Richard Schoenfeld, the convicted kidnapper who took 26 schoolchildren and their bus driver in Chowchilla, Calif., and buried them alive in a rock quarry 36 years ago, is expected to be released from prison within the next week, NBC Bay Area has learned. 

That is a big change from the 2021 parole date that Schoenfeld was last given.

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But in a statement Friday to NBCBayArea.com, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman Luis Patino said:  "Schoenfeld will be released to an undisclosed location during the second half of the month of June 2012. As this is a developing situation, no other details are available at this time.”

See the original story at NBCBayArea.com

Patino added that the prison body has "been informed that the California Supreme Court has declined to review an appellate court's earlier decision granting immediate parole to Richard Schoenfeld. As such CDCR does not have any legal option other than to release inmate Shoenfeld and will do so."

Schoenfeld, his brother, James Schoenfeld, and Frederick Woods kidnapped 26 children and their bus driver on July 15, 1976, buried them alive in a rock quarry in Livermore, Calif., and then planned to demand a $5 million ransom. The victims miraculously escaped.

Frank Edward Ray, the school bus driver hailed as a hero for helping lead the children to safety after 16 hours underground, died May 17 at the age of 91 in Chowchilla.

In March, the First District Court ruled that California's Board of Parolee Hearings improperly calculated Schoenfeld's release date after determining in 2008 that he could be safely paroled.

James Schoenfeld and Woods never have been found suitable for parole by the state board.

The trio, who were in their mid-20s at the time of the kidnapping, said they had fallen into debt because of a failed real estate deal and hatched the elaborate kidnapping as a way to rid themselves of financial worry, The Associated Press reported.

Laws in effect in 1977 when the three pleaded guilty made Richard Schoenfeld, and who hailed from a wealthy family in upscale Atherton, Calif., eligible for parole after only six months, but like the others, his parole was routinely denied, largely because of the seriousness of his crimes.

There have been a series of significant dates in Schoenfeld's legal case:

In 2008, the parole board ruled that Schoenfeld "would not pose an unreasonable risk of danger to society or a threat to public safety if released from prison."

But in August 2009, a second panel decided against granting parole to Schoenfeld, saying that a third panel should consider whether granting parole would be "improvident."

On April 5, 2011, the third panel held its hearing on the matter at the California Men's Colony in San Luis Obispo, where all three kidnappers are being held, and it ruled that parole would be appropriate for Schoenfeld.

But the panel said that based on its calculations Schoenfeld should not be released until November 2021.

However, the First District Court of Appeal said the parole panel "erred" because it violated its own rules and lacked authority to increase Schoenfeld's sentence after finding him suitable for parole.

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A Connecticut hiker who had been missing for a week was found severely dehydrated with a broken leg just before the search for him was to end, authorities said.

A state worker found Richard Roncarti, 50, around 12:30 p.m. Thursday in the Beacon Falls section of the Naugatuck State Forest.  

He was rescued just minutes before the search was going to be called off, officials said. 

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Read the original report on NBCConnecticut.com

Crews said Roncarti was stranded in the Naugatuck State Forest with severe injuries after falling 100 feet and having no food or water for seven days. The area is a few miles south of Waterbury.

Emergency crews said he was lucky to be alive.

“He looked like he had been in the weather a few days. He was beat up pretty good,” Chief Michael Pratt, of the Beacon Falls Fire Department, said. 

Pratt said the hiker from Watertown had no idea he was stranded in the Naugatuck State Forest for so long.

Roncarti’s family reported him missing last Thursday night. His vehicle was found over the weekend, parked in the parking lot of the state forest, but there was no sign of him until yesterday.

“He said, 'I’ve been out here seven days.' After seven days you don’t think positive. You don’t think you're going to find someone alive,” Pratt admitted.

Roncarti was taken to Waterbury Hospital on Thursday and is being treated for non-life threatening injuries. He is expected to be released in the next few days.

Firefighters said he had a broken leg, possibly a broken hip, and he was severely dehydrated.

“Yes it could have been a lot worse ... it could have been fatal,” said Pratt.

Emergency crews said Roncarti was nearly impossible to find because he didn’t have a cell phone. 

They want all hikers to make sure they were prepared for a worst-case scenario when they hit the trails this summer. 

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Jerry Sandusky's defense will be allowed to call an expert witness to testify that some of his behavior and letters to young boys are manifestations of a personality disorder and not evidence that he was "grooming" the boys for sex, the judge in his child sexual abuse trial ruled Friday.

Sandusky, 68, the former longtime defensive coordinator for Penn State University's football team, is on trial on 52 counts alleging that he abused 10 boys over 15 years. Two grand jury reports accused him of having used his connection to one of the nation's premier college football programs to "groom" the boys, whom he met through his Second Mile charity for troubled children, for sexual relationships. He has denied all charges.

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Defense lawyers this week filed a motion seeking permission to introduce expert testimony from a psychologist that Sandusky has "histrionic personality disorder."

Histrionic means "dramatic" or "theatrical." People with the disorder desperately seek the approval of others and behave dramatically or inappropriately to get attention, according to the Cleveland Clinic, one of the nation's leading medical centers.

Does it matter if Sandusky has a personality disorder?

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The motion, which was filed Monday in Centre County Court in Bellefonte, Pa., says the testimony would offer a "fair explanation of these letters that is consistent with innocence."

"The jury should not be mislead (sic) into believing these statements and actions are likely grooming when hey (sic) are just as likely or more likely Histrionic in origin," it says.

Read the full defense motion (.pdf)

Judge John Cleland ordered that Sandusky would also have to be available for a psychiatric examination by a prosecution expert. It wasn't immediately clear whether the examination would delay the trial, but as of late Friday afternoon, court was still scheduled to resume Monday at 9 a.m. ET after prosecutors presented their case this week.

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The Obama administration's announcement Friday that it would defer deporting most young illegal immigrants poses a dilemma for those who are eligible, as they must take a leap of faith that they won't jump to the head of the line for deportation if a future president rescinds the order.

Under the order, the Obama administration wouldn't seek to deport illegal immigrants under 30 who entered the U.S. as children and meet certain other residency and education requirements for the next two years. They also would be eligible to apply for work permits, the Department of Homeland Security said. DHS is the parent agency of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The order could apply to as many as 800,000 young illegal immigrants, officials estimated. The Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center, said later that even more immigrants — as many as 1.4 million children and young adults — could meet the eligibility requirements. That would be about 12 percent of the 11.2 million illegal immigrants estimated to be in the U.S. as of 2010.

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But it's not at all certain how many of them will seek to take advantage of the order. That's because it requires eligible immigrants to step forward and ask for the deferment every two years.

Even though President Barack Obama said Friday that the order would "lift the shadow of deportation" over illegal immigrants who were brought to the U.S. while they were children, a future administration could choose to overturn the regulation, jeopardizing those who have identified themselves to the government as illegal immigrants.

