WORLD BRIEFLY
Wednesday, December 28, 2016
reports every day of so-called
suspicious packages, though
that number can surge
depending on current events.
In the days after a pressure
cooker bomb exploded
earlier this year in New
York City, police responded
to more than 800 calls of
“suspicious packages.”
Stray bag of toys
prompts scare at
Trump Tower
NEW YORK (AP) — A
stray backpack prompted the
partial evacuation of Trump
Tower on Tuesday, though
bomb squad technicians
quickly determined the
unattended bag contained
children’s toys and was
harmless.
Video posted online
showed people running
through the Manhattan
skyscraper’s public lobby
as uniformed police officers
waved them toward the exits.
Stephen Davis, the New
York Police Department’s
top spokesman, said the
bomb squad gave the “all
clear” around 5 p.m. after
examining the backpack
left near the entrance to
Niketown, a store in the
building.
President-elect Donald
Trump lives in the tower and
has his offices there, though
he was at his Mar-a-Lago
estate in Florida when the
East Oregonian
AP Photo/Craig Ruttle
New York firefighters, police officers and others stand
outside Trump Tower lobby in New York, Tuesday. Police
cleared the lobby to investigate an unattended back-
pack, only to find it contained children’s toys.
bag was discovered.
His newly appointed
press secretary, Sean Spicer,
Tweeted that officials were
“back to work” following
the “false alarm.”
Shoppers and visitors
to Trump’s namesake
skyscraper described a
chaotic scramble.
“It was hysteria,” said
Andy Martin, a 16-year-old
from the New York City
suburb of Huntington.
“Police were shouting and
telling people to leave.”
Trump Tower, in addition
to being the president-
elect’s home and business
headquarters, contains
residences, restaurants, retail
stores — and a lobby that by
law is open to the public to
visitors daily from 8 a.m. to
10 p.m.
Police receive about 42
will likely have returned 5.8
million packages, topping
last year’s 5 million, which
was also a record.
A survey by the National
Retail Federation estimated
that more than $260 billion
worth of merchandise was
returned 2015.
UPS expects 1.3M
returns in one day
Execution stay
lifted for ex-soldier
in military prison
WASHINGTON (AP)
— Christmas is the season
of giving, and January the
month of returns.
UPS expects to deliver
1.3 million packages back to
retailers on Jan. 5, celebrated
by the delivery service, but
no one else, as “National
Returns Day.”
Surging online sales have
been followed by a surge of
returns by air and if UPS is
right, it will be its busiest
returns day ever, topping last
year’s 1 million.
By the end of January’s
first week, the Atlanta
company said Tuesday that it
KANSAS CITY, Mo.
(AP) — A Kansas federal
judge has lifted a stay of
execution for a former
soldier sentenced to death
for two killings and a
series of rapes, inching the
man closer to becoming
the military’s first death
sentence carried out in more
than a half-century.
U.S. District Judge
J. Thomas Marten last
week sided with the U.S.
government in denying a bid
by former Fort Bragg, North
Carolina, soldier Ronald A.
Gray to block the military
from pressing ahead with the
Page 7A
execution by lethal injection.
Since a military court
sentenced him to die in
1988, Gray has been held
at Fort Leavenworth,
Kansas, where the military
carried out its last execution
when it hanged Army Pvt.
John Bennett in 1961 for
raping and trying to kill an
11-year-old Austrian girl.
No known execution date
has been set for Gray as of
Tuesday. Though Gray’s
attorneys have said in recent
court filings that they plan
to ask military courts to
intervene, that status of
those appeals was unclear
Tuesday.
Gray, 51, is among six
people on the U.S. military’s
death row, according to the
Death Penalty Information
Center, a nonprofit research
group that opposes capital
punishment. Those inmates,
whose appeals are pending,
include Nidal Hasan, an
Army psychiatrist who killed
13 people in a 2009 shooting
rampage at a Texas Army
base.
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