Detour...

Are we going back to the Darkest ages of our lives?

Style...

A massive manhunt was underway  for one of France’s most notorious criminals  

In an elaborately orchestrated escape, heavily armed commandos landed a hijacked helicopter on the grounds of the lockup near Paris, overwhelmed guards and whisked gangster Redoine Faid to freedom in just a "few minutes," officials said.

Faid’s escape from Reau Prison, south of Paris, marked the second time in less than five years that he has absconded from a maximum-security penitentiary.  He was serving a 25-year sentence for a botched 2010 armed robbery in which 26-year-old French police officer Aurélie Fouquet was killed during a gun battle.

Crosshairs...

No change to this issue regardless who is chosen. But the two parties will be sounding the highest alarm they got.

Term...

Struck...

Image is not related

The Iowa Supreme Court struck down a law requiring a 72-hour waiting period for women seeking an abortion, ruling that the restriction was unconstitutional and that "autonomy and dominion over one's body go to the very heart of what it means to be free."

Justices noted that the waiting period could force delays, increase costs and in some cases prevent a woman from legally obtaining an abortion. The court's 5-2 decision said the mandatory delay violated the Iowa Constitution because the restrictions on women weren't "narrowly tailored to serve a compelling interest of the state."

"At stake in this case is the right to shape, for oneself, without unwarranted governmental intrusion, one's own identity, destiny, and place in the world. Nothing could be more fundamental to the notion of liberty," the justices wrote.

Romaine...

Tainted irrigation water appears to be the source of a national food poisoning outbreak linked to romaine lettuce, health officials said Thursday.

About 200 people were sickened in the E. coli outbreak and five people died. The outbreak, which started in the spring, is now over, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

The illnesses in 36 states were previously traced to romaine lettuce grown in Yuma, Arizona, which provides most of the romaine sold in the U.S. during the winter.

Earlier, officials tied eight illnesses at a jail in Alaska, unable to find a single farm or packaging or distribution site associated with the break.

Can't Run...

A California man suspected in a decades-old unsolved slaying killed himself when police arrived at his home to serve a search warrant after DNA evidence helped identify him, authorities said.

Stephen Blake Crawford, 72, had been linked to the killing of Arlis Perry, 19, who was found dead at the rear of Memorial Church on the Stanford University campus Oct 12, 1974.

Perry "was found nude from the waist down. She had been molested and beaten," according to the student-run Stanford Daily newspaper.

Crawford was always a person of interest, police said, adding it was only recently that investigators linked him to DNA found on Perry's clothing,

Retracted...

A widely cited study of suicide rates for different occupations in the U.S. has been retracted.

The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention produced the 2016 study that showed the "farming, fishing and forestry" occupational group suffered a higher rate of suicide than any other occupation.

The CDC retracted the study, issuing a notice about errors in the initial data.

Among the errors was mis-classifying farmers into the wrong occupation group, which resulted in being overstated. 

Recklessness...

Prosecutors lodged criminal charges against an Indiana man after he allegedly dropped his gun in Ikea, left the store and a 6-year-old boy picked it up and fired it.

Francis T. Wright, 62, of Camby, Indiana was charged with criminal recklessness committed with a deadly weapon after the child found the gun in the cushions of a couch on display and fired one round, according to a statement from Sgt. Tom Weger of the Fishers Police Department.

Phelan...

Vicky Phelan

One of America's largest labs reached a $8.76 million settlement with an Irish woman who says it mistakenly cleared her of cancer years ago. She is just one of more than 200 women in Ireland found to have been misdiagnosed in a screening program that involved two American labs.

Emma Mhic Mhathuna, who just won the big battle, is still fighting for her life.

A government audit in 2014 found that the labs mistakenly cleared 209 women in Ireland who were later diagnosed with cervical cancer. Since then, 18 of those women have died. But most of the women affected were never told, until one of them, Vicky Phelan, discovered a page from the audit in her medical file in January.