David Mcnew / Getty Images

In this Sept 7. photo, marijuana plants grow at the Perennial Holistic Wellness Center, a not-for-profit medical marijuana dispensary in Los Angeles, Calif. On the November ballot, Arkansas voters will be asked whether centers like these can be legal in its state.

Come November, Arkansas voters will be faced with a question unprecedented in the South: Should qualified patients be allowed to buy medical marijuana from nonprofit dispensaries with a doctor's recommendation?

The Arkansas Supreme Court upheld the proposed ballot measure on Thursday, making "The Natural State" the first in the South to ask its voters about medical marijuana, The Associated Press reported. Seventeen other states and the District of Columbia have already legalized medical marijuana to some degree.

The court's review of "The Arkansas Medical Marijuana Act" came after the Coalition to Preserve Arkansas Values filed a lawsuit in August that tried to get the proposal off the state's ballot, NBC station KARK 4 of Little Rock reported. The conservative coalition claimed that the 384-word ballot question doesn't properly explain the consequences of passing the 8,700-word law, according to the AP. Even if the act were passed, approved patients could still be prosecuted under federal law.

"We hold that it is an adequate and fair representation without misleading tendencies or partisan coloring," the court wrote. "Therefore, the act is proper for inclusion on the ballot at the general election on Nov. 6, 2012, and the petition is therefore denied."

The conservative coalition, which includes leaders from the Arkansas Faith and Ethics Council, the Families First Foundation and the Family Council Action Committee, has five days to ask the court for a rehearing, according to KARK 4.

Related: Legalize pot vote coming up in 3 states - Colo., Ore. & Wash.

Danny Johnston / AP

Jerry Cox, the head of the Arkansas Family Council and a member of a coalition of groups opposed to the proposed medical marijuana ballot measure, holds a copy of the proposal as he speaks to reporters in Little Rock, Ark. on Thursday.

An attorney for Arkansas for Compassionate Care — the group behind the measure — said he is pleased with the ruling.

"Now that we've passed muster with the Supreme Court we'll begin our campaign to show the people of the state of Arkansas that this is truly a compassionate measure," attorney David Couch told the AP.

Following the decision, opponents soon responded on Thursday.

"We've shifted into campaign mode," coalition spokesman Larry Page said, according to KARK 4. "We respect the court's decision, but we are very disappointed that this flawed measure will appear on the ballot."

According to the AP, the proposal lets qualified patients or designated caregivers grow marijuana if the patient lives more than five miles away from a dispensary. It also allows minors to use medical marijuana with parental consent. Cancer, Alzheimer's disease, glaucoma, HIV and AIDS would all be qualifying health conditions.

Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe, a Democrat, is against the measure and told reporters Thursday that he's requested an estimate on how much it will cost to regulate the dispensaries if voters pass it.

"If I understand what I think I understand about it, if it passes, it's going to require a whole of administration from the health department," Beebe said, according to the AP. "I don't know where we're going to get it from."

Beebe also told reporters that he doesn't believe Arkansas voters would legalize medical marijuana.

While voters in Arkansas and Massachusetts are expected to have their say on this issue on the November ballot, voters in North Dakota won't, after its state Supreme Court ruled the initiative can't appear on its ballot, the AP reported.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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No alcohol at the tailgate party: That's the decree of University of Kentucky President Eli Capilouto.

Campus radio station WUKY reported that Capilouto on Thursday announced the alcohol ban from non-reserved tailgate spots in response to fights after UK lost to Western Kentucky University on Sept. 15. Also banned: DJs and bands.

University spokesperson Jay Blanton said that an area along the university's Cooper Drive was the center of the problem and that no drinking would be allowed in the area between Sports Center Drive and University Drive.

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Kentucky plays South Carolina on Saturday, with kickoff set for 7 p.m. EDT.

The Associated Press noted that after the school won the national basketball championship this March, unruly celebrations resulted in numerous small fires and gunfire that left a man wounded.

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A 60-year-old woman was killed Wednesday by a pit bull terrier owned by her family in Oklahoma City, police said.

Officers with the Oklahoma City Police Department said Nellie Davis’ granddaughter found her body in her home at about 11:30 p.m. The granddaughter had returned to the apartment and discovered that her grandmother had been attacked by one of the family’s two large pit bulls, according to police.

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When police arrived, they attempted to force the pit bull into a crate, but, police said, they were forced to shoot due to the crate’s broken lock.

Homicide detectives are investigating Davis’ death, and patrol supervisors are investigating the shooting of the dog.

Earlier this week, police in Burleson, Texas, said a 3-month-old baby boy died after being mauled by the family’s pit bull. The infant apparently was attacked while lying asleep on a bed; he was pronounced dead at a hospital.

The dog was euthanized by Burleson Animal Control. 

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Kelly Glasscock / Getty Images file

Flowers are seen in front of the Women's Health Care Services abortion clinic and serve as a memorial to Dr. George Tiller's death May 31, 2009 in Wichita, Kansas.

The shuttered Wichita abortion clinic formerly operated by the late Dr. George Tiller has been bought by an abortion-rights group that intends to reopen it as a family and women's health center that will offer abortions, among other services, the group's executive director said Wednesday.

Julie Burkhart said the Wichita-based non-profit group Trust Women Foundation Inc. purchased Tiller's former clinic in late August. Erin Thompson, an attorney for Tiller's widow, Jeanne, confirmed the sale.

Burkhart, a former Tiller employee who also founded a separate Trust Women political action committee, has said for months that she was trying to raise money for a new clinic in Wichita. Most of Kansas, except for the Kansas City area, has been without an abortion clinic since an anti-abortion zealot murdered Tiller at the doctor's church in May 2009.

Tiller was among a few U.S. doctors known to perform abortions in the final weeks of pregnancy, but Burkhart said the new clinic won't offer such services, largely because Kansas legislators have tightened restrictions on late-term procedures. But she said the new clinic will perform abortions earlier in pregnancy as part of a wide range of obstetrical and family care.

Burkhart declined to discuss the details of the sale, but property tax records available online list the appraised value of the property as $734,100. Burkhart said she can't say yet exactly when the new clinic will open or how many doctors will work there.

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"It's about more than abortion. We're about serving the needs of women," Burkhart said during a telephone interview. "Thousands of women right now have to travel three hours-plus for medical services. It's a burden on women. It's a burden on women's families."

Kansas has three abortion clinics, but all are in the Kansas City area. The Wichita Eagle first reported the sale of Tiller's former clinic, based on public records.

Abortion opponents have been watching for signs that a new clinic would open in Wichita, and earlier this month, anti-abortion groups said they expected Burkhart to open one early next year.

"It is tragic Burkhart appears poised to re-engage in destroying unborn children and exploiting women for money," Mary Kay Culp, executive director of Kansans for Life, said in a statement Wednesday.

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In a recent advertisement circulated by email to abortion-rights supporters, Trust Women said it was looking for medical staff experienced in first and early-second trimester abortions and planned to open its clinic between mid-November and January 2013.

Burkhart said the group looked at seven or eight buildings but concluded others were not the correct size or needed too much renovation. Tiller's former clinic, with 8,800 square feet of space, had been listed for sale starting in 2010.

