COLU @ CONCEPTS

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Maureen Hart was riding home on the Founders Bridge into Hartford when the tire on her bicycle went flat. Stranded on her way home from a friend’s house, Hart took advantage of a program she’d learned about just days before. While at a jazz concert in Bushnell Park, she and other friends who rode there were approached by a city bicycle “safety ambassador,” who gave them a phone number to call if they ever needed roadside assistance. Hart called that number and soon a bicycle mechanic was on hand, putting a new tube in her tire. “This is such a cool service,” she said. “I know people who live in Portland (Oregon) and that’s a really bicycle-friendly city. They don’t have anything like this. This is amazing.” The free roadside assistance initiative is run by the Hartford Business Improvement District. It is part of the organization’s Clean and Safe program, which puts those “safety ambassadors” on downtown streets, giving free assistance to strande...

WAUKESHA, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin girl who admitted to participating in the stabbing of a classmate to please horror character Slender Man will avoid prison after a jury determined that she was mentally ill at the time of the attack. Anissa Weier trembled as the jury’s verdict late Friday was read after a week of testimony and some 11 hours of deliberations. She wasn’t available afterward, but her attorney said Weier was relieved and cried following the verdict. “I’m very thankful to the jurors for taking the time to look at what was really going on with her,” Maura McMahon said, her own eyes wet from crying. Weier and Morgan Geyser lured classmate Payton Leutner into the woods at a park in Waukesha, a Milwaukee suburb, in 2014. Geyser stabbed Leutner 19 times while Weier urged her on, according to investigators. A passing bicyclist found Leutner, who barely survived her wounds. All three girls were 12 at the time. Both Weier and Geyser told detectives they felt they had...

BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq is prepared to intervene militarily if the Kurdish region’s planned independence referendum results in violence, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview Saturday. If the Iraqi population is “threatened by the use of force outside the law, then we will intervene militarily,” he said. Iraq’s Kurdish region plans to hold the referendum on support for independence from Iraq on Sept. 25 in three governorates that make up their autonomous region, and in disputed areas controlled by Kurdish forces but which are claimed by Baghdad. “If you challenge the constitution and if you challenge the borders of Iraq and the borders of the region, this is a public invitation to the countries in the region to violate Iraqi borders as well, which is a very dangerous escalation,” al-Abadi said. The leaders of Iraq’s Kurdish region have said they hope the referendum will push Baghdad to come to the negotiating table and create a path...

MINEOLA, N.Y. (AP) — For years, the thicket along a beach highway on Long Island held a horrible secret. Hidden from passing drivers were the skeletal remains of 10 people, mostly young women who had worked as prostitutes. Who killed them, and why, is a mystery that has vexed a slew of seasoned homicide detectives. The case took an intriguing turn when a veteran county prosecutor became the first authority to publicly name a suspect in at least one of the deaths: John Bittrolff, a Long Island carpenter who was sentenced to consecutive 25 years-to-life terms in prison this week for beating two prostitutes to death in 1993 and 1994. Robert Biancavilla, an assistant district attorney in Suffolk County, said after the sentencing that some of the remains found near Gilgo Beach “may be attributed to the handiwork of Mr. Bittrolff.” If authorities have evidence to back up their suspicions, though, they aren’t saying. Biancavilla declined to elaborate. Suffolk County police offici...

THAXTON, Va. (AP) — The disappearance of two young Maryland sisters shook the suburbs of Washington, and remained an agonizing mystery for more than four decades. Now another region 250 miles away is linked to the crime. Authorities say convicted sex offender Lloyd Lee Welch Jr. burned at least one of the sisters’ bodies in a fire on his cousins’ property on Taylors Mountain, in west-central Virginia. Following Welch’s guilty plea this week, the people of Taylors Mountain are hoping to put an end to any association between their home and the slayings of 10-year-old Katherine and 12-year-old Sheila Lyon. The sisters vanished in 1975 after walking to a shopping mall near their home in Kensington, Maryland. “All of us feel like he stained all of our reputations. We had nothing to do with it. It’s something we’d rather have not had happen here. We wouldn’t want to see it happen anywhere,” said Danny Johnson, who runs an apple orchard and winery on the mountain. Taylors Mountai...