A senior administration official, who briefed reporters on the policy Friday on condition of anonymity, conceded that "the executive can always change its mind about how to exercise discretion."

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For Yelky Ramos, 20, a recent college graduate who came from the Dominican Republic when she was 13, the change means she should be able to get a job.

"We just hope that the way they're going to implement it is going to be fair to the undocumented youth and it won't be a trap, in which people will be applying for this type of deferral and then find themselves … (in) legal proceedings that might lead to deportation," Ramos told msnbc.com. 

Even before Obama appeared in the White House Rose Garden to discuss the order Friday afternoon, Democratic campaign officials were trying to place responsibility for any such "trap" on Republicans, sending reporters "talking points" highlighting previous statements on immigration by Mitt Romney. 

Romney, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, has said he would veto an immigration bill known as the DREAM Act, which would enact many of the policies the White House announced Friday. The measure has passed in the Democratic-led House but has been blocked in the Republican-led Senate.

The memos were meant to get the message out that a vote for Romney — who trails Obama by a significant margin among Latino voters — would be a vote to rescind Friday's order.

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano told NBC News that there was no immediate danger of applicants' being targeted for deportation, saying the order would be binding for the next two years regardless of who is president. That means Romney, if elected in November, could overturn it as early as 2014, however.

Rep. Charles Gonzalez, D-Texas, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, praised Obama on Friday for "taking action to avoid further injustices against young people." 

But "a legislative remedy is still needed," he said.

Until one emerges, illegal immigrants must meet a narrowly specific set of requirements to be eligible for immunity, which DHS outlined in an eight-page document Friday:

• They must be younger than 30.
• They must have been brought to the U.S. before their 16th birthdays.
• They must have been in the country for five continuous years.
• They must have no criminal history.
• They must have graduated from an American high school, earned an equivalent degree or served in the U.S. military.
• They must pass a government background check.

Read the full DHS document (.pdf)

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A billionaire hedge-fund manager on Friday pledged to protect 90,000 acres of his Colorado ranch from further development as part of a much larger planned conservation area. The Obama administration said it would be the "largest single conservation easement" ever provided to the federal government. 

The easement, which would include tax benefits for New York-based Louis Bacon, provides "the foundation for the proposed new Sangre de Cristo Conservation Area," the Interior Department announced.

Should the conservation area happen, Bacon said Friday, "I will place approximately 90,000 currently unprotected acres of the Blanca portion of Trinchera Ranch into a conservation easement."

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who grew up in the area and announced the deal with Bacon at his side, said the ranch "is in one of the most beautiful places in the country" -- and home to three peaks above 14,000 feet that are in the center of the longest U.S. mountain chain. 

Conserving the land will protect the region's water and wildlife, Salazar told reporters. The region is used as a corridor by bison, cougars, black bears, bighorn sheep, elk and deer, and borders the Great Sand Dunes National Park.

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The proposed conservation area -- which would be much larger than Bacon's ranch -- "remains largely unchanged and is a place where wildlife can migrate between the high prairies of eastern New Mexico and the high mountain valleys of central Colorado," an Interior team that scouted the area last year reported.

"Maintaining such an open corridor is important for species survival and overall ecosystem health," the team added. "There are few other places in the southwestern United States where such an open and unchanged landscape exists."

Bacon, ranked by Forbes as the 312th richest American with a $1.4 billion estimated net worth, bought the 172,000-acre Trinchera Ranch from the family of billionaire Malcolm Forbes in 2007 for $175 million -- which media reports at the time called the most expensive single property ever sold in the U.S.

The Forbes family had earlier placed more than 80,000 acres of the ranch in a conservation easement.

Easements allow continued ranching and hunting but no construction of significant structures. They also provide tax incentives to property owners.

"The conservation incentives are incredibly efficient ways of conserving land," Greg Yankee, policy director for the Colorado Coalition of Land Trusts, told msnbc.com.

Colorado grants a maximum $375,000 tax credit for any easement, he added, and a property owner who meets all the criteria could also list the easement as a federal income tax deduction.

The Interior Department did not immediately respond to a request for how much Bacon could expect. 

Billionaire Ted Turner, founder of CNN, owns the largest parcel inside the proposed conservation area -- the 600,000-acre Vermejo Ranch.

Salazar told the Denver Post that while he's had conversations with Turner, there were no specific proposals in the works.

"It'll happen over the next several years," Salazar said of the larger conservation area. "It's important that, as the conservation efforts move forward, that it be done with full cognizance of the need to honor water rights and property rights on the valley floor."

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BOYNTON BEACH, Fla. - A woman who was set on fire at a gas station says she's being victimized again, this time by hundreds of dollars in car towing fees levied by the state of Florida.

Naomie Breton, 34, has to pay $340 for having her car towed from the gas station where police say the father of her son set her on fire Monday, television station WPBF of Palm Beach, Fla., reported.

"I think it's a disgrace," Breton told WPBF. "It's not like I had a choice of where my car went to. I was on fire. So therefore, my car is here now and I have to pay you to get what's mine back? That's not right."

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Adding insult to injury, Breton also is on the hook for the $363 towing bill -- plus the $25-a-day late fee -- owed by the man accused of attacking her, Roosevelt Mondesir, WPBF reported.

Both his and her names are on the car. Mondesir, 52, is behind bars at the Palm Beach County Jail, being held without bail on a charge of attempted first-degree murder.

Boynton Beach police said they responded to a 7-Eleven at 7088 Lawrence Road and found Breton with severe burns to her face and body, according to a probable cause affidavit obtained by NBCMiami.com. Parts of her shirt were still on fire on the ground, it said.

Store surveillance video showed the woman running into the convenience store, screaming as she tried to shut the front door. She could be heard telling a man to leave her alone, and then a man pulls her out of the store. Moments later she ran by outside ablaze.

Breton had driven to the gas station in her Mercedes to meet Mondesir for their "time-sharing exchange" of their 4-year-old son, for whom they share custody, the affidavit said.  As she waited at the gas pumps in her car, Mondesir arrived in a Jaguar and Breton realized her son was not in the car, the affidavit said. She wanted to get back in her car to leave, but he got out of his car with a red gas can and began dousing her body and car with gasoline, according to the report.

Breton was burned over 12 percent of her body and was released Tuesday from Delray Medical Center. Breton told the Palm Beach Post from her Lantana, Fla., home that she wouldn't have been attacked if Palm Beach County Judge Thomas Barkdyll had granted her a restraining order in late May.

“They said there wasn’t enough physical evidence,” the single mother of three told the Post.

She told the Post that she and Mondesir had been together for eight years but that he became verbally abusive and violent after she did not give him a definite answer to a Valentine’s Day marriage proposal.

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Authorities say a San Francisco couple dispensed their own brand of justice by gunning down their 17-year-old daughter's pimp, the Los Angeles Times reported. 