"We never looked at renting," Burkhart said. "Frankly, this building was the best building. It made the most sense for us."

But when Tiller operated the clinic, it was the site of regular protests by abortion opponents, including large "Summer of Mercy" demonstrations both in 1991 and 2001. Burkhart was a clinic employee and ran ProKanDo, a PAC formed by Tiller, from 2002 to 2009.

Mark Gietzen, president of the Kansas Coalition for Life, said in a statement this week that his group, which coordinated years of daily protests outside Tiller's clinic, would restart its efforts should another abortion clinic open in Wichita, the Wichita Eagle reported.

"KCFL volunteers intend to be on-site to offer financial help, housing, and other forms of direct support to abortion-bound women who feel forced into having an abortion by circumstances beyond their control," Gietzen said in the statement.

Burkhart acknowledged the building's past was an issue in the search for a new clinic site but said the good that can come from reopening it as a medical center "outweighs any stigma that people might see."

"We want to work to take the abortion piece of health care out of the corner and normalize it," Burkhart said. “Women should not be ashamed. Women should not be intimidated."

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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You'd think the end of summer would mean the end — or at least beginning of the end — of this year's drought, but the nation's official stat keepers on Thursday revealed otherwise.

With the Midwest corn harvest in full swing, the worst U.S. drought in decades actually worsened: 65.45 percent of the lower 48 states was in some form of drought on Tuesday, up from 64.82 percent a week earlier, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. 

The 65.45 percent is a new record in the 12-year index tracked by the monitor, and it could get worse before getting better.

"I would not be too surprised to see conditions continue to worsen if we do not see widespread rain/snow events" soon, Brian Fuchs, a climatologist who compiles the stats for the Drought Monitor, told NBC News. "The forecast does not bode well for any type of widespread improvements any time soon outside of the central and eastern Corn Belt and maybe into portions of Arkansas and Texas."

"The western and northern Great Plains have indeed continued to worsen and this has spread into the central and northern Rocky Mountains as well," he added.

Brad Rippey, a meteorologist for the Department of Agriculture, noted that the Seasonal Drought Outlook indicates any improvements are likely to "be at least partially offset by worsening conditions from the Pacific Northwest to the upper Midwest." 

Other stats from the latest Drought Monitor were not encouraging:

• Areas in extreme or exceptional drought, the two worst categories, were at 21.5 percent, up from 20.7 percent a week earlier.
• The worst drought conditions remain in the heart of the U.S. breadbasket, weather.com reported: Nebraska at 73 percent, Kansas at 51 percent and Oklahoma at 42 percent.
• Iowa: 100 percent of the nation's biggest corn producer is in some form of drought. That's the same as the previous week.
• Minnesota: 77 percent is now in drought, up from 64 percent, with extreme conditions in the northwest and spreading into southern areas, weather.com noted.
• North Dakota: 95 percent is in drought, up from 88 percent the week before.
• South Dakota: The entire state is in some form of drought, up from 96 percent.

As bad as it's been, some farmers are feeling lucky they got as much out of their harvests as they have.

"Technology and farm practices have helped compared to the last significant drought in the Corn Belt back in 1988," said Fuchs.

That technology includes seed hybrids engineered to be drought tolerant. While environmentalists are concerned genetically engineered plants will alter ecosystems, farmers are quick adopters.

Related: Drought-resistant corn seen as minimizing crop loss this year
Related: Drought-induced 'bacon shortage' not quite what it seems
Related: Time-lapse photos show drought's impact on corn field

Another factor has been Mother Nature.

"Some soybeans in the mid-South and lower Midwest were helped by late-summer rainfall, which included the remnants of Hurricane Isaac," said Rippey.

In the case of corn, "perhaps one of the biggest wild cards ... was the timing of reproduction," he added. A June/July heat wave "hammered corn in the lower Midwest," he said, while the western Corn Belt was hit by a separate heat wave in July. 

"Fields that managed to pollinate either before or after these two heat waves fared better," he said.

"Still, we lost more than one-quarter (28 percent) of the U.S. corn production from pre-drought estimates — a total of nearly 4.1 billion bushels," he said. "Nearly one-fifth (18 percent) of the U.S. soybean production, or 575 million bushels, was lost."

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A Powerball lottery ticket sold in Iowa with a number line-up bravely built around the number 13 matched the six numbers drawn Wednesday night for a jackpot prize worth $202.1 million.

The numbers were 13, 26, 39, 41, 42 and Powerball 10. As NPR points out, the first three numbers played are all multiples of 13. The drawing took place on Sept. 26 -- also a multiple of 13 -- as Philly.com points out.

The number-savvy winner and the location where the ticket was bought are still unavailable. Another ticket that matched the first five numbers but not the Powerball one was sold in Iowa and is worth $1 million, The Associated Press reported.

"Due to of the large number of big prizes involved, the Iowa Lottery’s processing of the winning information is expected to take longer than usual," a press release from the Iowa lottery read Thursday.

According to the AP, a group of 20 employees from Cedar Rapids shared a $241 million Powerball jackpot in June.

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The Journal News

Eugene Palmer, 73.

A manhunt for a 73-year-old diabetic wanted for murder entered its fourth day Thursday as authorities in Rockland County, N.Y., looked for proof that their suspect was even in the state park they were searching.

"The woods are too thick for a general sweep," Haverstraw Police Chief Charles Miller said. "There are so many places to hide ... [Or] he could have made it to a road and gotten picked up by somebody, and he could be staying elsewhere."

Eugene Palmer, of Haverstraw, is accused of killing his estranged daughter-in-law, Tammy Palmer, 39, who lived in a trailer 50 feet from his house, The New York Times reported. His sister, Elaine Babcock, said he stopped by her nearby home Monday morning, gave her money for his property taxes, and then told her that he had killed Palmer before asking her to wait an hour before calling police.

But Babcock immediately called 911, The Journal News in New York's Hudson Valley reported. Officers said a separate 911 caller heard three gunshots coming from the home; they found Tammy Palmer, who has two teenage sons with Eugene's son, dead on the ground behind her trailer, NBCNewYork.com reported.

Authorities have been combing the thick woods of the 46,000-acre Harriman State Park, which spans Rockland County and Orange County, in their search for Palmer. They believe Palmer is armed with at least one shotgun; at a news conference at the state park on Wednesday, Haverstraw Police Chief Miller said there is also "a lone rifle missing from his house. I don't know if he has that."

So far, clues have been sparse in the manhunt for Palmer. On Tuesday, authorities found Palmer's abandoned pickup truck at Harriman State Park, The Journal News reported. And on Wednesday, police said dogs followed his scent to leftovers of a campfire close to the truck in an area of the park known as the Irish Potato Trail, but they lost his scent afterwards, Miller said in Wednesday's news conference.

About 30 officers from Haverstraw were looking for Palmer on Wednesday, and authorities from nearby jurisdictions were also participating. The Department of Defense was sending infrared helicopters to track Palmer's body heat, Miller told reporters.

His family does not know whether Palmer, who is a diabetic and who suffered a heart attack about a year ago, brought any medication with him.

"I'm hopeful he is still alive," Miller said, adding police would like to "hear his side of the story."

