Pedestrian deaths surged by an estimated 10% last year as the economy improved, the price of gas plunged and motorists put more miles behind the wheel than ever before. The growing use of cellphones distracting drivers and walkers may also be partially to blame, states the report. Warmer weather and shorter winters along with a greater awareness of health benefits may also be encouraging people to walk more.   read more

The Washington Post reports that officials at the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority have said that one unidentified Washington resident was responsible for about three-quarters of last year's noise complaints. That's the equivalent of one person making about 18 calls every day of the year.   read more

Qualifications for penalty exemptions include being a victim of domestic violence or having a religious opposition to insurance. There's an exemption for those who spent most of the year in another country, had an immediate family member die, or were caring for an ill or aging relative. Taxpayers can even get a pass if their utilities were shut off, if they were the victim of a natural disaster, being homeless or in jail, declaring bankruptcy, getting evicted, or having steep medical debt.   read more

“By the time the curtain closes on the Obama administration, we are on track to have delisted more species due to recovery than all previous administrations combined,” said Fish & Wildlife Service's Dan Ashe. “We’ve done that because of several decades of hard work, like with the grizzly bear.” Thursday’s announcement came as conflicts between humans and grizzly bears have been on the rise, including six people fatally mauled since 2010. A record 59 bears were killed by humans last year.   read more

A referendum to rename Katie Crotch Road to Cadie Road is being considered in Embden in Somerset County. Residents are sorting out the matter with a vote Friday and a town meeting Saturday. Board of Selectman Chairman Charles Taylor says the thefts occur so frequently that "you would think every dorm room in the state of Maine should have one by now."   read more

A right-wing conspiracy theorist who claims President Obama worked as a gay prostitute in his twenties is the favorite for a spot on the Texas Board of Education, which approves curriculum and textbooks. Mary Lou Bruner, a 68-year-old retired schoolteacher, has said climate change is a Marxist hoax, evolution is atheist propaganda, and that baby dinosaurs rode on Noah’s Ark and became extinct after the flood cleared out their vegetation.   read more

A woman found out the hard way at the Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport that you can't dress to kill while going through airport security. Officials say she was stopped Sunday at a security checkpoint with a pair of gun-shaped stiletto heels. The woman was told she had to put the shoes in her checked baggage.   read more

The Seventh Circuit denied immunity to a police officer accused of siccing his dog on a burglary suspect trapped in an empty pool, yelling, “You like to rob houses, punk?” The officer yelling “you like to rob houses, punk?” before commanding his dog to attack casts doubt on his assertion that he made a split-second safety calculation,” the judge ruled.   read more

Screened high-tech specialists will be brought in to try to breach the Defense Department’s public Internet pages in a pilot program aimed at finding and fixing cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Defense officials laid out the broad outlines of the plan Wednesday, but had few details on how it will work, what Pentagon systems would be tested and how the hackers would be compensated. Called “Hack the Pentagon,” the program will begin next month.   read more

The New Mexico Supreme Court ruled that home begins at the window screen - even if only the fingertips have succeeded in breaking and entering. Anthony Holt was convicted of breaking and entering a home in Las Cruces and was sentenced to five years and five months in prison. He appealed, claiming that only his fingertips had entered the home, as the homeowner heard him, and when she caught him in the act, he said, "Oh, I'm sorry," and vamoosed.   read more

Problems related to cars’ rapidly advancing technology are now at the top of the list of consumer complaints. The biggest issues are balky voice recognition systems and problems with Bluetooth pairing, accounting for 20% of all customer complaints. Overall, the discontent drove a 3% decline in vehicle dependability in the study. Complaints about technology have gone from being fifth most troublesome in the 2014 study to now being first.   read more

It takes about 22 hours to reach Florida by car for a person traveling from Wisconsin. But if you're a cat, the 1,484-mile journey likely takes closer to two months. At least that's how long it took Nadia, the Russian blue, to trek from her home on a snowy December day to sunny Naples this week where animal officials helped find her owners.   read more

Under the rule, restaurant owners must now post distinct triangle icons with salt-shaker images inside on menus next to items that top the recommended daily limit of 2,300 milligrams of sodium, about a teaspoon's worth. It is but the latest in a series of healthy eating measures pioneered by New York City public health officials that have been challenged in the courts, including an upheld requirement that chains post calorie counts on menus.   read more

The data reveal generational differences with respect to Americans’ tendency to visit historic sites. With each birth cohort, Americans of all ages have been less likely to visit historic sites. For example, those born from 1938 to 1947 had a 45% likelihood of having visited a historic site in the previous 12 months when they were ages 35–44, while those who were born in the 1968–1977 period had only a 23% likelihood of having visited a historic site when they were the same age.   read more

Ohio began its program ahead of a White House initiative launched in 2015 to spend $41 million to accelerate testing nationwide of an estimated 400,000 rape kits that have been back logged in law enforcement storage rooms and crime labs. "This is a tremendous milestone," Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said. "The testing of these 10,000 kits has helped identify hundreds of alleged assailants, many of whom repeatedly committed violent attacks."   read more

The string of nine consecutive record hot months matches June 1997 to February 1998, which was the last time Earth had a large El Nino. It is still behind the 10 straight months of record heat in 1944. It's likely we'll tie that record in February, Blunden said. NASA said January 2016 was 2.03 degrees Fahrenheit above normal. The NOAA, which calculates temperatures differently, said last month was 1.87 degrees (1.04 degrees Celsius), which is the second biggest margin in history.   read more