Prosecutors say Barry Laprell Gilton, 38, and Lupe Mercado, 37, had attempted once before to kill 22-year-old Calvin Sneed in May but were unsuccessful.

In a second attempt, Sneed was sitting in his car on June 4 when Gilton fired a .40-caliber weapon from another vehicle, killing him, the Times quoted officials as saying.

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Gilton and Mercado each have been charged with one count of murder, one count of discharging a firearm into an occupied motor vehicle and one count of conspiracy to commit murder. Gilton faces an additional charge of possession of a firearm as a felon because of a 1995 drug-related conviction, the Times reported. They are being held on $2 million bail each.

According to Gilton's lawyer, Eric Safire, there isn't enough evidence to tie the parents to the murder.

"There is some circumstantial evidence, and there's certainly a motive, but there is no direct evidence that we've been made aware of," Safire told the Times.

The couple's daughter left home about a year ago and they discovered she was appearing in escort ads and working for Sneed. They tried to persuade her to return home, the newspaper said.

During an attempt on Sneed's life on May 27, Gilton fired a handgun at him while he sat in a car in North Hollywood, the Times quoted officials as saying. Police said Sneed was injured by shattered glass but refused to cooperate with police.

The weekend before the second shooting, officials said, the daughter visited a sick relative and argued with her parents, who insisted that Sneed leave, the Times reported.

Assistant District Attorney George Gascón said at a news conference that he felt the parents' anger and frustration, but that vilgilante justice will not be tolerated, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. 

"Killing someone in a situation other than defense of serious bodily injury or death is not an acceptable solution," Gascón told reporters.

 Authorities said Sneed was a member of the Nutty Block Crips in Compton, outside Los Angeles, and was the victim of a drive-by shooting last year, the Chronicle reported. 

His father, Charles Sneed, said his son wasn't in a gang but had been shot at many times, the Chronicle reported. He said he tried to convince the younger Sneed to change his ways and tried to stage an intervention but no other family member backed him, the paper reported. 

He said he would have returned the girl to her home and tried to persuade his son to stop being a pimp if he had known what was going on. 

"Weigh it up," he told the Chronicle. "You can call him the dirtiest low-down dog in the world, but if he wasn't killing anybody, he didn't deserve that."

  

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Authorities say a man who claimed to have been the victim of a drive-by shooting in Montana confessed to shooting himself, The Associated Press reported. 

 

Ray Dolin, 39, of West Virginia, told police he was walking along U.S. 2 near Glasgow when a pickup pulled over and the driver rolled down his window and shot him in the arm. Dolin, a freelance photographer, said he had been hitchhiking across the country working on a memoir titled "The Kindness of America" when the incident happened.

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Valley County Sheriff Glen Meier told msnbc.com on Monday that Dolin flagged down another motorist and was taken to the hospital in Glasgow with non-life-threatening injuries.

Authorities arrested 52-year-old Christopher Danielson III, 52, of Washington state, and charged him with felony assault. They said he was under the influence of alcohol and drugs at the time. The charges have since been dropped, the AP said.

No charges have been filed against Dolin. Valley County Undersheriff Vernon Buerkle said the case is still under investigation, the AP reported. 

No one at the Valley County Sheriff's Office's was immediately available when reached for comment. 

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Updated at 3:20 p.m. ET: In what both sides described as a momentous ruling, a jury in Oakland, Calif., has found that Jehovah’s Witnesses was partly responsible for the alleged sexual abuse of a girl by one of its members and must pay her more than $20 million.

The Alameda County Superior Court jury on Thursday awarded $21 million in punitive damages to the plaintiff, who is now 26 years old. That was on top of the $7 million in compensatory damages it awarded her on Wednesday.

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The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ legal entity, is responsible for the entire punitive damages amount and 40 percent of the compensatory damages, said Rick Simons, attorney for the plaintiff. Sixty percent of the compensatory damages was assessed against Jonathan Kendrick, the man accused of abusing her.

Candace Conti sued Watchtower, the Fremont, Calif., congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses and Kendrick in 2011. It’s msnbc.com’s policy not to identify victims of sexual abuse, but Conti agreed to be identified so that any other victims would feel they could come forward too.

"The ultimate goal of the lawsuit was to have a change in policy, to be able to ID these people, child molesters, to the congregation to protect children," Conti told msnbc.com. "Secondarily, to have silent ones come forward and tell their stories and to bring to light that overall issue of violence and the hush-hush policy."

Both her parents were Watchtower congregation members at the time of the abuse, she said.

"I was trying to be the best Jehovah’s Witness I could be at that time," she told msnbc.com.

Jim McCabe, attorney for the Fremont congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses, said that he was “stunned” by the verdict and would appeal.

“This is the first case I know of where a church has been hit with liability involving a rank-and-file member,” he told msnbc.com.

“Mr. Simons has his twist on the facts and we will see how a court of appeals views the trial court rulings and the evidence,” McCabe said.

The jury found that the elders who managed the Fremont congregation in the 1990s and who were under the supervision of Watchtower knew that Kendrick, a member, had recently been convicted of the sexual abuse of another child, but they kept his past record secret from the congregation, said Simons.

Kendrick went on to molest the plaintiff, who was a Jehovah's Witness member in Fremont, over a two-year period beginning when she was 9 years old, the lawsuit contended.

Kendrick was eventually convicted in 2004 of the sexual abuse of another girl, and is now a registered sex offender in California, Simons said. He has not been criminally charged with abusing the plaintiff, but Simons said the case is under investigation by law enforcement.

Watch US News videos on msnbc.com

Kendrick was not in court for the trial and msnbc.com could not immediately find a contact number for him.

The California sex offender registry lists two convictions for him: lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14 years of age and sexual battery involving a restrained person.

The lawsuit alleged that Watchtower had a policy that instructed elders in its Jehovah’s Witnesses congregations to keep reports of child sex abusers within the religious group secret to avoid lawsuits.

“The verdict is significant because the policy of hiding sex abusers within the congregation was out in this case,” Simons said.

He also said the judgment was “one of the largest in the country for a child sex abuse single victim in a religious institution molestation case.”

Jehovah's Witnesses is a Christian denomination noted for its nontraditional interpretation of the Bible. Members are best known for their door-to-door preaching, distributing literature such as The Watchtower and Awake! magazines.

Conti filed the lawsuit after trying, without success, to get Jehovah’s Witnesses in Southern California and in Fremont to change the secrecy policy, Simons said.

“There was no settlement demand from her because she felt the only way to expose this policy and make it change was to bring this case to trial and make it public,” he said.

“The money is the only way left for her to force Jehovah’s Witnesses to stop keep hiding known sex offenders within their congregation.”

McCabe denied Jehovah’s Witnesses has a secrecy policy concerning child sex abuse. He called the verdict "unprecedented."

“We’re stunned by the verdict. We hate child abuse and everything to do with it.”