Part of what makes the search difficult is Palmer's familiarity with the area. According to New York Times, Palmer was known as a loner to his neighbors. He would frequently go into the woods to camp and hunt on his own.

Palmer's dislike for his daughter-in-law was obvious to family members.

"He's been trying to look out for the kids, and her being a mother, didn't want him butting in. But him being a grandfather, thought it was his place, so they started to aggravate and annoy each other," his sister, Babcock, said, according to NBCNewYork.com. She said the feuding also was related to marital problems between Tammy and Palmer's son.

Tammy Palmer and John Palmer had been married for about 17 years, John Pannirello, Tammy's father, told The New York Times, but they separated five months ago, and in the past few weeks, they had been in a custody battle over the kids. 

“He’s very coldhearted,” Pannirello told The Times of Eugene Palmer. “The detective says he won’t be surprised if something goes on between us and him, if he has guns with him. I just have a bad, bad feeling.” 

Haverstraw police confirmed on Thursday they were still searching for Palmer, but said they would provide more details on Thursday's efforts later in the day.

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By Meghan Frank, Jamie Farnsworth, Sabrina Esposito and Jessica Hopper
Rock Center

From the time she was a little girl, Claire Russo knew she wanted to be a Marine.

“When I was 10 and when I was 18 and when I was 23, the reason never changed.  They were the toughest,” said Russo in an interview with Natalie Morales broadcast Thursday on NBC’s Rock Center with Brian Williams. 

The native of Washington, D.C., stuck to her dream, graduating No. 4 in her class from officer candidate school in 2003.  Her father, Ken Wilkinsen, watched her commissioning with pride.

“This colonel came up,” Wilkinsen recalled.  “He said, ‘If we had more of her type here... my job would be a lot easier.’”

Russo began what she thought would be a long career in the military, but her work as an intelligence officer was upended when she was sexually assaulted by a fellow Marine in November 2004. 

“I love this country,” said the 32-year-old Russo. “But, you know, there’s a wound that will never heal. I gave the Marine Corps everything and it took from me something that I’m never going to get back.”

Russo is one of the thousands of members of the Armed Forces who have been sexually assaulted while serving their country.  Last year, 3,192 service members across all branches of the military reported sexual assaults. Based on anonymous surveys of active-duty service members conducted in 2010, the Department of Defense says the number of incidents was closer to 19,000. Of the cases that are reported, only a fraction are prosecuted in the military justice system. 

Attorney Susan Burke has filed several lawsuits against the top brass at the Department of Defense on behalf of sexual assault victims, charging they’ve been deprived of their due process.

“What all of us expect as Americans is an impartial system of justice.  We don’t know the judge.  We don’t know the jurors,” Burke said.  “That’s not what is happening in the military.  In the military, the commanders get to decide based on their own impressions of the two people coming forward who to believe. ”

Courtesy of Claire Russo

Claire Russo

Russo’s case was shut down by the Marine Corps, but since her assault happened off base, she was able to seek justice in the civilian court system. Recalling the November 2004 night she was assaulted is still upsetting to Russo.  She attended the Marine Corps Ball at a San Diego, Calif., hotel with her cousin, Tom, a Navy F-18 aviator.  Tom introduced her to a fellow marine, Doug Dowson.  Dowson bought her a drink and said he’d take her to a room party.

Russo said that after accepting the drink from Dowson, things started “to get a little hazy.” Russo said that she felt like she’d been drugged. A drug test taken over 24 hours after the assault was inconclusive.

“The next thing I remember is being on the ground in the bathroom.  He was holding me down and sodomizing me and at that point, I was just crying and begging him to stop,” said Russo through tears.

The day after the assault, she told her cousin. He reported it to his command and was ordered to take Russo to the naval hospital for a rape exam. As Russo was about to undergo the exam, her cousin received a phone call from the military criminal investigator assigned to the case, NCIS Special Agent Zach Paton.

“I told him to leave and come to me,” Paton said. Though Paton was the naval criminal investigator assigned to Russo’s case, he didn’t trust the military to handle it well. “The Naval Medical Center, they didn’t have appropriate personnel, training and material for doing rape kits," he said.

Paton took Russo to a civilian hospital for a sexual assault exam, waiting outside the hospital room as Russo was examined. 

“You could hear her crying out in pain,” Paton recalled.

Since the assault had taken place off base, Paton could run a joint investigation with the local police. This proved pivotal in Russo’s pursuit of justice because although Paton would present the military with forensic evidence, testimony and photos, the Marine Corps ultimately decided not to charge Russo’s accused rapist.

“As the investigation progressed, as the command briefings and evidence and investigative reports were presented to the command of the accused, it was very apparent that they were going to take no action,” Paton said.

Paton broke the news to Russo, but neither of them was prepared to give up.

“Fortunately it was a joint investigation with the police department. So we explored that avenue of letting the D.A.’s office take a look at it,” Paton said.

The San Diego district attorney’s office wanted to prosecute, but Russo said she  felt pressure from her command not to work with civilian authorities.

“They did say, you know, ‘This is a bad idea,’” Russo said.  “Once this case goes to the district attorney’s office, Claire, we can’t help you.  You know, we can’t protect you.”

“It felt as though there was a desire to sort of intimidate both me and the district attorney out of actually prosecuting this case,” Russo said.

Russo said the Marines also ignored her pleas for a transfer which meant that she had to endure an on base encounter with the man she knew had raped her.

“I broke down physically, emotionally and I actually like, I urinated on myself,” said Russo of one encounter with Dowson.  “I was terrified.”

The district attorney obtained a search warrant for Dowson’s house.  There, Paton said he and the police found hidden cameras and hundreds of hours of video of Dowson having sex with seemingly incapacitated women.  Paton also discovered that just seven months prior to Russo’s assault, a female aviator had a similar incident with Dowson. She told her command but said she felt pressure not to file a formal report.

Prosecutors charged Dowson with raping Russo.  He pleaded guilty to sodomy before his civilian trial began and was sentenced to three years in prison. He was released after serving 18 months.  

Courtesy of Darchelle Mitchell

Darchelle Mitchell

When asked if her case is an exception within the military, Russo said, “The only thing that makes my story extraordinary is that I got justice.”

Rock Center interviewed several women who claim they were raped by fellow military members. Unlike Russo, many of them never received justice. Some didn’t report their assaults because they feared it would destroy their careers.

In Darchelle Mitchell’s case, the petty officer she says raped her was acquitted and her Navy career suffered. When Mitchell tried to re-enlist as active duty in the Navy her request was denied. She has since joined the Navy reserves.

“I knew joining the military was going to be a sacrifice.  This wasn’t the intended sacrifice that I was willing to make,” she said.

Former Air Force Sgt. Laura Sellinger said that she attempted suicide after her command announced to her squadron that she had been raped while at a training exercise in South Korea.

“Everybody  knew at work,” Sellinger said.  “And they’re calling me all kinds of things and I’m sitting here and I just went to Iraq and through hell and now I’m dealing with this, ‘I’m a slut, I’m a whore. I deserved it,’ and all this kind of stuff.  I give up.  I absolutely give up. I’ve never been so hollow.”

