Around the Nation

Feds drop charges against activist

MADISON, Wis. — Federal prosecutors have dropped four extortion charges against an animal rights activist who was accused of freeing thousands of mink from farms around the Midwest.

Prosecutors said they were forced to act because a Supreme Court decision changed the legal definition of extortion while Peter Daniel Young was on the run. The ruling determined that someone must actually take something from another person, authorities said.

Mr. Young, 27, of Mercer Island, Wash., still faces two counts of animal enterprise terrorism — misdemeanors that each carry up to a year in prison. Each of the four counts of interference with commerce by extortion carried penalties of up to 20 years in prison.

Prosecutors believe Mr. Young is part of the Animal Liberation Front, a group that aims to destroy animal-related industries. He and reputed accomplice Justin Samuel were indicted in 1998 on the six charges. Prosecutors say the pair trespassed onto five farms in Iowa, South Dakota and Wisconsin in 1997 and freed about 7,000 mink.

Samuel cooperated with authorities and got two years in prison.

Financier who gave millions to charity dies

LITTLE ROCK — Jack Stephens, a financier who built one of the largest investment banking firms off Wall Street and donated millions of dollars to charitable causes, died yesterday. He was 81.

Mr. Stephens died after suffering from declining health for some time. He had a mild stroke in 1998 and had been hospitalized for about a month before going home Thursday, said Frank Thomas, a spokesman for the firm Stephens Inc.

Mr. Stephens, with his brother, W.R. “Witt” Stephens, was one of the richest people in Arkansas. He gave generously to charity, including $48 million to a spinal institute at the University of Arkansas.

Wal-Mart nixes ’Singles Shopping’

ROANOKE — Wal-Mart has ditched a program that helped single shoppers find love in the discount store’s aisles. Officials at Wal-Mart headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., ordered their Roanoke store to put an end to Singles Shopping, the only program of its kind at Wal-Mart’s U.S. stores.

Taking a cue from Wal-Marts in Germany, the month-old program encouraged customers on Friday evenings to pick up a red bow they could place on their shopping carts as an invitation to other singles. “Flirt points” were set up in various sections of the store.

A Wal-Mart spokesman declined to comment on the reason behind the program’s cancellation, but customer Dale Firebaugh, who showed up Friday night hoping to meet his match, said store employees told him several people had complained.

“I’m disappointed,” said Mr. Firebaugh, 63. “Where can someone over 40 who doesn’t smoke or drink or go to bars meet someone?”

1 dead, 1 wounded in hospital shooting

GOLDSBORO, N.C. — A man being admitted to a psychiatric hospital Friday grabbed a deputy’s gun, wounded a hospital employee and then fatally shot himself, authorities said.

The deputy was helping to admit the 27-year-old man to Cherry Psychiatric Hospital in Goldsboro, about 45 miles southeast of Raleigh, Onslow County Sheriff Ed Brown said. Neither the deputy nor the shooter was immediately identified.

William Shelton Denning, 44, a health care technician at the psychiatric hospital, underwent surgery at Wayne Memorial Hospital, where information on his condition was not available, the state Department of Health and Human Services said.

Cherry Psychiatric Hospital went into lockdown after the shooting. The hospital serves several hundred patients from more than 30 counties in eastern North Carolina.

Children locked out in heat, parents held

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. —Three children, one a toddler, were locked out of their parents’ home in blistering heat until rescued by a sheriff’s deputy.

A police report said the three siblings — a 5-year-old girl, a 4-year-old boy and a 22-month-old boy — appeared near exhaustion when a deputy found them locked outside behind the family’s double-wide manufactured house just south of Deming, the Albuquerque Journal reported.

The mother, father and grandmother, who were inside the house with two family dogs, were arrested. The police report said the thermometer outside the house showed a temperature of 109 degrees.

From wire dispatches and staff reports