McCabe said he was not aware of any other case in which a religious organization has been found liable for wrongdoing by a member who was not in an official position of responsibility.

“We’ve got a long ways to go yet before this one is resolved,” he said of the planned appeal.

Simons said Jehovah’s Witnesses has sufficient resources, including valuable real estate, to cover the judgment but an appeal could drag out for years.  

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An 8-month-old infant boy was mauled and killed by at least one dog Thursday evening in a San Diego suburb, according to the county Sheriff's Department.

Up to three dogs may have been involved in the attack, which happened just before 5 p.m. on the 3000 block of West Street in Lemon Grove, east of downtown San Diego, NBCSanDiego.com reported.

The circumstances of the attack were unclear, but deputies arrived within four minutes of getting the call, San Diego sheriff's homicide Lt. Larry Nesbit told The San Diego Union-Tribune.

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Read the story at NBCSanDiego.com 

The child was pronounced dead at Rady's Children Hospital, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Authorities confirmed that three pit bulls were hauled away from the scene by Animal Control officers, NBCSanDiego.com reported. 

"They were aggressive," Nesbit told NBCSanDiego.com. "They were restrained by animal control officers with the tools they have."

It's not clear if the boy's family owned the dogs or if the attack happened at their home.

"I can’t even imagine losing a child and to know that a family pet did it," next-door neighbor Regina Marlow told NBCSanDiego.com. "That’s horrific. I can’t even imagine what the family would be going through."

Neighbor Deirdra Canty said the dogs had been known to attack cats before.

"I don’t think that a dog like a pit bull, rottweiler, large dogs should be around little infants," Canty said.

Msnbc.com staff contributed to this report from Monica Garske and Lauren Steussy at NBCSanDiego.com.

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Updated 6:35 p.m.: A scrubs-clad body found in a ravine south of Buffalo, N.Y., is the trauma surgeon suspected of shooting his ex-girlfriend at a hospital, police said Friday. He was killed by a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head, they said.

The body of Timothy Jorden was found in the woods along Eighteenmile Creek behind his home in Lake View, N.Y. One of Jorden’s neighbors had told police Thursday that he heard a gunshot in the area around 9 a.m. on Wednesday morning.

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Police launched a nationwide manhunt for Jorden, 49, after hospital administrative assistant Jacqueline Wisniewski, 33, of West Seneca, was found dead in a stairwell at the Erie County Medical Center in Buffalo.

Jorden was considered armed and dangerous. He joined the National Guard in high school, went into the Army after graduation and served with the Army’s Special Forces, first as a weapons expert, then as a medic in the Caribbean, Japan and Korea.

Police Commissioner Daniel Derenda at a Friday evening news conference said Jorden apparently planned the killing and suicide. Jorden, he said, had withdrawn about $36,000 and had been giving away gifts of cash.

No suicide note was found, Derenda said.

A personal video surveillance system at his home showed Jorden returned to his residence at 8:37 a.m. immediately following the shooting at the hospital, returned to his car and re-entered the house and four minutes later went out his back door to the woods behind his home, he said. Hamburg and Buffalo police found the body Friday morning. A handgun of the same type used in the killing was found in his hand, Derenda said.

Hospital video had shown Jorden toting a handgun and a shotgun before the shooting, he said. Jorden apparently lured Wisniewski to the stairwell through a 17-minute phone conversation with her. He shot her five times with the handgun, Derenda said.

A friend of Wisniewski’s told WIVB-TV that she used to live with Jorden but left him because she believed he was having affairs with other women. But, Heather Shipley said, “when they broke up, he wouldn’t let go.”

She said Jorden had once held Wisniewski captive in her home for a day and a half, wielding a knife, and he also put a GPS tracking device in her car.

“She told me if anything happened to her,” Shipley said, “that it was him.”

Neighbors and colleagues said they suspected something was wrong with Jorden, a decorated surgeon and respected community member, when he began putting less effort into things he previously cared about, became less friendly, and changed his appearance.

“I saw him at the beginning of the season and noticed how much weight he had lost,” June DuPree, a neighbor of Jorden’s in an exclusive cluster of homes on the shore of Lake Erie, told the Associated Press. “He said, ‘Yeah, I lost a little bit.’ But it was more than a little bit. It was a lot. He wasn’t too friendly that time I saw him. He just didn’t want to talk.”

One of Jorden’s colleagues estimated Jorden had dropped about 75 pounds in recent months.

Additionally, neighbors say Jorden’s waning attention to maintaining the well-manicured grounds of his half-million dollar home in his Lake View neighborhood south of Buffalo suggested something might be wrong.

“He had a lot of money invested in his house and the landscaping. And when I came back from Florida in May, it was really neglected. I was just shocked,” neighbor Tom Wrzosek told the AP.

“We presumed he was sick, that maybe he had some sort of major ailment,” he said. “He was sick, but not in the way we thought he was sick.”

Jorden’s colleagues told the Buffalo News that Jorden, normally a soft-spoken and even-keeled man, had been acting strangely in recent months, avoiding eye contact and basic communication.

A police official told the Buffalo News that Jorden may have been having mental health issues or “some type of serious physical ailment that caused the drastic weight loss.”

Jorden's office may offer clues to his mental status. A police source said it appeared he had been living in the office. Hidden above ceiling tiles, police found rancid takeout containers and dirty laundry, the Buffalo News reported.

Jorden has been licensed to practice medicine in New York for a decade. He has a medical degree from the University of Buffalo and trained at the Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma, Wash. He received his certification from the American Board of Surgery in 2004.

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In another case of environmental rules becoming election fodder, the Obama administration on Friday proposed tighter restrictions on soot, a pollutant caused mainly by smokestacks and diesel engines. 

It had been called "the sleeping giant of clean-air issues" by Frank O'Donnell, head of the activist group Clean Air Watch. And while little was made of it until now, Republicans and industry were quick to pounce on it as more red tape in a weak economy.

The proposed Environmental Protection Agency rule would set the maximum allowable standard for soot in a range of 12 to 13 micrograms per cubic meter of air. The current annual standard, last revised in 1997, is 15 micrograms per cubic meter. 

---

The EPA had delayed its required review of the Clean Air Act's soot provision, leading New York, California and nine other states to sue. Under a court order, the EPA agreed to unveil its proposal this week.

O'Donnell was not impressed with EPA's pace. "EPA had to be dragged kicking and screaming to do this," O'Donnell told msnbc.com, referring to the lawsuit. The states, along with activists and the American Lung Association, argued that tougher standards will reduce premature deaths and asthma attacks.

"Clean air is not a luxury," New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said after a court ordered the EPA to act. "It is a basic public right, and standards that protect it are an absolute necessity."

The proposal follows the World Health Organization's declaration on Tuesday that diesel fumes can cause cancer.

The risk is small, a WHO science panel noted, but raising the status to carcinogen from "probable carcinogen" was an important shift because so many people breathe in the fumes in some way.