Courtesy of Laura Sellinger

Laura Sellinger

Another veteran told Rock Center she was threatened with adultery charges from her commander after she pushed for her rapists to be prosecuted. Victims say this culture of blaming them and not punishing their rapists leads to more assaults. 

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said the military is trying to do a better job of prosecuting these crimes.

“I think we owe all of those who’ve been impacted not just an apology, but we owe them the effort to make sure that this doesn’t happen again,” Panetta said. 

Since taking over as secretary of defense in 2011, Panetta said that tackling the issue has been a top priority. 

“It’s an outrage that we aren’t prosecuting the people involved here,” Panetta said. 

Panetta pointed to a number of changes including moving victims away from their assailants, new special victims units and pushing reporting higher up the chain of command. Still, he admitted that for decades this has been a problem the military has been sweeping under the rug.  

“We need to improve the investigations.  We need to make sure we have these special victims units that do the investigations and we need to ensure that we have prosecutors who are willing to bring these cases to court and make sure that these people don’t get away,” Panetta said.

Editor’s Note: Natalie Morales’ full report aired Thursday, Sept. 27 on NBC’s Rock Center with Brian Williams.

Additional Resources:

DOD Safe Helpline

Service Women's Action's Network

Protect Our Defenders

Police arrested the 16-year-old son of a woman who was found shot dead and stuffed inside a plastic trash bin in the Bronx Wednesday.

Darwin Jackson reportedly told police investigators he shot his mother, Tihesha Savage, 34, amid an argument, the New York Daily News reported. He was charged with second-degree murder and weapons possession.

A superintendent of the building where the family lived made the discovery when he spotted a tan, rectangular bin near some bushes shortly after 9 a.m. Wednesday. When he took off the lid, he found Savage’s crumpled body swaddled in a blood-stained Scooby Doo blanket, with what appeared to be a gunshot wound to the back of her head.

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The super called police. Amid the commotion, neighbors reported they saw Jackson walking around the scene in a daze. He even reportedly identified his mother’s body.

NYPD officers arrested the teen Wednesday evening and took him to a precinct in the Bronx where he was questioned until he confessed, police say. In building surveillance video obtained by police, a male can be seen dragging the bin across the street and leaving it there, police said.

Neighbors said they were startled and saddened to hear of Savage’s murder.

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“She was just a hard-working mother,” Kevin McCorkle said. “If you lived here, you’d call her a ghost. If she wasn’t with her kids, she was in the house.”

Savage was a mother of two and had lived in the area for years, neighbors said.

It wasn't clear if Jackson had a lawyer. 

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KRQE

Nikka, a police dog in Vaughn, N.M., is now the town's only official member of the police force.

VAUGHN, N.M.-- A drug-sniffing dog now is the only certified member of the police force in the small eastern New Mexico town of Vaughn.

Police Chief Ernest "Chris" Armijo decided to step down Wednesday after news stories reported that he wasn't allowed to carry a gun because of his criminal background. 

"He decided the attention was distracting," said Dave Romero, an attorney for the town. 

State officials said Armijo couldn't carry a gun since acknowledging that he owed tens of thousands of dollars in delinquent child support payments in Texas. Armijo also faces new felony charges after being accused of selling a town-owned rifle and pocketing the cash. 

Romero said Armijo is working to clear up the latest case. He said Armijo has not ruled out seeking the police chief's position again if his case is resolved and the position is open. 

According to NBC affiliate KOB.com in New Mexico, Armijo's annual salary is less than $30,000. Because he can't own a gun or any ammunition, he sold an assault rifle he owned to Guadalupe Sheriff's Deputy Juan Sanchez in January for $250, KOB.com reported.

A second police officer in Vaughn, Brian Bernal, was hired in the spring, but he had his own legal problems: In January of 2011, Bernal pleaded guilty to assault and battery against a household member, which prohibits him from owning a firearm by federal law, KOB.com said.

Now, according to records, the only qualified member of the Vaughn Police Department is Nikka, a drug-sniffing dog. Non-certified officers can't make arrests and can't carry firearms. 

Russell Contreras / AP

The K-9 police truck of the Vaughn, N.M. Police Department sits in the driveway of former Vaughn Police Chief Ernest "Chris" Armijo on Wednesday, Sept. 26.

But Romero said not having an officer qualified to carry a gun didn't put Vaughn at risk. "England doesn't allow police officers to carry guns," he said. "Sometime the strongest weapon in law enforcement is communication." 

Vaughn, a town of about 450 located 104 miles east of Albuquerque, is a quiet place that is an overnight stop for railroad workers.

While residents maintain there is no crime problem, the town is set deep in what U.S. officials say is an area popular with drug traffickers. The desolate roads in Guadalupe County make it hard for authorities to catch smugglers moving drugs from Mexico. 

Guadalupe County Sheriff Michael Lucero said since news about the police chief's record became public his department has helped patrol Vaughn. But he said those efforts have put a slight strain on his already short-staffed department. 

"I visit the town at least once a month," said Lucero. "The important thing is to keep a presence so residents know we're there to help if we're needed." 

Romero said town officials are considering whether to hire another police chief or keep the department staffed with just one officer. He said it's unclear whether the town will keep the police dog, which had been in Armijo's care. 

When approached by a reporter from The Associated Press at his Vaughn home, Armijo said he had no comment, and he declined to grant access to the canine for photographs or video. 

The dog's kennel could be seen in Armijo's backyard, and a police truck marked "K-9" was parked in his driveway. 

At Penny's Diner, residents said they were embarrassed by the attention the episode has put on the small town. 

"There's just a whole lot of nothing going on here," said cook Joyce Tabor. "We have very little crime. It's quiet. So this really doesn't matter."

Armijo told KOB.com in June that he didn't feel he needed a gun to do his job. 

“We have tasers, batons, mace … stuff like that,” Armijo said. "This isn't a TV show. This is life. We don't run in every day with a gun drawn. Life isn't in a pistol grip. It's how you talk to people. I wasn't the type of person to go, 'I'm a cop, now give me my badge and my chip on my shoulder.' That's not me."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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PHOENIX -- Police have arrested an Arizona man who allegedly filmed his 16-year-old nephew walking city streets dressed in a sheet and carrying a fake grenade launcher, authorities said on Wednesday.

Michael David Turley, 39, was arrested Monday over the making of the video, in which an unidentified narrator says he aims to discover how quickly police in Phoenix would respond following the fatal shooting of 12 people at the screening of the “Dark Knight Rises” Batman movie in Aurora, Colorado, in July.

The bizarre, amateurish video depicts a person with a fairly realistic but fake grenade launcher walking around a Phoenix intersection in what appears to be a blue sheet with dark material covering his head and face.

Made eight days after the shooting at a screening of a Batman movie, the film was posted on YouTube and titled, "Dark Knight Shooting Response, Rocket Launcher Police Test."

"Given this event, I wanted to run a little test here in Phoenix, Arizona," the narrator says in the film. "I want to find out how safe I really am, and I want to know the response time of the Phoenix police department."

The filmmaker claims it took 15 minutes for police to respond.

The first officer finds the filmmaker and the teen standing in a driveway. The officer calmly tells the boy to put down the weapon and the man to put down the camera. He didn't draw his gun.

