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Four suspects were being pursued after the shooting of a student at South Carolina State University Friday afternoon.

Campus police said the student later died. The shooting occurred around 1:30 p.m. outside of the Andrew Hugine Suites of Living and Learning community. The victim was not identified.

The suspects remained at large but were no longer on campus, according to the police. Perimeters had been secured to prevent the suspects from returning to school grounds.

“The students are safe,” campus police Chief Mernard Clarkson said. “The perimeters of the campus have been secured.”

In a statement, university President Thomas J. Elzey expressed condolences to the victim’s family

“I want to reassure parents who have children on this campus, that your children are in good hands,” said Elzey, promising to “maintain a safe and secure environment.”

The Orangeburg City Police, Orangeburg County Sheriff Department and South Carolina State Police were assisting the school in the investigation.

The university sent an alert announcing it was locked down. A siren went off on campus, and the school sent out social media alerts to communicate with students. The lockdown was lifted hours later.

South Carolina State University is about 40 miles south of Columbia.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Matt Rourke / AP

David Wildstein walks from a hearing on Jan. 9, 2014, at the Statehouse in Trenton, N.J.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey announced Friday it will not pay for legal fees for the former executive at the center of the George Washington Bridge scandal.

The transit agency denied a request for indemnification on Friday from David Wildstein, the agency executive who ordered the lane closures on the bridge in September, a Port Authority source familiar with the decision told the Bergen Record.

The closures recently have been exposed as a political vendetta by associates of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie against the mayor of Fort Lee. Christie has denied any knowledge of the ploy.

Wildstein was told that his request to have his legal fees covered “would not be warranted” under the Port Authority’s bylaws, which state the agency will pay for legal representation if the action falls within the employee or former employee’s job duties. However, the agency will not pay if fraud, malice, misconduct or intentional wrongdoing were involved.

Wildstein, who was hired by an appointee of Christie's, resigned from his $150,000-a-year job as the authority’s director of interstate capital projects after the controversy broke and started to grow.

He is accused of ordering traffic jam-inducing lane closures on the bridge in retaliation for the Fort Lee mayor's decision to not support Christie’s re-election campaign.

The U.S. Attorney's Office is investigating whether federal laws were broken, and a separate panel has subpoenaed 18 people to gain additional information about the closures. Wildstein has hired outside attorney, Alan Zegas, to represent him.

Wildstein did not respond to requests for comments Friday, but when he resigned he wrote in a letter, “My plan was to leave the agency at some point next year, but the Fort Lee issue has been a distraction.”

Related:

Christie in a jam: Where things stand in New Jersey's Sandy, bridge scandals

Former Homeland Security chief hired to represent bridge honcho in New Jersey probe

Christie campaign organization on subpoena list in bridge probe, source says

Ross D. Franklin / AP file

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, seen here at a December news conference, says 38 inmates at the jail have desecrated American flags.

Controversial Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio says 38 inmates have rebelled against his new policy of putting American flags in jail cells, desecrating the Stars and Stripes and earning them what he calls a diet of "bread and water."

The regimen actually is a baked loaf of ground-up fruits, vegetables, milk powder, dough and other ingredients and, though it fulfills nutritional requirements, is decidedly unappetizing.

Arpaio said that any inmate who damages a flag will be eating the so-called nutra-loaf — without utensils — for two weeks.

"I run a patriotic jail system," said Arpaio. "I am somewhat disappointed that 38 inmates recently desecrated the flags, tearing them up and writing on them and throwing them in the toilet."

The Maricopa County sheriff has made headlines in the past for making prisoners wear pink underwear and questioning President Barack Obama's birth certificate. A federal judge ruled last year that his office has racially profiled Latinos, a decision the five-term sheriff is appealing.

The Arizona American Civil Liberties Union said it did not have a comment on Arpaio's flags-in-cells program or the punishment he's devised.

"This is not a First Amendment situation," Arpaio said. "When they tamper with the flag, they are tampering with government property."

Arpaio said he did not know why the inmates were damaging the flags, "but I don't believe there is any conspiracy."

AP Photo/Indiana State Police

Emergency crews work at the scene of a massive pileup involving more than 40 vehicles, many of them semitrailers, along Interstate 94 Thursday afternoon near Michigan City, Ind. At least three were killed and more than 20 people were injured.

A mile-long stretch of a busy northern Indiana interstate reopened Friday morning, nearly a full day after a massive pileup that killed three people and injured more than 20.