"It's on the same order of magnitude" as secondhand smoke, said Kurt Straif, director of the WHO department that evaluates cancer risks. "This could be another big push for countries to clean up exhaust from diesel engines." 

That finding, O'Donnell argued, "is all the more reason EPA needs to get tough on particle soot."

Republicans, for their part, in recent months have seized as election fodder the argument that environmental regulations are strangling economic recovery.

House Energy Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., reiterated that in a letter to EPA chief Lisa Jackson last week, saying that "stringent standards" on soot "will likely be costly and have significant regulatory and other implications."

The American Petroleum Institute agreed. "By continuing to implement the existing standards we would avoid the potentially heavy added economic costs of more stringent standards, which our economy and American workers cannot afford," spokesman Howard Feldman told reporters Tuesday.

The EPA countered that soot pollution has already been reduced since the last rule revision in 1997 and that the proposed standard is more of a formality. 

All but six counties across the country would meet the proposed standard by 2020 with no additional actions needed beyond compliance with existing and pending rules, the EPA said.

Those counties are San Bernardino and Riverside counties in California; Santa Cruz County, Arizona; Wayne County, Mich.; Jefferson County, Ala. and Lincoln County, Mont. All six face "unique challenges" and will receive individual attention, the EPA added.

Still, Bill Becker, head of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, told msnbc.com that "meeting the standards could be far more challenging" for some counties than others, and he urged the EPA and Congress to provide resources to enforce any new standard.

As for enforcing a new rule, Becker noted that "today’s proposal is an ‘ambient’ standard, not an emission limit on industry." Any state with a county consistently above the standard would be required to draft a strategy to curb emissions, he added, and that could then "trigger additional controls on industry."

After a public comment period, a final rule is expected in December.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Even in the water, amid a furious race to win back his confidence, the blind swimmer needs a cane.

Actually, Lt. Brad Snyder relies on two canes to avoid the sort of ugly collisions he has suffered repeatedly on dry land.

At one end of the pool, his swimming coach stands above Snyder’s starting block, clutching a walking cane affixed with a tennis ball. As Snyder nears that hard edge, his coach leans down, extends the cane and taps the Navy officer on the back of his head with the ball, alerting him to abruptly finish his stroke and execute a flip turn. At the opposite end of the lane, Snyder’s brother, Mitchell, is armed with the same device and the same task.

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“Any communication between the tapper and the swimmer is illegal -- other than: ‘You’re close to the wall!’ ”said Mitchell Snyder, 25, a former college swimmer. “Of course, you’re natural instinct is to tell him how he’s doing. You’re the one who can see the clock and see the whole pool. You want to tell them where they’re at in the race. But I don’t give him any extra signals.”

The tap is merely one of the tactics and tools that Brad Snyder -- blinded last September by an Afghan bomb blast -- now uses to swim competitively in utter darkness. During each length of every race, he silently tracks his stroke count to hold a steady clip. He occasionally brushes a finger or shoulder, lightly, against the lane marker to verify his location. And, oddly, he must wear blacked-out goggles, by rule, over both of his blue prosthetic eyes. 

Through Saturday, the former Naval Academy swimmer is vying for one of 14 roster spots at the U.S. Paralympic Swimming Trials in Bismarck, N.D. If Snyder, 28, equals or nears a current world-best time in one of his five events, he’ll join the American team bound for the 2012 London Paralympics, held later this summer.

Wearing one of his old college caps with the Navy emblem on one side and the American flag on the other, he’s racing to again represent his country, this time on the international sports stage. He’s racing to help restore his self-image as a fully capable man -- a sacred piece of himself he lost when the IED detonated in his face. He’s racing to deliver a deeper message about thriving amid life’s occasional rough waters. 

Editor's note: This is the second installment that chronicles Lt. Brad Snyder's efforts to earn a spot on Team USA's roster for the 2012 London Paralympics. Read the first story here.

Racing the clock
“All sorts of people have contacted me on Facebook, or by e-mail, or they come up to me in person and say, ‘You really inspired us, just by the fact that you’ve moved forward, that you don’t let this thing slow you down.’ I want them to see that, hey, you can go out (despite this type of wound) and excel at something -- become a really good writer, or a good cook; it doesn’t matter,” Snyder said. “Hopefully, we can utilize this as a platform.”

That platform, he understands, will become far larger if he makes the 2012 U.S. Paralympic team. But getting to London is all about minutes, seconds and tenths of seconds -- the fewer of those during his heats, the better. And as a swimmer without sight, ensuring a brisk time is all about maintaining tight direction: the straighter he goes, the quicker he touches the finish line.

But, much like his delicate job in Afghanistan and Iraq -- dissecting and dismantling homemade explosives -- haste in the pool can be Snyder’s enemy.

When he swims fast and tries to increase his (arms’) turnover rate, he ends up almost pin-balling in the lane -- one side to the other, one side to the other -- ricocheting off that lane line,” said his coach, Brian Loeffler. “If he gets going too much and crashes into a lane line, he can just be stopped in the water and lose all forward progress.”

When he swam for Navy in the early 2000s, Snyder’s initial style was to dive in and sprint -- no other strategy, no clean technique, just winning on pure guts. Eventually at the Naval Academy, he began to hone his strokes, evening his pace and becoming more efficient. Now, he and Loeffler are focused on keeping each 50-meter race length (or “split,” in pool jargon), as even as possible to all other trips up and down the pool -- both in terms of his times and his stroke counts.

That physical symmetry allows Snyder to better hold his course and avoid side-swiping the lane markers.

“When he can keep a long, steady stroke, he has a real good rhythm,” said Loeffer, the head swimming coach at Loyola University in Baltimore. He also will serve as one of the assistant swim coaches for the U.S. Paralympic team. “We’ve got to find a balance between that kind of speed but also being able to be real straight in the water.”

Golden vision
Snyder’s best shot at making the American team, he believes, will come in the 400-meter freestyle. At the Bismarck trials, he’ll also aim to notch qualifying times in the 50-meter and 100-meter freestyle heats as well as the 100-meter butterfly and 200-meter individual medley.

For each heat, he’ll don special goggles – not, however, to boost his pace. Swimmers competing in the Paralympics’ fully blind division must wear the black, plastic eye covers to ensure that they can’t see even a glimmer of light. That would give those swimmers an advantage in a sport that takes itself as seriously as any Olympic endeavor.

“When I swam in my last Paralympic-sanctioned meet, every time I got out of the pool after racing, an official came over and looked at my goggles to make sure he couldn’t see through them,” Snyder said. “But there’s another reason for them. If one of the prosthetic eyes comes out, my goggle would catch it. I wouldn’t have to ask someone to go search the pool for my eye.”

But behind those artificial eyes, Snyder has begun to visualize a blissful finish – especially if he makes the U.S. team. The final men’s Paralympic swimming roster will be announced on Sunday.