Officer James Holmes, a police spokesman, said Turley told the officer they were just filming a movie, and the officer took down their names and left.

Three Aurora theater shooting victims suing Cinemark; theater to reopen in 2013

After interviewing people who called 911 and later seeing the video posted on YouTube, police arrested Turley.

"It surprised us that he actually put that video on YouTube," Holmes said.

Not 'fun and games'
Holmes said the police response took just over three minutes from the first call, and a helicopter and SWAT team was dispatched as backup.

Turley was charged with knowingly giving a false impression of a terrorist act, endangerment, contributing to the delinquency of a minor and misconduct involving a simulated explosive.

He is being held in county jail on a $5,000 bond. If convicted, he faces up to 45 months in prison, said Maricopa County Attorney's Office spokesman Jerry Cobb.

"We take something like this seriously," Phoenix police spokesman Officer James Holmes said. "It wasn't fun and games to all the people who were affected by this. We don't behave like this in this country to prove a point."

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The 16-year-old has not been arrested, Holmes said.

"The video told us what Turley was intentionally trying to do -- creating a terrorist hoax for his own personal ideals," he said.

Turley doesn't have a listed phone number. He didn't immediately respond to messages sent Wednesday through the YouTube account.

An attorney for Turley could not be immediately reached for comment.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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ANCHORAGE, Alaska - A powerful earthquake rocked one of the few inhabited islands in Alaska's Aleutian chain on Wednesday, but no damage has been found, federal and local officials said.

The magnitude 6.9 quake, centered 80 miles southwest of Adak, struck at 3:40 p.m. local time (7.40 p.m. ET), the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center said. No tsunami warning was issued, but scientists will monitor the area for any possible earthquake-related waves, center Director Paul Whitmore said.

In Adak, a community of about 330, "We definitely felt it," City Manager Layton Lockett said.

The building that houses city offices and the local school, engineered to withstand frequent earthquakes that strike the region, performed as designed, Lockett said.

"You could just hear the building move, and things were shaking," he said.

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No damage was found, though officials were concerned about the fate of underground pipes, he said. The school, which has about 20 students, was out of session at the time.

Adak, an island city about 1,300 miles southwest of Anchorage, is a converted U.S. Navy station that once housed 6,000 people. It now operates as a port and seafood-processing center serving the North Pacific commercial fishing fleet.

Other moderate earthquakes have struck western Alaska in recent days, according to the center.

A magnitude 4.9 quake was recorded 90 miles west of the Alaska Peninsula town of Cold Bay on Tuesday. A magnitude 5.2 quake about 90 miles southwest of Kodiak was recorded on Sept. 18.

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SEATTLE -- Animal control officers seized 39 emaciated and sickly horses from inhumane conditions in dark stalls filled with feces on a breeding farm outside of Tacoma on Wednesday, authorities said.

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents discovered the malnourished animals, many injured and some standing in more than a foot of waste, while serving drug-related warrants on Tuesday at the 99-acre property in Graham, Washington, Pierce County Animal Control supervisor Brian Boman told Reuters.

Animal control officers and sheriff's deputies from Pierce and Kitsap counties returned to the ranch a day later to seize the animals and found many were highly skittish because they had been "stall-bound" in three dark barns, Boman said.

"It was like a puppy mill, only with horses," Boman told Reuters. "The conditions are terrible. There's no telling how long it's been since they've seen daylight."

Read the story on NBC's KING5.com

Pierce County auditor Julie Anderson told NBC station KING 5 in Seattle that the horses had not been handled in a very long time. "They literally have their 'night eyes' on so they're very sun sensitive and are having trouble with depth perception," she said, describing the scene as "wanton criminal neglect."

The horses were receiving veterinary care and were being held for the time being as evidence, KING 5 reported.

No-one has been arrested so far but the owners could face charges of animal cruelty in the second degree, a gross misdemeanor in the state of Washington.

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KING 5 reported that an attorney for the owner said his client "loves these animals" and did not believe the conditions reached a criminal level.

'No lighting or ventilation'
Authorities spent more than nine hours rounding up the horses, which included mostly purebred Arabians as well as Belgian Draft horses and Clydesdales, to take them to nearby fairgrounds. None were race horses.

Some likely would be euthanized, Boman said.

A Pierce County Sheriff's Office news release, describing the roundup as the largest horse seizure the county had ever undertaken, cited the horses' living conditions as deplorable.

"Most of the horses were in barns that had large amounts of urine and feces in the stalls," the release said. "Some of the barns had no lighting or ventilation and the smell of ammonia was very strong."

Because federal and county criminal investigations are ongoing, federal authorities would not immediately release the name of the farm's owner, said Emily Langlie, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Seattle.

NBC News staff and Reuters contributed to this report.

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Al Behrman / AP file

A customer walks down the bread and pastry aisle at a Kroger Co. supermarket, March 1, 2011.

A store manager for Kroger, America’s largest grocery chain, has been transferred to a different store after a Georgia woman accused him of mocking her for using food stamps.

Cindy Nerger said last week that a manager and two store employees at a Kroger grocery store in Warner Robbins, Ga., told her that her purchases weren’t covered by food stamps. The manager later acknowledged that all of the items in Nerger’s cart were covered by them, and Nerger stressed that she had been right all along. The manager then reportedly responded, “Well excuse me that I work for a living and don’t rely on food stamps like you,” Nerger told local news outlet 13WMAZ.

Nerger said she spends 12 hours a day on dialysis and has been waiting for a kidney transplant for years. That’s why, she said, she relies on food stamps to feed her family.

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Humiliated and driven to tears by the incident, Nerger said she issued a complaint through the store’s national customer service line. The store responded by apologizing and offering her a $15 gift card, which she turned down because she said she doesn’t plan on returning to Kroger stores.

Still, it seems, Kroger is intent on keeping Nerger’s business.

In a statement, Kroger spokesman Glynn Jenkins said that the company decided to transfer the co-manager in question to another location after an internal investigation. “We wish the customer well and hope she will consider making Kroger her destination to shop in the future,” the statement concluded.

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When told about the manager’s transfer, Nerger said it wasn’t good enough and suggested he “should have been demoted to cashier so he can learn who is really on food stamps,” she told 13WMAZ.

Jenkins said workers at the implicated Kroger store will be retrained to prevent any similar incident, 13WMAZ reported.

Food stamp use has increased by nearly 51 percent since October 2008, and a record 46.7 million Americans used food stamps in June, according to a Department of Agriculture report released earlier this month. 

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A packed convention center — even a place staffed with PTSD experts — is precisely the type of environment most service members and veterans are likely to avoid. 

For many military folks dealing with the symptoms of post-traumatic stress, crowds make them jumpy. And due to the attached social stigma of the disorder, the thought of being spotted at such an gathering would make lots of veterans cringe. 

But a virtual get-together where disabled veterans can anonymously ask questions about the anxieties weighing them down?

That's part of the thinking behind the first True Help Disability Web Expo taking place Thursday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Central Standard Time. The free event, organized by Allsup — a nationwide provider of services for people with disabilities — loops together more than a dozen leading health, disability, advocacy and social service organizations, several of them adept at working specifically with current and former service members.