Nearly four dozen vehicles — many of them tractor-trailers — were involved in the chain-reaction wreck Thursday afternoon on Interstate 94, the main artery connecting Detroit and Chicago in Indiana.

At least one person was trapped in a vehicle for hours before authorities could come to the rescue, Indiana State Police said.

LaPorte County Coroner John Sullivan said the victims are 65-year-old Jerry Dalrymple from the Chicago area, who had a dog with him that also died. A couple, Thomas Wolma, 67, and Marilyn Wolma, 65, from Grand Rapids, Mich., were also killed in the crash.

Twenty two other people were hurt and taken to local hospitals, state police said. The injured included Henry Imboden, 79, and Jeffrey Rennell, 48, who were in critical condition, Indiana State Police Sgt. Ann Wojas said in a news conference Friday.

The pileup stretched out over about a mile of the interstate, said state police Cpl. Larry Koebcke. Lanes remained closed until late Friday morning, after crews in cranes worked to clear the scene. 

A total of 46 vehicles were involved in the accident, including 18 semitrailers, Wojas said. Two box trucks and 26 passenger vehicles made up the rest of the catastrophic wreckage, she said. 

“It’ll live with us forever. That’s something that you never forget,” said Coolspring Fire Department Chief Mick Pawlik. “We’re lucky that there weren’t 20 people dead and three people injured.”

Indiana State Police via AP

Snow and whiteout conditions were contributing factors to the accident, state police said. A band of heavy lake-effect snow was reported Thursday afternoon when the pileup began, dropping 1 to 2 inches of snow per hour and reducing visibility to a quarter-mile or less, National Weather Service meteorologist Evan Bentley said.

“We had a full call out of crews on 94 the entire day,” said Matt Deitchley, director of media relations at the Indiana Department of Transportation. 

Deitchley said Interstate 94 was plowed and salted just 20 minutes before the accident took place, but “the conditions that happened so quickly,” rendered efforts ineffective. 

Dixie Juchcinski, speaking in stand-still traffic some four miles from the crash, told the station the accident occurred in white-out conditions.

"When we first came to a stop, it was a complete whiteout," Juchcinski said. "It was kind of a surprise to us because we could only see one or two cars in front of us."

Scott Collins, 17, of Chesterton, Ind., was riding in a car with three other teens and saw the crash happen just behind them. 

"One of the semis started sliding and I think it jackknifed in the middle of the road" and collided with another semi, he told the Associated Press. "After that happened, multiple semis locked up ... We were pretty nervous." 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

This story was originally published on Fri Jan 24, 2014 1:03 PM EST

Erik S. Lesser / EPA

A woman walks past a frozen fountain in Atlanta on Friday.

The latest — but certainly not the last — brutal blast of winter weather stretched so far south Friday that even Texas and Louisiana got a taste of the pain.

Ice caused traffic accidents all over Houston, and sleet slicked rooftops outside Austin. Freezing rain was reported in Baton Rouge, and snow fell within 150 miles of the Mexican border. Fort Hood was closed to all but essential military personnel.

Alexandria, La., where it snows roughly once every five years, had an inch on the ground for only the 23rd time on record, said Jonathan Erdman, a meteorologist for The Weather Channel.

Elsewhere, it was bitterly cold. Still.                                     

Single-digit temperatures stretched as far south as the Carolinas, and it was 0 degrees as people drove to work in central Kentucky. Burlington, Vt., woke up to 9 below, and Chicago was 11 below. Wind chills in the Great Lakes approached 30 below.

Not only will there be no relief in the days ahead, but it’s going to get worse. Repeated surges of arctic air this weekend and early next week will rival the conditions of the infamous polar vortex of earlier this month, forecasters said.

The Great Lakes, Ohio Valley and Northeast are all in for snow on Saturday, and then comes the severe cold. By Tuesday morning, the temperature should be 16 below in Chicago, 22 below in Minneapolis and 9 below in Cincinnati.

This story was originally published on Fri Jan 24, 2014 10:20 AM EST

Courtesy of Ryan Clapp

Lily Glidden

The young American woman trampled to death by elephants in Thailand was a "fearless" outdoor researcher who knew how to handle dangerous animals, her family said Friday.

Lily Glidden's body was found in a forest five days after she went for a walk in the Kaeng Krachan National Park and never returned, police said.

Her camera contained photos of wildlife, and investigators believe she was crushed by elephants based on the nature of her injuries.