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Heather Peele is just like any other mom rushing to pick up her child at day care after work. Except, it’s 2:30 a.m., and her 6-year-old daughter has been sleeping for hours at a 24-hour child care center near the Las Vegas airport. Parents like Peele, a casino cocktail waitress, who work outside traditional business hours often are lost in the national conversation about access to child care and early education. “I’m just in survival mode right now,” said Peele, who is thankful she found a safe, clean and affordable facility for her daughter while she works, sometimes until 4 a.m. She pays about $40 a day for 10 hours of care. In many cases, the children of shift workers are cared for by relatives or friends in unofficial capacities. Those without such a support network have few, if any, options. The National Survey of Early Care and Education said in a 2015 report that just 2 percent of the child care centers it surveyed offer child care in the evening...

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. (AP) — The first 911 call from the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills didn’t sound ominous: A nursing home patient had an abnormal heartbeat. An hour later, came a second call: a patient had trouble breathing. Then came the third call. A patient had gone into cardiac arrest — and died. Over the next few hours of Wednesday morning, the dire situation at the Rehabilitation Center for fragile, elderly people would come into clearer view. Three days after Hurricane Irma hit Florida, the center still didn’t have air conditioning, and it ultimately became the grimmest tragedy in a state already full of them. Eight people died and 145 patients had to be moved out of the stifling-hot facility, many of them on stretchers or in wheelchairs. Authorities launched a criminal investigation to figure out what went wrong and who, if anyone, was to blame. Within hours of the tragedy, Gov. Rick Scott and U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson made no effort to hide their anger and frus...

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A judge’s decision to acquit an officer of murder in the death of a black suspect came down to two major questions: Did the officer plant a gun, and did his outburst about killing the man seconds before the shooting signal premeditation? St. Louis Circuit Judge Timothy Wilson determined Friday that prosecutors failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Jason Stockley’s use of deadly force was not justifiable self-defense. Anthony Lamar Smith was killed in the 2011 encounter. “Ultimately when people argue about this case, they are going to be arguing whether the judge drew the right conclusion from the evidence and probably less about the law,” said Ben Trachtenberg, an associate professor of law at the University of Missouri. Here’s a look at how the judge parsed those arguments in his ruling: ___ DID THE OFFICER PLANT THE GUN? The officers were investigating what appeared to be a drug transaction in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant. T...

Rising sea levels and fierce storms have failed to stop relentless population growth along U.S. coasts in recent years, a new Associated Press analysis shows. The latest punishing hurricanes scored bull’s-eyes on two of the country’s fastest growing regions: coastal Texas around Houston and resort areas of southwest Florida. Nothing seems to curb America’s appetite for life near the sea, especially in the warmer climates of the South. Coastal development destroys natural barriers such as islands and wetlands, promotes erosion and flooding, and positions more buildings and people in the path of future destruction, according to researchers and policy advisers who study hurricanes. “History gives us a lesson, but we don’t always learn from it,” said Graham Tobin, a disaster researcher at the University of South Florida in Tampa. That city took a glancing hit from Hurricane Irma — one of the most intense U.S. hurricanes in years — but suffered less flooding and damage than som...

LONDON (AP) — British police made a “significant” arrest Saturday in the manhunt for suspects a day after the London subway was hit by a partially-exploded bomb and launched a heavily armed search of a home southwest of London. The fast-moving inquiry into the subway blast that wounded 29 people has shifted to Sunbury, on the outskirts of the British capital, where neighbors were evacuated amid the police operation as a precaution. A no-fly zone was established over the area to keep out small planes and drones as police moved in and police cordons were put in place to keep the public well away. No details about the police search were released, but it came after the arrest of an 18-year-old man who is being held under the Terrorism Act. The man was arrested Saturday morning by Kent police in the port of Dover on the English Channel. Dover is a major ferry port for travel between Britain and France — and it was not clear if the suspect was trying to board a ferry for France ...