The World - Sept. 22, 2011

THURSDAY

Striking teachers in Tacoma returned to picket lines in defiance of a back-to-work order, forcing school officials to cancel classes for 28,000 students for a third straight day.

NASA’s Kepler spacecraft found a planet, named Kepler-16b, which orbits around two waltzing stars, the first time such a phenomenon has been confirmed. Unlike Luke Skywalker’s rocky desert home planet of Tattooine, however, Kepler-16b is a cool gas giant.

Evolta, a Panasonic-built robot, has been entered into Hawaii’s grueling Ironman Triathlon. The robot will have to swim, run and bike for a total of approximately 230 km. Evolta has been given 168 hours to complete the course, which is ten times longer than it would take a sportsman.

Supermodel and TV host Heidi Klum is the most dangerous celebrity in cyberspace, saddling computer users with malware and viruses on one of every 10 searches.

FRIDAY

A pet rabbit was honored for saving its owners from a house fire in Ketchikan, Alaska. The rabbit scratched her owner’s chest, allowing her and her daughter to flee the inferno. The rabbit later died of smoke inhalation.

Ruth Angelica Gomez, 18, Horizon City, Texas, faces charges that she duped her hometown into giving her $17,000 because they erroneously believed she was dying of cancer.

Los Angeles Lakers Ron Artest officially became Metta World Peace when a Los Angeles Superior Court Commissioner approved the name change. Artest was given a lengthy suspension in 2004, after brawling with fans in a game in Detroit.

WEEKEND

A vintage military T-28 airplane crashed in a fireball on Saturday at a West Virginia air show, killing pilot John “Flash” Mangan of North Carolina, a day after a World War II P-51 Mustang fighter plane crashed at a Nevada show, killing 11 and injuring more than 50 others.

Tribal, state and federal officials began the process of removing the 108-foot-tall Elwha Dam on the Elwha River near Port Angeles. The 98-year-old dam is the largest dam to be removed in U.S. history, and cut salmon populations on the Elwha from some 300,000 to roughly 3,000.

A grizzly bear attacked and killed a Nevada man whose friend moments earlier had shot and wounded the animal during a hunting trip in northwest Montana.

Bridgette Jordan, 22, a 27-inch tall college student from Kentucky whose hobbies include dancing and cheerleading, was named by Guinness World Records as the world’s shortest woman.

MONDAY

Wildlife officials discovered thousands of dead white bass along the Arkansas River in Little Rock. Most were found near the foot of the Two Rivers Bridge, an 80-foot pedestrian bridge that opened in July.

Two Marines were killed when their helicopter crashed during a training mission at Camp Pendleton in Southern California. The crash set off a 50-acre brush fire.

The universities of Oklahoma and Texas were given permission to withdraw from the Big 12 conference. Both are reportedly looking to join the Pac-12.

Alaska announced its citizens will receive $1,174 this year from the state as part of its annual dividend payout from Alaska’s oil wealth fund.

TUESDAY

The Pentagon ended its 18-year-old “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, allowing homosexuals to serve openly in the armed forces.

Department of Justice auditors found officials in the DOJ provided some 250 participants at a 2009 conference in Washington D.C. with $16 muffins and $10 cookies.

Leroy Schweitzer, 73, leader of anti-government extremists known as the Montana Freemen and a former ag pilot in Colfax, died of apparent natural causes at the U.S. government’s highest-security prison, Supermax in Florida. Schweitzer was serving a 22-year sentence for various tax, fraud and weapons offenses.

The Republic, Missouri, School Board voted 6-0 to end long-standing bans on two books - “Slaughterhouse-Five” and “Twenty Boy Summer.”

The bodies of 35 people with suspected links to organized crime were dumped on a road in the tourist port city of Veracruz, Mexico. The bodies were piled into two trucks abandoned under a highway bridge about three miles from the city center, horrifying passers-by on the busy thoroughfare.

WEDNESDAY

Rescue workers searched through rubble for survivors of a 6.9 magnitude earthquake that killed at least 100 people in remote Himalayan regions of India, Nepal and Tibet and left thousands stranded, including 400 foreigners.

Compiled by Gazette staff from a variety

of sources.