Daoud Dean, was born Thursday night in New York.
Before making the official announcement, Beatz sent a blissful tweet Thursday night.  "I'm so thankful for everything I been blessed with in my life wowwwwww!" he wrote, seemingly out of the blue, on his Twitter page.