LINDEN, N.J.
No questioning of suspect
Investigators haven’t been able to question a man charged with setting off bombs in New York and New Jersey because he’s too severely injured from his shootout with police, a law enforcement official said Thursday. Ahmad Khan Rahami remained hospitalized after his gunbattle with police officers Monday, and it was unclear when he might be taken to court to face federal terrorism charges in the blasts, which injured 31 people Saturday. A public defender has sought a court appearance for Rahami so he can hear the charges against him. Rahami, an Afghan-born U.S. citizen, has been unconscious and intubated for much of the time since undergoing surgery, said Robert Reilly, a spokesman for the FBI’s Newark office.
NEW YORK
Weiner under investigation
Online communications between disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner and a 15-year-old girl are being investigated by law enforcement agencies in New York and North Carolina, officials said Thursday. The office of Jill Westmoreland Rose, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of North Carolina in Charlotte, has “begun investigative efforts,” a spokeswoman said. An FBI task force in New York designed to combat the sexual exploitation of children also is investigating, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
MINNEAPOLIS
Man found dead in mudslide
Several Midwestern states were a soggy mess Thursday after up to 10 inches of rain fell in parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa and triggered mudslides that caused one death. Washed-out railroad tracks derailed a train in southwestern Wisconsin, where a mudslide destroyed a house and killed the man inside. In northern Iowa, about 100 people were evacuated from their apartments. Mud pushed a home onto Wisconsin State Highway 35 in Vernon County on Thursday morning. It took search and rescue crews until the afternoon to find his body, emergency management officials said.
BOSTON
Sexy rat study wins Ig Nobel
A Swede who wrote a trilogy about collecting bugs, an Egyptian doctor who put pants on rats to study their sex lives and a British researcher who lived like an animal have been named winners of the Ig Nobels, the annual spoof prizes for quirky scientific achievement. The winners were honored — or maybe dishonored — Thursday in a ceremony at Harvard University. Winners receive $10 trillion cash prizes — in virtually worthless Zimbabwean money.
Compiled from wire reports.