“I really hope to bring attention to the wounded warriors (fellow servicemen and servicewomen hurt in Afghanistan and Iraq). And I hope my story maybe gives people some perspective,” Snyder said.

“You know how people get upset about silly things, like they get all fired up in rush hour? Well, let’s give them a story they can rally behind and say, hey it’s not that bad, maybe I should probably calm down a little bit.”

If Snyder earns a Paralympic slot, his best race – the 400-meter freestyle – is scheduled in London for Sept. 7. That means exactly one year to the day that the U.S. sailor lost his sight after stepping on a battlefield bomb, he’ll be wearing American colors, swimming for gold. 

COMING MONDAY: Did Lt. Brad Snyder make the U.S. men’s Paralympic swimming team? 

Bill Briggs is a frequent contributor to msnbc.com and author of “The Third Miracle.” 

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Daryl Henry's reward for 20 years of service in the Navy was a $1,083 monthly pension. But more than half of it went to a private California company -- Retired Military Financial Services -- after Henry was duped into a complex financial agreement, the Maryland resident alleged in a class-action lawsuit.

Struggling with bills, Henry says he answered an ad in the Navy Times and traded 96 months of future pension checks -- totaling $103,000 -- for a lump sum payment of $42,131. He then spent years depositing his government pension checks into a special account so Retired Military Financial Services could take its share of the taxpayer-funded payments and pay private investors with it.

Lump sum pension payments for vets are big business, targeting 1.5 million former service members who receive $40 billion annually. Companies that provide them have attracted negative attention from military advocates for years. Tales of retired or injured vets getting 30 to 40 cents on the dollar are easy to find. In 2004, Congress threatened legislation designed to banish the industry, and several courts have ruled the arrangements run afoul of existing federal laws.

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Still, companies offering so-called "annuity utilization contracts" crowd out Google searches around military pensions and loans. The websites that rank highest are often decorated with red, white and blue banners, and they have government-sounding dot-com names. While the lump payouts may sound attractive to retired vets in a financial bind, the terms are oppressive: Participants find themselves with what is essentially a loan at 30 percent interest.

 

But on Monday, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray said his agency will begin focusing on pension lump sum payments.

"We are ... concerned about military pension buyout schemes," Cordray said in a speech on Elder Abuse Awareness Day. "Military retirees are offered lump-sum cash payments in return for surrendering their rights to their pension payouts. These schemes are usually very bad deals for the retirees. We want to collect information on all of these kinds of financial practices."

Several agencies and investigators have been collecting information on the industry for years. John Wasik, an author of 13 books on personal finance, recently investigated the industry for investment-related fraud in a column on Forbes.com.

"Basically, you sign up they lock you in, and if you want out, you don't have recourse," Wasik said. "There is very clear language saying, ‘This is not a loan,’ but it resembles a loan in all characteristics."

Where do these pension payout companies get their capital from? Investors looking for steady returns. Wasik found that Retired Military Financial Service’s partner, California-based Structured Investments Co., was ordered by an arbitrator in November to repay $5 million to investors who alleged they were defrauded. In December, the firm agreed to stop selling the investments in California.

In August, a California court ruled in favor of Henry and the class of veterans who joined his lawsuit, ordering Retired Military Financial Service to return $2.9 million.

"There is an awful lot of litigation out there," Wasik said. "My biggest concern is the proliferation of these things without regulation. Somebody should be looking at what they are doing."

Attempts to reach Retired Military Financial Services by deadline were unsuccessful. Founder Steven P. Covey defended his company last year in a story published by the Center for Public Integrity’s iWatchNews.org.

"The position is: We’re purchasing at a discounted lump-sum, future cash flow,” he said. “We’re not lenders. When you’re not lenders, you’re not dealing in potential usury areas.”

Covey's attorney, Robert Clarkson, told Wasik that his client had "done nothing wrong,” but said he wouldn't answer questions because of pending litigation.

'It's likely every single one is violating a law'
Plenty of websites offer cash for pension and disability payments, which add to an already crowded field of firms offering lump payments for structured settlement recipients. There’s good money in granting lump payments to down-on-their-luck consumers who have a guaranteed stream of income. Military pensions fall into a protected category, however, says Stuart Rossman of the National Consumer Law Center, who helped argue Henry's case.

"If these sites are dealing with the issue of military pensions, it's likely every single one is violating a law," he said.

All firms that offer such lump payments are between a legal rock and a hard place, he said. Assigning military pensions to a third party isn’t legal; offering loans without abiding by Truth and Lending Requirements is also illegal.

"And they are either one of the other," he said. 

One site, MilitaryPensionLoan.org, offers a typical example: "This program is NOT A LOAN," it says on its home page, despite its Web address. "We will buy the next eight years of your pension for a lump sum of cash."

MilitaryPensionLoan.org didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Despite the legal troubles, and occasional bad publicity, the military loan/pension products have survived for more than a decade. Rossman said he filed his first case against such a firm nine years ago. But why?

He thinks many of these companies use veterans' sense of honor against them.

"They believe in doing their duty. They don't want to come forward. They believe 'It's my mistake and I have to own up to it,'" Rossman said. "And a lot of them don't even realize they are paying 30 percent interest."

Rossman hopes military pension payout companies are on the ropes now that investors might be scared away by the California litigation. No investors would mean no money for lump payments. 

Henry’s legal triumph was a bit of a hollow victory, however -- he'd already made all 96 payments by the time the judge ruled in his favor. While he is entitled to a portion of the $2.9 million judgment, Rossman said the owners of Retired Military Financial Payments had declared bankruptcy, so there are no assets to pay the judgement.  

Still, it was a worthy fight, Rossman said. 

"He's proud he's put a stop to this, and once we had the judge's ruling, we were able to tell other members of the class they could stop making payments. We saved them a lot of money, and he's proud of that," Rossman said.

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The limping gait of the U.S. economy remains painful for many Americans and for President Barack Obama's re-election chances, with the vast majority of metro areas making only small, halting steps toward recovery, according to the latest Adversity Index data from Moody’s Analytics and msnbc.com.

Data released this week and included in the index, which measures changes in jobs, housing starts, industrial production and house prices, reflect changes in the economy through April.

The good news: The economy improved in April in every region of the country. Not a single state remains in recession. If someone in your family is out of work, that label may require a bit of clarification: While many have not recovered the jobs lost in the recession, no state is still in a sharp decline. In other words, one can be climbing out of a hole and still be in the hole. And looking more closely at the nation's 384 metro areas, nearly 90 percent have moved out of the recession into at least a modest recovery. The share of metro areas in recession in April was the lowest since the previous July.

The bad news: Only two states have entered a robust economic expansion. Among metro areas, only 6 percent are in expansion. The rest are stuck in a weak recovery, making small advances and not gaining much economic traction.

