NATIONAL BRIEFS
NEW JERSEY: Campus cop testifies
A Rutgers University police officer told jurors Thursday he knocked on a dorm room door shortly before 10 p.m. on Sept. 22, 2010, for a well-being check on a resident, Tyler Clementi. The other freshman who lived in the cramped room said, the officer testified, that when he'd last seen Clementi five hours earlier, everything was normal. The jury is likely to hear otherwise in coming days in the trial of Dharun Ravi, who is accused of using a webcam to spy on Clementi's intimate encounter with another man. Prosecutors appeared to be using the testimony of Officer Krzysztof Kowalczyk to lay groundwork for the case there was a cover-up. According to legal filings, Clementi posted to Facebook at 8:42 p.m.: "Jumping off the gw bridge, sorry." He leapt to his death from the George Washington Bridge.
CALIFORNIA: Statewide tuition protests
Students, educators and Occupy Wall Street activists held demonstrations Thursday across California to protest state budget cuts to education, partly shutting down at least one college campus. Hundreds of students blocked entrances to the University of California, Santa Cruz, and prevented cars and buses from entering the coastal campus. Many classes were canceled or rescheduled. It was among demonstrations held on about 30 campuses across the state to protest rising tuition and call for restoring funding to higher education. College students and Occupy activists around the country held demonstrations as part of a "National Day of Action for Education." In California, a major "Occupy the Capitol" rally is scheduled Monday in Sacramento.
UTAH: Feat of family planning
A Provo woman has given birth on a third consecutive Leap Day, tying a record set in the 1960s. David and Louise Estes' daughter Jade was born Wednesday, four years after their son Remington was born Feb. 29, 2008, and eight years after son Xavier was born Feb. 29, 2004. The only other known triple Leap Day babies are in the Henriksen family of Norway, which logged Feb. 29 births in 1960, 1964 and 1968, the Guinness World Records office said.