"We believe that what happened to Lily was a result of unknowable and unusual circumstances which she must have been unable to foresee or prevent," her family said in a statement.

Glidden, who graduated from Tufts University in 2012 with a biology degree, had done work trapping wolves in the West, handling venomous snakes in Hong Kong, and counting game animals on the Serenegti plain. She spent a year in tracking and survival training at a wilderness school.

"Lily was very aware of the dangers of working with wildlife and not a person to court foolish risks, particularly where animals were involved," her family said.

"She had an educated and dedicated respect for the natural world and was completely comfortable in it. She did extensive solo hiking and backpacking in many parts throughout the West and knew how to respond to chance encounters with bears and other potentially dangerous animals.

"She was also a fearless individual... We would wish her remembered as an extremely competent professional in her chosen field.”

Courtesy Ryan Clapp

Lily Glidden

Glidden, who grew up in Freeville, N.Y., outside Ithaca, had traveled all over for work but was on vacation in Thailand, said close friend Ryan Clapp, who visited her there in early January.

The two attended Tufts, where Glidden was the president of the Mountain Club and the Ultimate Frisbee team.

"She was known as kind of a badass," said Clapp.

He recalled that during wilderness training in their senior year, Glidden spent her free time making a pelt from a dead squirrel she found on the road. During one spring break, she camped out by herself at the reservoir with little supplies, just to see if she could do it.

"She threw out one of her shoulders skydiving. The result was she was asked to to go to the hospital to get it back into place. Instead she went to a tree and threw herself backwards into it and popped her shoulder back into place," Clapp said.

She had a "big brassy laugh" but an unassuming style, he said. "We'd have to brag for her."

Glidden posted pictures of her travels and wildlife work on her Facebook page. One photo showed her holding a huge snake and wearing a T-shirt with an image of an elephant.

Clapp had visited her in Hong Kong, where she was part of a project that tracked bamboo pit vipers, which can be deadly. He said she had snakes in bags stashed all over the jungle shack she shared with other researchers.

"It made me so nervous," he said. "But she talked about them like they were little puffballs."

Twenty-five dead pilot whales were discovered Thursday near Kice Island in southwest Florida, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.

They were part of a pod of whales first seen swimming around Gordon Pass in Naples in Collier County on Sunday, NOAA Fisheries Southeast marine mammal stranding coordinator Blair Mase said.

Biologists marked the whales, which were spotted again off Marco Pass near Marco Island on Monday. A Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission boat stayed with the group for much of Monday, when they were two miles off-shore, before officials stopped monitoring them.

But early Thursday afternoon, officials received a report from a boater who saw the whales on Kice Island, Mase said.

Mase said the whales came in on the high seas and were beached on Kice Island. It is on the south side of Caxambas Pass, which divides Marco Island and Kice Island, NOAA Fisheries spokeswoman Kim Amendola said. They were discovered 16 miles south of where they were originally spotted on Sunday.

A FWC field biologist went out and confirmed that the whales were all dead, and had been there for about 24 hours, Mase said. The biologist was accompanied by FWC law enforcement.

Sixteen of the whales were females, and nine were males, NOAA Fisheries said as it gave an increased death toll late Thursday afternoon.

Officials initially said that about 20 whales were found.

Earlier this week, four pilot whales died and four more were euthanized around Lover’s Key near Fort Myers in Lee County.
Mase said the necropsies on those eight whales were completed Wednesday. Some of the whales looked emaciated, and some appeared to be in decent condition, she said.

"They did all have empty stomachs, which is something that we were suspecting," she said.

Five of the whales were males and three were females, including one that was pregnant, Amendola said.

In December, 51 pilot whales were found stranded in Everglades National Park, and 22 of them died. No cause of deaths has been determined yet for those whales, Mase said Thursday.

Journal News/lohud.com

Mount Pleasant police chief Brian Fanelli pictured in 1999.

A suburban New York police chief who taught sex-abuse awareness classes to children has been charged with downloading child pornography.

Mount Pleasant Chief Brian Fanelli was arrested Thursday by Homeland Security agents.

In a complaint filed with the court, an agent says Fanelli told investigators that he first viewed child pornography as research for the sex-abuse awareness classes he was teaching at two schools.

He then began viewing the pornography "for personal interest," according to the complaint.

Fanelli appeared in federal court in White Plains and was released on $50,000 bond.

No plea was entered. Fanelli's attorney refused to comment after the court session.

Fanelli has been chief for just two months in Mount Pleasant, in Westchester County. He first joined the department in 1981.