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Four years earlier, at the same point in President George W. Bush's second term, 19 states had expanding economies. That number fell rapidly to only one by the time of the 2008 election, when Obama defeated Republican Sen. John McCain, and was at zero just a month after his inauguration. In the three-plus years of the Obama administration, only Alaska and North Dakota have accelerated into a full recovery, and no one expects either of those two Republican states to vote for Obama in 2012.

Check your state or metro area
The Adversity Index is calculated by Moody's Analytics based on a design developed with msnbc.com. It places each area in one of five economic categories: Expansion is the best, recession the worst, and in the middle are three transition categories.

You can see the economic status of each state or metro area on an interactive map from Moody's Analytics. Here's the link for free access through a Moody's partnership with msnbc.com.

A slow recovery
"Although April regional data appeared favorable for continued recovery, more recent national data have been soft," reported economist Brent Campbell at Moody's Analytics. "May payroll employment came in below expectations, and the forecast has been revised lower. As a result, risk levels could rise for metro area and state economies in coming months."

Here's a snapshot from the April data:

States

• 2 states are in a steady expansion: Alaska, North Dakota.
• 5 are at risk, meaning they're still in positive territory but slipping toward recession: Illinois, Maine, Mississippi, Rhode Island, Wisconsin.
• The remaining 44 (including D.C.) are in recovery, meaning they're still weak but rising toward expansion. The states improving into this category in April were Alabama, Connecticut, Missouri, Oregon and South Carolina, according to Moody's.
• 0 are in a moderating recession, meaning their economies are not contracting as severely as six months earlier.
• 0 are in an unrelenting recession. It's been that way since January. The last state out was Georgia.

Metro areas

• 21 metro areas are in a steady expansion: Amarillo, Texas; Anchorage, Alaska; Austin, Texas; Bismarck, N.D.; Burlington, Vt.; Cheyenne, Wyo.; Clarksville, Tenn.; Columbia, Mo.; Columbus, Ind.; Dubuque, Iowa; Fargo, N.D.; Grand Forks, N.D.; Holland, Mich.; Lafayette, Ind.; Lafayette, La.; Lubbock, Texas; McAllen, Texas; Midland, Texas; Odessa, Texas; Sioux City, Iowa; Waterloo, Iowa.
• 76 are at risk, meaning they're still in positive territory but slipping toward recession. That's the fewest since September 2010, Moody's reported. They are Abilene, Texas; Akron, Ohio; Alexandria, La.; Auburn, Ala.; Augusta, Ga.; Bangor, Maine; Battle Creek, Mich.; Beaumont, Texas; Bloomington, Ind.; Bloomington, Ill.; Bridgeport, Conn.; Brunswick, Ga.; Chicago, Ill.; Chico, Calif.; Cleveland, Ohio; College Station, Texas; Columbus, Ga.; Columbus, Ohio; Danville, Ill.; Decatur, Ala.; Eau Claire, Wisc.; Elizabethtown, Ky.; Eugene, Ore.; Farmington, N.M.; Flagstaff, Ariz.; Florence, Ala.; Fond du Lac, Wisc.; Gainesville, Fla.; Great Falls, Mont.; Greeley, Colo.; Ithaca, N.Y.; Kennewick, Wash.; La Crosse, Wisc.; Lake Charles, La.; Lake County, Ill.; Lancaster, Pa.; Las Cruces, N.M.; Lebanon, Pa.; Lewiston, Maine; Los Angeles, Calif.; Madison, Wisc.; Mansfield, Ohio; Merced, Calif.; Michigan City, Ind.; Milwaukee, Wisc.; Monroe, Mich.; Morristown, Tenn.; Mount Vernon, Wash.; Muncie, Ind.; Myrtle Beach, S.C.; Naples, Fla.; North Port, Fla.; Olympia, Wash.; Owensboro, Ky.; Panama City, Fla.; Pensacola, Fla.; Pittsfield, Mass.; Port St. Lucie, Fla.; Portland, Maine; Providence, R.I.; Punta Gorda, Fla.; Richmond, Va.; Saginaw, Mich.; Sandusky, Ohio; Santa Rosa, Calif.; Sheboygan,  Wisc.; Springfield, Ill.; Sumter, S.C.; Virginia Beach, Va.; Waco, Texas; Warner Robins, Ga.; Wausau, Wisc.; Wenatchee, Wash.; Wichita Falls, Texas; Wilmington, N.C.; Yakima, Wash.
• The largest group, the 242 metro areas not named here, are in recovery, meaning they're still weak but rising toward expansion.
• 31 are in a moderating recession, meaning their economies are not contracting as severely as six months earlier: Albuquerque, N.M.; Anderson, Ind.; Anderson, S.C.; Anniston, Ala.; Bremerton, Wash.; Carson City, Nev.; Cleveland, Tenn.; Dalton, Ga.; El Centro, Calif.; Jackson, Tenn.; Lake Havasu, Ariz.; Lakeland, Fla.; Lewiston, Idaho; Longview, Wash.; Madera, Calif.; Missoula, Mont.; Modesto, Calif.; Ocala, Fla.; Palm Bay, Fla.; Palm Coast, Fla.; Pine Bluff, Ark.; Prescott, Ariz.; Racine, Wisc.; Rocky Mount, N.C.; Rome, Ga.; Salem, Ore.; Tallahassee, Fla.; Visalia, Calif.; Youngstown, Ohio; Yuba City, Calif.; Yuma, Ariz.
• 14 are in an unrelenting recession: Albany, Ga.; Champaign, Ill.; Dothan, Ala.; Elmira, N.Y.; Fort Smith, Ark.; Gulfport, Miss.; Huntsville, Ala.; Lawton, Okla.; Montgomery, Ala.; Norwich, Conn.; Pascagoula, Miss.; Pueblo, Colo.; Reno, N.V.; Spokane, Wash.

About the Adversity Index

The index is based on changes in employment, housing starts, industrial production and house prices. Each geographic area is judged to be in recession, at risk of recession, recovering from recession, or expanding. More about the index is at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29866676/ns/us_news-the_elkhart_project/t/how-adversity-index-detects-trends-local-economies/.

For an area to be deemed in recession, the six-month moving average of the index is lower than it was six months earlier. To be deemed in expansion, the opposite is true. The categories "at risk" and "recovery" are transition stages: At risk indicates that the economy is slipping from expansion toward recession, while recovery indicates movement from recession toward expansion.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Possible military aircraft debris, along with material that may be bone fragments, has been discovered in the Knik Glacier area, north-east of Anchorage, according to officials.

Alaska Army National Guardsmen on board a UH-60 Blackhawk flying a routine training mission discovered the debris at about 1 p.m. local time Sunday, and conducted a brief aerial inspection before returning to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson.

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Capt. Tania Bryan, director of public affairs for the Alaskan Command, said the crash was believed to be that of a vintage aircraft and "not recent."

Read the story at Channel 2/KTUU.com

She says details about the crash are being withheld pending possible notifications of next of kin.

