NATION NEWS BRIEFS

WASHINGTON STATE / Fatal infatuation suspect killed

A man apparently infatuated with a special education teacher he knew from college shot and killed her as she walked into her elementary school Friday in Tacoma, shortly before students began arriving. The suspect was killed later in a shootout with a deputy, said Pierce County sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer. He had been arrested on charges of violating a protective order the teacher, Jennifer Paulson, 30, got in September 2008, said Tacoma police spokesman Mark Fulghum.

NATIONWIDE / JetBlue grounded in computer glitch

Forest Hills-based JetBlue Airways Corp., the discount carrier whose New York home airport was blanketed by snow today, said a computer glitch forced it to ground some flights for about 45 minutes Friday. JetBlue lost the flow of data from airport gates on the status of flights and the transmission of pilots' work hours, said Jenny Dervin, a spokeswoman. She said the interruption affected fewer than two dozen jets already on the ground, not those in flight. "Airborne flights were totally unaffected, but it affected our ability to dispatch flights," Dervin said. The glitch occurred at 2:45 p.m., and the airline began resuming takeoff about 3:30 p.m. Cancellations from the Northeast snowstorm reduced the number of would-be delays.

MARYLAND / Escaped inmate, of NY, recaptured

A man from New York serving three life terms conned his way out of a Baltimore prison after posing as his cellmate, an escape that raised questions about Maryland's procedures for release. Raymond T. Taylor, 26, escaped Thursday afternoon and was recaptured Friday morning in West Virginia. He was convicted in 2005 of the attempted slayings of his ex-girlfriend and her two teen daughters. All three survived gunshot wounds to the head.

CALIFORNIA / Students take over UC office

Students took over the chancellor's office Friday at the University of California, San Diego, to protest the hanging of a noose in a campus library. They blocked the doors to Chancellor Marye Anne Fox's offices around noon, and they left peacefully at sundown with no arrests. Student leaders plan to resume talks with school officials Monday. Hundreds protested outside the administration building, calling the noose the latest example of intolerance on a campus where less than 2 percent of students are black.

CALIFORNIA / Hospital chief: Not guilty of abuse

The former head of one of the nation's biggest state mental hospitals pleaded not guilty Friday to molesting an adopted foster son and was ordered held on $3.5 million bail. Claude Foulk, 62, is charged with 35 counts of sexually abuse. Long Beach police said the victim was 10 when he was taken in by Foulk in 1992 and that the molestation continued until 2004.

Combined news reports