Attendees simply need to register to chat all day from the comfort of their homes, local coffee shops, or their places of work. The expo will provide a "veterans booth" where military personnel past and present can seek and find suggestions, tips and advice on how and where to get treatment — including a primer on how to successfully access and steer through the monolithic U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, said Brett Buchanan, an Allsup’s VA-accredited claims agent. 

"In my experience dealing with veterans with PTSD and with depression, I find that the veterans do much better over the phone, when they’re in their house," Buchanan said. "I can have better conversations with them then when I meet them face to face.

"I think, absolutely, when you’re going to compare a Web expo to a live expo at an actual convention center, I don’t think you would get those individuals anywhere near that environment with those crowds," he added.

Allsup will bring together representatives from 15 national nonprofit groups that specialize in disabilities, including the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the Brain Injury Association of America, the Invisible Disabilities Association and the National Family Caregivers Association. 

"Our hope is that veterans will find valuable information and resources that they just didn’t know existed," said Rebecca Ray, director of corporate public relations for Allsup. "We know veterans have a lot of options through the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense. But there are a lot of groups that help veterans that may be new to them." 

While attendees can live chat with experts throughout the day, the expo will offer two moderated sessions for service members and their families: "What You Need to Know About Veterans Disability," from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. CST, and "Wounded Warriors — A Discussion on Veteran Disability Resources," from 2:35 to 3:00 p.m. CST.

"We dive into little nuances of the VA disability system," Buchanan said. "There are special considerations for different veterans — specifically if the veteran has more than one disability that’s related to service, or if they’re a combat veteran they are given special consideration.

"We’ll be talking about the VA process," he added. "We’ll be taking people through, step by step, on filing a claim, what happens if the claim is denied, or what happens if you get a decision and you’re not satisfied with it: are you able to appeal it?"

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Forty percent of U.S. households headed by someone younger than age 35 owed student debt in 2010 – double the percentage from 20 years ago, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis that found a record one in five households hobbled by student debt.

“We know the total amount of student debt has been rising, but what this study does is help us get a handle on who owes it,” said Richard Fry, a researcher with the Pew Center.

Outstanding student loans have topped $1 trillion, and rising tuition costs have spurred colleges and students to call for reforms.

“It’s been a hard labor market for everyone, but particularly for 18- to 20-year-olds, who have not been able to find work or find work in their qualified field,” Fry said.

View the Pew Research Center's complete report (Pdf)

Households headed by someone younger than age 35 have by far the highest share of the debt among the age groups, Fry said.  He said 70 percent of the total debt was owed by households headed by those under age 45. 

Among households owing student debt, the average outstanding student loan balance edged upward to $26,682 in 2010 from $23,349 in 2007, data show.

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Fry said incidence of student debt increased in nearly every demographic and economic category since 2007, but households with incomes less than $21,000 were hardest hit.

“While households with higher incomes also had student debt, they were able to shed other debt obligations,” he said.  

Other key findings:

• In 2010, nearly 90 percent of the debt was owed by households whose head had completed at least some college education and almost 70 percent was owed by households whose head had finished college.
• In 2009-10, 51 percent of full-time, first-time undergraduate students had a student loan; that was up 43.5 percent in 2006-2007.
• Most debtor households had less than $50,000 in outstanding student debt in 2010, but the share of households owing elevated amounts increased. For example, in 2007, 10 percent of student debtors owed more than $54,238. By 2010, 10 percent of student debtor households owed more than $61,894 (figures are adjusted for inflation).

The study released is based on the Survey of Consumer Finances, conducted every three years and sponsored by the Federal Reserve.

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Army officer, Fort Hood, Texas

The code on an ACOG (Advanced Combat Optical Gunsight) made for the U.S. military by defense contractor Trijicon. The lettering at the end, JN8:12 refers to the Bible passage John 8:12.

When the so-called "Jesus rifle" came to light in Jan. 2010, it sparked constitutional and security concerns, and a maelstrom of media coverage. The Pentagon ordered the removal of the secret code referring to Bible passages that the manufacturer had inscribed on the scopes of the standard issue rifles carried by U.S. soldiers into battle in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Nearly three years later — despite the military's assertion that is making "good progress" — the code remains on many rifles deploying to Afghanistan, which some soldiers argue is endangering their lives by reinforcing suspicions that the United States is waging a crusade against Muslims.

"I honestly believe that this is a dangerous situation. It literally could be a matter of life and death for a soldier if he fell into the wrong hands," said an Army officer who spoke to NBC News from Fort Hood, Texas. "The fact that combatant commanders are not following (rules set by Department of Defense) commanders is very disturbing to me."

The officer, who asked not to be named out of fear of reprisal from commanders, provided a photograph, taken on Tuesday, of the code on an M-4 rifle assigned to a soldier who is slated to deploy to Afghanistan in coming weeks.

The code stamped into the metal of the soldier’s ACOG (Advanced Combat Optical Gunsight) ends with the model number with "JN8:12." which refers to the New Testament passage, John 8:12, which reads: "Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life."

Other rifle scopes among some 250,000 provided by Michigan-based manufacturer Trijicon were imprinted with codes that point to passages in Matthew, Mark, Luke, Corinthians and Revelation, ABC News reported when it broke the news in 2010. 

Trijicon, reportedly had been following this practice for at least two decades, and it was well known to gun enthusiasts.

But these scopes attach to M-4 assault rifles used by U.S. troops, allies and Afghan and Iraqi forces being trained by the U.S. military.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit group that aggressively pursues the separation of church and state in defense institutions, first flagged the issue in late 2009 after receiving scores of complaints from active duty military members.  

"It’s constitutionally noxious," said foundation president Mikey Weinstein. "It's an embarrassment and makes us look exactly like the tenth incarnation of the crusades which launches 8 million new jihadist recruiting videos."

The military first said it was unaware of the biblical code. Then Gen. David Petraeus, formerly the head of U.S. Central Command overseeing U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, in Jan. 2010 issued a press release saying he was "very concerned" to learn of the biblical markings, which were "contrary to U.S. Central Command guidance."
 
"Our mission is to protect the population we're serving and establish conditions for security, stability, and development, and we strive to do that while remaining sensitive to the cultural and religious norms of the populace we are supporting," he said.

In Jan 2010, Trijicon which had a multi-year Defense Department contract to provide up to 800,000 sights, announced it would stop printing the verses on new scopes for the military use and provide modification kits for the removal of the code on existing scopes.

The Department of Defense said it would modify the scopes, starting with those on bases, though in March said it might take as long as a year.

Not all observers thought removal of the unobtrusive lettering on the scopes was a matter of great urgency.

"I understand that we have already started to address this issue," said retired Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis, in a debate with Weinstein on ABC News in March 2010. "You may argue it’s not fast enough," but he said he saw "no evidence" that the code presented a security issue.

Fast forward two and a half years, and "Jesus rifles" are still widely used in the United States and in areas of conflict, according to the Fort Hood officer, who was deployed to Iraq in 2010-2011. He says he has never seen a fixit kit.

Weinstein of MRFF said he has received more than 2,800 complaints from troops about the Jesus rifles — now even more widely known to Afghans and Iraqis, in part because of the controversy.

