NEWARK, N.J.

Mayor says NYPD mislead his city on Muslim surveillance

The mayor and police director of New Jersey’s largest city said Wednesday the New York Police Department misled their city and never told them it was conducting a widespread spying operation on Newark’s Muslim neighborhoods. Had they known, they said, they never would have allowed it.

In mid-2007, the NYPD’s secretive Demographics Unit fanned out across Newark, photographing every mosque and eavesdropping in Muslim businesses. The findings were cataloged in a 60-page report, obtained by The Associated Press, that served as a police guidebook to Newark’s Muslims. There was no mention of terrorism or any criminal wrongdoing.

TACOMA, Wash.

Judge rules state can’t force sales of Plan B contraceptive

Washington state cannot force pharmacies to sell Plan B or other emergency contraceptives, a federal judge ruled Wednesday, saying the state’s true goal was to suppress religious objections by druggists – not to promote timely access to the medicines for people who need them.

U.S. District Judge Ronald Leighton heard closing arguments earlier this month in a lawsuit that claimed state rules violate the constitutional rights of pharmacists by requiring them to dispense such medicine. The state requires pharmacies to dispense any medication for which there is a community need and to stock a representative assortment of drugs needed by their patients.

Ralph’s Thriftway in Olympia, Wash., and two licensed Washington pharmacists sued in 2007, saying that dispensing Plan B would infringe on their religious beliefs because it can prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg, an act they equate with taking human life.

Leighton ruled that the state allows all sorts of business exemptions to that rule. Pharmacies can decline to stock a drug, such as certain painkillers, if it’s likely to increase the risk of theft.

EAGLE POINT, Ore.

14-year-old dies at party inhaling helium from tank

Last weekend, 14-year-old Ashley Long told her parents she was going to a slumber party. But instead she piled into a car with a bunch of her friends and rode to a condo in Medford, Ore., where police say the big sister of one of her friends was throwing a party.

After drinking on the drive, and downing more drinks in the condo, it came time for Ashley to take her turn on a tank of helium that everyone else was inhaling to make their voices sound funny.

“That helium tank got going around,” said Ashley’s stepfather, Justin Earp, who learned what happened from talking to Ashley’s friends at the party. “It got to my daughter. My daughter didn’t want to do it. It was peer pressure. “‘

She passed out and later died at a hospital, the result of an obstruction in a blood vessel caused by inhaling helium from a pressurized tank.

DALLAS

Collection of rare comic books sells for $3.5 million

The bulk of a man’s childhood comic book collection that included many of the most prized issues ever published sold at auction Wednesday for about $3.5 million.

A copy of Detective Comics No. 27, which sold for 10 cents in 1939 and features the debut of Batman, got the top bid at the New York City auction Wednesday. It sold for about $523,000, including a buyer’s premium, said Lon Allen, managing director of comics for Heritage Auctions, the Dallas-based auction house overseeing the sale.

Action Comics No. 1, a 1938 issue featuring the first appearance of Superman, sold for about $299,000; Batman No. 1, from 1940, sold for about $275,000; and Captain America No. 2, a 1941 issue with a frightened Adolf Hitler on the cover, brought in about $114,000, Allen said.