No shootings, stabbings in NYC Monday
NEW YORK, Nov. 28 (UPI) -- New York City's 8.2 million people must have been in a good mood Monday. Police didn't receive a single shooting or stabbing complaint the whole day.
Actually, NYPD officials -- who were at a loss as to why or how the pleasant news happened -- said they didn't field a shooting or stabbing call from 10:25 p.m. Sunday to 11:27 a.m. Tuesday. One Brooklyn teenager showed up at an area hospital with a gunshot wound, but it was later determined he accidentally shot himself, the New York Daily News reported Wednesday.
"Nice way to start the week," said Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne, the NYPD's top spokesman.
Officials couldn't remember the last time they went 24 hours without a single shooting or stabbing, but pointed to homicide rates that have sharply declined in recent years. The Big Apple is on pace to log fewer than 400 homicides this year, it's lowest number on record.
Monday's tranquility is a sharp contrast with the height of a crime wave that plagued the nation's cities in the early 1990s. In 1994, the first year NYPD began tracking crime using computers, 4,967 people were shot -- an average of 14 per day.
Anti-Islam filmmakers sentenced to death
CAIRO, Nov. 28 (UPI) -- Seven expatriate Egyptians involved in making the anti-Islam film "Innocence of Muslims" were sentenced to death in absentia by the Cairo Criminal Court.
The ruling Wednesday against the seven, each a Coptic Christian, was forwarded to Cairo's grand mufti, the highest religious official of Islamic law, for his approval, the Egyptian newspaper al-Masry al-Youm reported.
The film sparked protests across the Muslim world by people who saw its depiction of Islam and the Prophet Muhammad as offensive.
Prosecutors accused the defendants -- alleged producer Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, Washington-based National American Coptic Assembly founder Maurice Sadeq Girgis Adbel Sharid, Assembly representative Nabil Adib Bassada, physician Fekry Adbel Masih Zoqlama, religious program presenter Morcos Azia Khalil, Phoebe Abdel Masih Paules Salib and Nader Farid Nicola -- of provoking sectarianism and blasphemy, and endangering national unity and social peace.
Five of the defendants live in the United States, one in Australia and one in Canada, the newspaper said.
Hard times mean more shared households
WASHINGTON, Nov. 28 (UPI) -- The percentage of adults living in someone else's household jumped almost 2 points from 2007 to 2011, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Wednesday.
In 2007, 16 percent of all U.S. residents 18 and older were living in situations in which they were neither the householder, or the householder's spouse or partner. Last year, 17.9 percent of all adults were in that situation.
More than half of those in shared households last year were adult children, and most of the rest were relatives. Fewer than one in five were non-relatives.
The number of shared households rose from 19.8 million or 17.6 percent of households in 2007, before the economy slumped, to 22.2 million or 19.4 percent in 2010. The number dipped in 2011 to 22 million or 19.2 percent.
In five states, California, Florida, Hawaii, New York and Nevada, and in the District of Columbia more than one in five adults was living in someone else's household in 2011.
Census said sharing a household protected many people from poverty. While 15.8 percent of adults living in others' households had incomes below the poverty line in 2011 based on household income, 55.5 would have been considered poor if living alone.
Man gets 6 months in parrot killing
EVERETT, Wash., Nov. 28 (UPI) -- A Washington state man will spend six months in jail and is barred from owning pets after pleading guilty to stabbing his girlfriend's parrot to death.
Richard J. Atkinson, 63, of Everett, Wash., pleaded guilty last month in Snohomish County Superior Court to first-degree animal cruelty and second-degree domestic-violence malicious mischief. The woman had owned the parrot named Bailey for 18 years.
Atkinson's lawyer William Steffener said his client mixed anti-anxiety medication with whiskey that sent him into a blacked-out rage where he killed the bird with a serving fork and trashed the home they shared, the Daily Herald of Everett, Wash., reported Tuesday.
Both Steffener and prosecutors asked Superior Court Judge George Appel to go forward with the sentence. Calling Atkinson's actions "depraved," Appel agreed.
He also added a stipulation that Atkinson receive treatment from mental health workers while in jail and prohibited Atkinson from owning any pets for at least five years.
Judge orders psych exam for 'killer' nanny
NEW YORK, Nov. 28 (UPI) -- A judge ordered a psychiatric examination Wednesday at a hearing in a New York hospital for the nanny charged with killing two children.
Yoselyn Ortega's lawyer entered a not guilty plea as she lay silent and handcuffed on a hospital bed, the New York Post reported. Ortega was formally charged with the first-degree murder of Lucia Krim, 6, and her brother, Leo, 2.
The children's mother, Marina Krim, found Lucia and Leo bleeding to death in a bathroom in the family's apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side on Oct. 25. Ortega, who had allegedly tried to cut her own throat, was with them.
Ortega has been under guard at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital since the killings. She is scheduled to appear in court Jan. 16.
