The World

THURSDAY

A Cessna with more than 20 pounds of marijuana was intercepted by a paif of F-16 fighter jets after it strayed into restricted airspace around President Barack Obama’s helicopter in Los Angeles.

A Cleveland judge sentenced two parents to eight years in prison after they pleaded guilty to failing to get medical help for their eight-year-old boy before he died from a treateable form of cancer.

Sears laid off about 100 of its 6,100 workers at the retailer’s headquarters in Hoffman Estates, Illinois.

Israel Cruz Millan, aka “El Muerto” (“The Dead Man”), was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison for using beatings and kidnapping to run one of the biggest and most violent phony document rings in the U.S.

FRIDAY

Two studies showing how scientists mutated the H5N1 bird flu virus into a form that could cause a deadly human pandemic will be published only after World Health Organization experts fully assess the risks of releasing the information.

Maryland’s House of Delegates approved a measure that would allow same-sex couples to marry, shortly after New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie vetoed a gay marriage bill approved by his state’s legislature.

Fire crews battled a blaze at the BP Cherry Point refinery in Ferndale as flames engulfed a tower at the state’s largest oil refinery.

The U.S. Supreme Court allowed corporations and a political advocacy group to spend freely in Montana’s 2012 elections, putting a hold on a December decision by the Montana Supreme Court that upheld a century-old state law banning independent corporate campaign spending.

Preliminary tests ruled out radiation from Japan’s tsunami-wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant as the cause of mysterious deaths and illness that struck scores of Alaskan seals.

WEEKEND

Three people were killed and as many as eight others were missing on Sunday after an avalanche near the Stevens Pass ski resort.

Elizabeth Smart, who was kidnapped at age 14 from her Utah home and held for what she described as “nine months of hell,” exchanged vows on Saturday with her boyfriend of the past year at a private wedding in Hawaii.

British actor Robert Pattinson, 25, said he may be too old to reprise his role as the eternally-18-year-old vampire Edward Cullen in the “Twilight” movies, should author Stephenie Meyer decide to add another novel to the series.

Christian Alexander Gomez, a 27-year-old convicted murderer, died while on a hunger strike to protest restrictions on access to health, good food, legal services and other amenities in a segregation unit at a California prison.

MONDAY

Foxconn Technology, top maker of Apple’s iPhones and iPads whose factories are under scrutiny over labor practices, has raised wages of its Chinese workers to 1,800 yuan ($290) per month. Pay three years ago was 900 yuan a month.

Monaco Prince Pierre Casiraghi was involved in a brawl at The Double Seven club in the trendy Meatpacking District of New York City.

John Junker, former chief of college football’s Fiesta Bowl, pleaded guilty to forcing bowl employees to contribute $50,000 to political campaigns.

TUESDAY

Euro zone finance ministers agreed to a 130-billion-euro rescue for Greece to avert an imminent chaotic default after forcing Athens to commit to unpopular cuts and private bondholders to take bigger losses.

Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne launched an investigation into accusations by the male lover of Paul Babeu, a tough-on-immigration sheriff, that the lawman threatened to deport him if he made their relationship public.

Sotheby’s will offer the only privately owned version of Edvard Munch’s haunting 1895 work “The Scream” at an auction in New York on May 2 where it expects to fetch more than $80 million, the highest pre-sale value the auctioneer has ever put on a work of art.

A woman pushing her child in a stroller in downtown El Paso, Texas, was struck by an assault rifle bullet fired from across the border in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

WEDNESDAY

The new U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is considering measures to crack down on checking account overdraft fees charged by banks. Members of the agency said the fees, which have brought in about $30 billion for banks the past three years, said the charges “inflict serious economic harm” on consumers.

Legendary American war correspondent Marie Colvin, known by her trademark eyepatch, was killed alongside French photographer Remi Ochik by rockets fired by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces onto protestors in the city of Homs.

Compiled by Gazette staff from a variety

of sources.