A recovery effort for the wreckage is being considered by the U.S. Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, which conducts search, recovery and laboratory efforts to locate lost service members.

The Federal Aviation Administration has placed a temporary flight restriction on the area, and aviators are being asked to avoid the vicinity as personnel investigate the site.

At the request of Alaska military officials, the Hawaii-based U.S. Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) is trying to plan a recovery mission at the Knik Glacier site, a spokeswoman told Reuters.

JPAC, which focuses on search and recovery missions for missing U.S. service members, hopes to schedule an Alaska trip and line up necessary expertise to work on the glacier, said Captain Jamie Dobson, a spokeswoman for the command.

"We believe that there's a reason for JPAC to be involved," she said.

Reuters contributed to this report. Channel 2/KTUU.com is an affiliate of NBC News.

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Wildfires continued to spread in New Mexico and Colorado as a new evacuation order was issued for approximately 80 homes in northern Colorado, NBC affiliate 9News.com reported.

Meanwhile, Reuters reported that some of the 2,500 people forced to evacuate their central New Mexico houses by wildfires raging near the resort village of Ruidoso began returning home on Thursday with the help of National Guard troops, officials said.

Evacuees from five communities have started heading home, but residents of four other neighborhoods around Ruidoso and the Lincoln National Forest, including those who lived in 230 burned homes, have yet to be allowed.

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"There are still hot spots and active fire burning," said fire information officer Jimmye Turner. "We won't let people in until those areas are safe."

The Little Bear Fire, sparked by lightning on June 4, has consumed 37,912 acres of the Lincoln National Forest.

Read the story at 9news.com

More than 1,300 firefighters and others have be working to cope with the disaster, including 400 National Guardsmen ordered to protect property and assist evacuations and returns.

Firefighters have been able to contain 40 percent of the blaze, helped by low winds and higher humidity. However, higher winds and temperatures on Thursday were igniting previously unburned islands within containment lines, Turner said.

In southeastern New Mexico, firefighters continued to battle what is known as the Whitewater-Baldy Complex fire, the largest in the state's history. The 289,478-acre fire is now 56 percent contained, officials said.

However, in neighboring Colorado, a blaze known as the High Park Fire, which has scorched 52,000 acres of timber and dried brush, is only 15-20 percent under control, despite the efforts of 1,200 firefighters, fire managers said.

The Colorado fire has destroyed more than 100 structures - including more than 30 homes - in the rugged mountain canyons 15 miles west of Fort Collins. It is blamed for one death.

Hundreds of people remain under evacuation orders, but some residents on the south side of the fire have been allowed home.

The western edge of the fire has moved into the Roosevelt National Forest, where there are fewer homes and denser concentrations of trees. The fire made a run into the stands of dead trees on Wednesday, sending a mushroom cloud of smoke some 30,000 feet into the air that was visible for hundreds of miles.

Officials have warned residents of a 1,000-home subdivision at the mouth of Poudre Canyon to "move out quickly" should flames jump the Poudre River and move into the canyon. 

Reuters contributed to this report.

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ANALYSIS

While the prosecution didn't rest Thursday, it is very clear that the bulk of the commonwealth's evidence against Jerry Sandusky has been presented. Given the surprisingly fast pace of the prosecution's case, the judge canceled Friday's proceedings, leaving the jury with some disturbing testimony to consider over the Father's Day weekend.

This trial has been difficult to sit through at times. The acts alleged are horrific, and the testimony took an obvious emotional toll on the jury.

Despite the very strong case against Sandusky, the defense had strong moments on cross-examination. It has skillfully pointed out inconsistencies in the witnesses' testimony and has raised substantial questions about why some grown adults would continue to have friendly relationships with the man they now say abused them.

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Nevertheless, the question remains: Why would so many witnesses come forward with similar stories? As Bob Costas stated it in the TV interview the jurors heard: If these witnesses are all lying, Sandusky must be the unluckiest guy any of us has ever known.

Jurors have long weekend to consider graphic evidence against Sandusky

Their stories weren't identical. In fact, had they been, one would suspect collusion. But there was a small detail that ran through all but one of the accounts: All but one alleged victim described Sandusky's first having touched him on the knee or the thigh as they rode in Sandusky's car.

If a group of people were going to concoct a group lie, one would expect them to coordinate the big details, not the small one. They were all, except one, in unison in describing this as Sandusky's first uncomfortable touch. In the case of one alleged victim, the prosecution didn't bring out this fact on direct examination — we learned this unifying fact on cross-examination.

Full coverage of the Jerry Sandusky trial

Legal analysis by Wes Oliver

Almost any witness will be vulnerable to cross-examination that casts some doubt on his or her testimony, and Sandusky's alleged victims were no exception. But given the number of them, their consistency, the independent witnesses who saw Sandusky in the Penn State showers and the defendant's own words in the letters he wrote to one victim, the prosecution has presented a very strong case.

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A teacher in Florida has been accused of telling a group of teens that they had to cut and burn themselves to rid their bodies of demons.

Danielle Hawkins, 35, a literacy teacher at  the Lealman and Asian Neighborhood Family Center in St. Petersburg, is charged with aggravated child abuse and child abuse, NBCMiami.com reported. 

Police said Hawkins and seven former students gathered at a pier Saturday before dusk and she told them they needed to cut themselves to rid evil spirits. She then said they needed to burn the wounds so that the spirits couldn't return, the Tampa Bay Times reported.

Two teens were injured during the ritual, with one suffering second-degree burns. None of the students told their parents, but one 16-year-old told a friend in a text message what happened. The friend told the boy's parent, who called police, the paper reported.

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"Obviously, it's very strange," St. Petersburg police spokesman Mike Puetz told the Times. "The motivations for the ritual are very unknown to us."

Police said that when wind blew out a lighter that Hawkins was holding next to one teen's hand, she doused him with perfume and lit it. Another suffered a cut on the neck from a broken bottle. Hawkins heated a small key to cauterize the wound, according to the Times.

Hawkins was arrested Tuesday and was being held in lieu of $55,000 bail. Authorities are not sure what religion the ritual was a part of, the Times reported. 

Hawkins has been suspended from her teaching job at the family center without pay. Executive director Carolyn Chance said the center's board will meet in a few days to discuss her fate with the organization. She also said Hawkins never exhibited any kind of strange behavior in the four-plus years she's worked there. 

"It's is the most bizarre thing I've ever seen, that's all I can say," Chance told msnbc.com.

Hawkins was the defendant in a sexual violence case that was dismissed in January and filed for a domestic violence injunction against her then-husband in August that was also dismissed, the paper reported. Her divorced was finalized June 1, the Times reported. 

Lisa Cope, Hawkins next-door neighbor, told the Times that the last time she saw Hawkins she had taken an interest in extreme religious beliefs. 

"She told me I was okay," Cope told the paper. "She said I didn't have any demons."

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Follow US News on msnbc.com on Twitter and Facebook