World and Politics

You would think Dennis Farina would know better considering one of his previous jobs. The actor was charged with a felony Sunday at Los Angeles International Airport after a loaded gun was found in his carry-on luggage. When the weapon was discovered at a security checkpoint, the 64-year-old actor said he had forgotten the .22-caliber handgun was in his luggage, police said. Farina was booked for investigation of carrying a concealed weapon, said Sgt. Dennis Beacham. Bail was set at $25,000 before police discovered the weapon was not registered. Charges were upgraded to a felony, and he is now being held in lieu of $35,000 bail. Farina is a former Chicago policeman (for 20 years) who ...

I don’t know about you, but I love new electronic gizmos. Livescribe has introduced Pulse pen, which records audio and also digitizes whatever you're writing, while keeping track of what exactly you were listening to while writing. The pen's power is in letting you review written notes that are synchronized with audio. When you tap what you've scribbled or drawn on the special "dot paper" Pulse works with, you'll hear any audio you recorded while you were writing. You can search notes on your (Windows-only) PC by typing in a word and having Livescribe's software find a written match. Pulse also functions as a basic digital audio recorder. The Pulse is powered by a Samsung ...

Police detained a suspected pedophile in New Jersey Thursday, just two days after Interpol made a rare appeal for public help in the international manhunt to catch him, the police agency said. Wayne Nelson Corliss, 58, was detained in Union City, N.J., Interpol said. He is suspected of sexually abusing at least three boys from Southeast Asia thought to have been as young as 6 to 10 years old at the time, the international police agency said. Interpol had asked for the public's help because two years of police investigations had failed to determine the man's identity, nationality and whereabouts. The agency's head, Ronald Noble, called the appeal an "extraordinary success" and that such calls for public ...

Rep. Vito Fossella of New York acknowledged on Thursday that he fathered a child from an extramarital affair, answering questions that arose from his arrest on drunken driving charges last week. Fossella, a Staten Island Republican who was arrested on May 1 in Alexandria, Va., issued a statement on Thursday acknowledging that he had had an extramarital affair with Laura Fay, a former Air Force lieutenant colonel, and that the two of them have a 3-year-old daughter together. When Fossella was pulled over, police said he told officers that he was going to see his daughter in the area. That prompted questions about who the daughter was. As speculation swirled over Mr. Fossella’s relationship with Ms. Fay ...

Scientists said they have mapped the genetic makeup of the platypus — one of nature's strangest animals with a bill like a duck's, a mammal's fur and snake-like venom. The researchers, whose analysis of the platypus genome was published Thursday in the journal Nature, said it could help explain how mammals, including humans, evolved from reptiles millions of years ago. The platypus is classed as a mammal because it has fur and feeds its young with milk. It flaps a beaver-like tail. But it also has bird and reptile features — a duck-like bill and webbed feet, and lives mostly underwater. Males have venom-filled spurs on their heels. "At first glance, the platypus appears as if it ...