Iraqis "absolutely" know that it’s a Jesus rifle, said the Fort Hood officer, based on his experience.

"Do all the Afghans and Taliban know about this? Probably not. But the ones who do could ultimately affect the life of a soldier," said the  officer. "There’s absolutely no reason this couldn’t have been done in the first six weeks. And that just leads me to wonder why is the Army leadership not taking ownership of the responsibility of completing this task?"

Contacted by NBC News, scope-maker Trijicon directed calls to the head of sales and marketing Tom Munson, who relayed the message through his secretary that "he had no interest" in discussing the Jesus rifle.

NBC News queries to the military about the plan to remove the gospel-referencing code were answered in the form of an email statement saying the "corrective measures the Army took to remove the code were still ongoing."

"We had to take steps to ensure the corrective measures did not impede ongoing operations in theater, but we've got procedures to catch this at multiple points," said the statement provided by Matthew Bourke, in the U.S. Army Media Relations Division. "We're making good progress."

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Jerry Siskind / AFP - Getty Images file

Jimmy Hoffa and his son, James P. Hoffa, who later also became president of the Teamsters, in a 1971 photo.

The FBI and local police in Michigan plan to take soil samples from the backyard of a house in the Detroit suburb of Roseville on Friday, acting on a dying man's tip that the body of former Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa might be buried there.

M. Alex Johnson is a reporter for NBC News. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

Authorities have chased down hundreds of would-be leads since Hoffa disappeared 37 years ago after he met with two top Mafia operatives at a restaurant in Bloomfield Township, another Detroit suburb, in July 1975. All have led to dead ends, but authorities said this lead could be different.

NBC station WDIV-TV of Detroit reported that an unidentified man who is dying from cancer told Roseville police that he saw men moving a black bag at the garage of the house just hours after Hoffa went missing. Acting on the tip, authorities ran radar tests last week that picked up an image of something buried beneath a cement slab in the backyard.

Roseville Police Chief James Berlin confirmed that investigators had received the tip, telling the Detroit Free Press that "the information seemed credible, so we decided to follow up on it."

The newspaper reported that the house is in the 18700 block of Florida Street in northern Roseville, about 20 miles northeast of Detroit.

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The disappearance of Hoffa — who ran the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the country's biggest labor union, from 1957 to 1971 — has long fueled conspiracy theories. At various times, his body was posited to have been buried under Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.; beneath General Motors headquarters at Detroit's Renaissance Center; on a farm in Hartland Township, Mich.; in a field in Milford, Mich.; and even on the grounds of the White House. 

What is known is that Hoffa, who was then 62, was chafing at restrictions on his activity in the Teamsters that President Richard Nixon imposed when he commuted Hoffa's 1967 federal prison sentence for fraud and jury tampering in 1971 (he continued to run the union from his prison cell). On July 30, 1975, Hoffa was scheduled to meet with Anthony "Tony Jack" Giacalone, capo of the Detroit Mafia, and Anthony "Tony Pro" Provenzano, a former Teamsters vice president who was also a captain in the Genovese crime family, at a restaurant called the Machus Red Fox in Bloomfield Township.

In a 1976 "here we stand" memo published several years later, the FBI speculated that Hoffa reluctantly agreed to the meeting to try to smooth over differences with Provenzano and Giacalone, who were reportedly perturbed that Hoffa was trying to get back into the Teamsters' leadership, That, presumably, would have lessened the mob's control over the union.

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"It is believed that the hit, if there was one, would have been approved at very highest levels within the Organized Crime structure," the FBI concluded. "If this be the case, it would tend to lend credence to the evidence that PROVENZANO or certainly someone at his level, both within the Teamsters Union and (Mafia), was responsible."

Read the 1976 FBI memo (.pdf)

Hoffa's body has never been found. Provenzano was later convicted of an unrelated murder and died in 1988; Giacalone, who was imprisoned for tax fraud, died in 2001.

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Maricopa County Sheriff's Office / AP file

Jami Lynn Toler, 27, faked having breast cancer so she could have her breasts augmented, according to Arizona police.

A Phoenix woman accused of pretending to have cancer to raise money for breast implants was sentenced on Wednesday to one year in jail, local media reported.

As part of a plea agreement, Jami Lynn Toler, 27, will also get three years’ probation and pay restitution, The Arizona Republic reported. 

"I am so sorry for violating the trust placed in me and so sorry for what I did," Toler said at her sentencing, according to kpho.com.

Toler pleaded guilty in Maricopa County Superior Court last month to theft.

According to prosecutors, Toler told her family, friends and co-workers at Hallmark Hospice that she had breast cancer and needed money for a double mastectomy and breast reconstructive surgery.

Toler's mother created a website for donations, and police said people donated more than $8,000 to the cause beginning in 2011.

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According to court records, Toler paid a doctor $5,800 cash for breast augmentation surgery that was performed Nov. 15.

Staff at her workplace became suspicious when she couldn't provide a doctor’s note for her medical leave, according to wptv.com.

Medical records later obtained by police show she didn't have cancer.

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Courtesy of U.S. Army

Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair is accused of multiple offenses, including forcible sodomy and adultery.

An Army general based in Fort Bragg, N.C., has been charged with forced sex, multiple counts of adultery and inappropriate relationships with female subordinates while serving in Afghanistan.

Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair was relieved of his command in Afghanistan last May and returned to Fort Bragg. In addition to the sexual misconduct accusations, Sinclair also faces charges of possessing pornography and alcohol while deployed in Afghanistan.

Sinclair has been in the Army for 27 years, according to The Associated Press, and has been deployed three times to Afghanistan. He also served in Iraq.

Sinclair now faces an Article 32, the Army's equivalent of a grand jury hearing, to determine whether he should face court martial on any or all charges.

The charge of "forced sex" involves allegations he forced a subordinate to perform oral sex and is based on the previous Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Related: Pentagon calls for steps to prevent sexual assault

Revisions to that code implemented this year now consider all forms of "forced sex" as rape.

Court martials of Army Generals are relatively rare.  Only two, a brigadier general and major general, have been court martialed in the past 13 years.

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On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta ordered all military services to review their training and response programs for officers and enlisted personnel.

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LOS ANGELES -- Attorneys on Thursday are expected to argue a Fullerton man's appeal of his misdemeanor conviction for putting semen in a co-worker's water bottle.

Michael Kevin Lallana said in court documents there is insufficient evidence to support his Feb. 24, 2011 conviction on two misdemeanor counts of battery with sentencing enhancements for committing a crime for sexual gratification.

Lallana is expected to appear on Thursday at 9:30 a.m. before a three-judge panel in an Orange County courtroom, said Gwen Vieau a spokeswoman for the Orange County Superior Court.

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Lallana's attorney, E. Thomas Dunn Jr., did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

The first incident began when Lallana deposited his semen into the victim’s water bottle when the two worked together at Northwestern Mutual Financial Network in Newport Beach in January 2010.

Lallanos did it a second time in April of that year at a Northwestern branch in Orange. In an interview with police, he told investigators he chose Tiffany G.'s bottle because "she's very attractive," court documents said.

“(She) drank the contaminated water unaware of the bottle’s contents,” prosecutors said in a statement at the time of Lallana’s sentencing. “She threw the bottle away after tasting the contents and realizing the water was contaminated.”

The second time, prosecutors said, the victim became suspicious of the taste and sent the bottle to a private lab for tests. The lab confirmed the bottle contained semen in June 2010, prosecutors said.

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Once confirmed, the victim reported both incidents to police who arrested Lallana at his Fullerton home the next month. Prosecutors said his DNA matched the semen in the water bottle.

Lallana was sentenced to six months in jail and three years of formal probation on April 22, 2011.

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He was ordered to register as a sex offender for life and was ordered to pay $27,411 in restitution to cover the victim’s lost income and therapy costs, prosecutors said.

Lallana was also issued a stay-away order barring any contact with the victim, officials said.

During Lallana’s sentencing, the victim told the court that his acts caused her to go into depression.

“I had to seek counseling to find a way to get through this period in my life,” she told the court. “The idea that I had Mr. Lallana’s semen in my mouth, without my knowing, against my will, for his sexual pleasure sickens me…I feel that it was a form of rape…”

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Officials at the University of Virginia on Wednesday weren't thrilled with Playboy’s dubious distinction listing the nation’s oldest public university as the No. 1 party school in America.

“We are demanding a recount,” UVA spokeswoman Marian Anderfuren told NBC News.

“It’s far more important for the university to be known for our academic achievements in teaching and research,” said Carol Wood, another UVA spokeswoman, in a statement to NBC News.  

Playboy ranked the Charlottesville, Va., university -- founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1819 -- as the top party school, beating 100 other colleges nationwide, according to Playboy’s 2012 Top Party Schools list. The rankings are featured in the October college issue.  

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"Raise a glass to UVA, whose students know a thing or two about raising glasses and everything important to this list," said Playboy on its website. “The Cavaliers placed an uninspiring 16th in sports but more than made up for it in nightlife and sex, finishing number three and number two, respectively. According to our math, two plus three equals one.”

The rankings were based on 900 data points across three categories: sex, sports and nightlife, according to Playboy officials.   

Playboy’s full top 10 list:

1. University of Virginia
2. University of Southern California
3. University of Florida
4. University of Texas
5. University of Wisconsin
6. University of Georgia
7. Vanderbilt
8. Tulane
9. Texas Christian
10. Ohio State

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Brian Nguyen / Reuters file

A UC-Davis police officer pepper-sprays students during their sit-in at an "Occupy UCD" demonstration in Davis, Calif., in this Nov. 18 file photo.

Updated at 1:42 p.m. ET: The University of California has agreed to pay about $1 million to settle a lawsuit filed by UC-Davis students who were pepper-sprayed by campus police during an Occupy-style protest on campus last November.

The settlement also calls for a personal written apology from UC-Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi to each person hit with the spray. 

UC and plaintiffs represented by the American Civil Liberties Union filed the preliminary settlement in federal court in Sacramento on Wednesday, The Associated Press reported.

Under the agreement, which must be approved by a federal judge, the university will pay $30,000 to each of 21 students and former students named in the complaint and an additional $250,000 for their attorneys to split. 

The settlement also calls for the UC to set aside $100,000 to pay other individuals who can prove they were arrested or pepper-sprayed during the Nov. 18, 2011, incident.

Videos and photos taken by witnesses of an officer methodically spraying orange pepper-spray in the faces of nonviolent protesters quickly went viral. Many of the demonstrators were sitting on a campus pathway with arms linked in a protest against tuition hikes and income inequality.

The outcry led to more campus protests, and some called for Katehi to resign.

A task force report released in April blamed the incident on poor communication and planning throughout the campus chain of command, from the chancellor to the pepper-spraying officers.

Read the proposed settlement (.PDF)

The University of California issued this statement in response to news of the proposed settlement:

“The University of California can confirm a preliminary settlement has been reached in the lawsuit regarding the pepper spray incident on the UC Davis quad last November. This settlement, not yet approved by the court, calls for the University of California to pay $30,000 to each of the 21 named plaintiffs and a total of $250,000 to their attorneys. If a federal judge approves the terms, the University also will set aside a maximum of $100,000 to pay up to $20,000 each to individuals who wish to join the class action and can prove they were either arrested or directly pepper-sprayed. Any money paid by UC will come from the university’s General Liability Risk Program, a self-insured fund.”

Fatima Sbeih, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said in a statement the incident created a divide between students and campus police, The Los Angeles Times reported.

“Since Nov. 18, students have been afraid of the police. The university still needs to work to rebuild students’ trust and this settlement is a step in the right direction,” said Sbeih, who recently graduated with a degree in international studies, according to the Times.

The UC-Davis police officers who doused the protesters won’t face criminal charges. The Yolo County District Attorney’s office said in a statement last week that there was insufficient evidence to prove the use of force was illegal.

John Pike, the police lieutenant who was shown in the videos pepper-spraying the protesters, told The Sacramento Bee he was relieved by the DA’s decision.

Pike was fired on July 31 by the campus police chief who took over the university’s police department after the chief who was in charge last fall, Annette Spicuzza, stepped down under fire.

NBC News' James Eng and The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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Princeton Borough Police

Princeton University student Richard Tuckwell, was accused of invasion of privacy for allegedly taking "sexually explicit" photos of another student while he slept.

A Princeton University student has been charged with invasion of privacy after he allegedly took sexually explicit photos of another student while he was sleeping in a dorm room.

Princeton Borough Police said Richard Charles Tuckwell, a 20-year-old student from Australia, met a 19-year-old male Princeton student at a party on Sept. 16. They later returned together to a campus dorm room where the victim, who had been drinking, fell asleep, according to a police statement.

Tuckwell allegedly took “sexually explicit photographs of the victim without the victim’s consent.” Then, police said, the victim, whose name has not been released, awoke and saw Tuckwell taking the photos with his cell phone.

Police said there is no evidence the photographs were distributed to anyone or posted online.

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Tuckwell turned himself in to police on Sept. 21. He was processed, charged and released without bail, Princeton Police Capt. Nicholas Stutter said.

Tuckwell’s Princeton-based lawyer, Arnold Mellk, told the Daily Princetonian that his client planned to plead not guilty to the charges but declined to comment further.

Tuckwell has not been suspended from the university, a Princeton spokesperson said, who added the university is conducting its own investigation, the Daily Princetonian reported. 

Police said they are continuing to investigate sexual assault allegations related to the incident.

If convicted, Tuckwell faces three to five years in prison. He is due in court Oct. 1.  

Two other similar incidents have been the subject of much attention in New Jersey in recent years. Both happened at Rutgers University in 2010.

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In one, student Minjin Oh fondled his sleeping roommate and used his cell phone to make a video recording. The roommate woke up and reported it to university police. Oh admitted to the unwanted sexual contact and could face up to 364 days in jail. 

In the other, Dharun Ravi used a webcam on his computer to spy on his roommate, Tyler Clementi, kissing another man without Clementi’s knowledge. Clementi killed himself three days later. Ravi was convicted earlier this year of 15 counts of invasion of privacy and served 20 days in jail. 

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