A woman threw her two young children from a freeway overpass during Wednesday’s morning rush before leaping off herself, police said, and all three somehow survived the 22-foot fall into traffic.

The 27-year-old woman and her sons, ages 8 and 6, were in stable condition at Dallas hospitals, said Sr. Cpl. Kevin Janse, a police spokesman.

Janse said he didn’t know if any of the three had been hit by a vehicle. Sgt. David Burroughs said in Wednesday’s online edition of The Dallas Morning News that the woman was struck.

“I don’t really have an explanation” for how the three survived, Janse said.

Janse said the mother and her sons were in a vehicle with her father when they stopped for gas. The woman took her two sons to the overpass while her father was paying for gas, Janse said.

Investigators were still trying to find out what led to the incident, Janse said. He said police weren’t immediately releasing identities.

The man named as a person of interest in the disappearance of a Hilton Head Island couple appears to have committed suicide, authorities said Tuesday.

The body of Dennis Ray Gerwing was found by his lawyer around 4 p.m. in the bathroom of a resort condominium unit his company manages, according to a news release from the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office.

Gerwing left behind two notes that are being examined by state agents, said deputies, who refused to release the contents of the notes.

An autopsy has been schedule for Wednesday. Authorities called the death an apparent suicide, but would not disclose any other details.

Gerwing, 54, was named a person of interest earlier Tuesday and was not cooperating with officers investigating the disappearance last week of John and Elizabeth Calvert, deputies said.

The couple remains missing.

Investigators searched Gerwing’s home, office and vehicles Saturday. Police would not say what, if anything, was found.

Gerwing was listed as chief financial officer of The Club Group, a realty group that manages property on Hilton Head Island. According to the group’s Web site, that includes boat slips for the Harbour Town marina leased and managed by the Calverts.

The phone at the office of Gerwing’s lawyer, Dan Saxton, was not being answered Tuesday night.
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The animal hospital at the New York Aquarium won’t officially open until summer, but the $14.5 million facility already had to admit a few patients.

Fonzie, the aquarium’s 22-year-old California sea lion, had an eye problem that needed immediate attention; Danny, the California sea otter, developed a serious fur condition; and JD, one of the aquarium’s female fur seals, had an upset stomach that could have been contagious.

There were also a few short-term patients at the new hospital last week. A green iguana and a red-footed tortoise both needed complete physicals before moving on to other Wildlife Conservation Society zoos.

“We always check and do X-rays before animals are transferred from one location to another,” said Catherine McClave, who is in charge of aquatic health sciences at the aquarium.

The new hospital is one-of-a-kind in the area, said newly appointed aquarium director John Dohlin. For the first time, all 10,000 animals in the collection — from a 20-gram sea horse to a 4,000-pound walrus — can be cared for under one roof.

“In the past, the smaller animals in our collection could be treated here in small, makeshift buildings we had outfitted for medical use, but we had none specifically designed for that purpose,” said Dohlin.

“The larger animals sometimes had to be transported to the Bronx Zoo, which was very stressful to the animals and to the staff,” Dohlin added.

Just about anything you’d find in a hospital for humans can be found at the aquarium facility. There’s an operating room, X-ray machines, plus a kitchen for preparing special meals and infant formulas.
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Murrieta Fire Capt. Matt Moore, a 17-year veteran of the department who had been hospitalized for months with a rare infection from a parasitic amoeba, died Monday. He was 43.

“Matt was one of our best,” Murrieta Fire Chief Paul Christman said Tuesday. “He was involved in just about every aspect of our department. We’re going to miss his presence within our ranks greatly.

“He maintained hope and courage right to the end, as we knew he would,” Christman said. “Matt was that kind of a guy.”

Mr. Moore died at about 11:30 p.m. Monday in the critical care unit at UC San Diego Medical Center Hillcrest from complications of meningoencephalitis, the Fire Department announced Tuesday in a news release.

Mr. Moore had been hospitalized on and off since November, but doctors confirmed only recently that his illness was caused by the parasite Balamuthia mandrillaris. Infection by this amoeba, which invades the brain, is usually fatal.

Fire officials said Mr. Moore was surrounded by family, including his wife, Sherry; his teenage children Alyssa, Trent and Branden; his parents, Carol and Phil Moore; brother, Mark, also a Murrieta fire captain, and many friends.

A formal procession to the England Family Mortuary in Temecula will depart from the hospital in San Diego about 10 a.m. today. The procession will exit the freeway at Murrieta Hot Springs Road, travel south on Jefferson Avenue to Buecking Drive and east to Madison Avenue. Funeral arrangements are pending.

Treffly Coyne was out of her car for just minutes and no more than 10 yards away.

But that was long and far enough to land her in court after a police officer spotted her sleeping 2-year-old daughter alone in the vehicle; Coyne had taken her two older daughters to pour $8.29 in coins into a Salvation Army kettle.

Minutes later, she was under arrest — the focus of both a police investigation and a probe by the state’s child welfare agency. Now the case that has become an Internet flash point for people who either blast police for overstepping their authority or Coyne for putting a child in danger.

The 36-year-old suburban mother is preparing to go on trial Thursday on misdemeanor charges of child endangerment and obstructing a peace officer. If convicted, she could be sentenced to a year in jail and fined $2,500, even though child welfare workers found no credible evidence of abuse or neglect.

On Dec. 8 Coyne decided to drive to Wal-Mart in the Chicago suburb of Crestwood so her children and a young friend could donate the coins they’d collected at her husband’s office.

Even as she buckled 2-year-old Phoebe into the car, the girl was asleep. When Coyne arrived at the store, she found a spot to park in a loading zone, right behind someone tying a Christmas tree onto a car.

“It’s sleeting out, it’s not pleasant, I don’t want to disturb her, wake her up,” Coyne said this week. “It was safer to leave her in the safety and warmth of an alarmed car than take her.”
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Scheming Manhattan doctors and medical workers who ran up $6 million in fraudulent insurance billings were busted yesterday, police said.

The fraud ring, run out of the St. Nicholas Ave. Medical Center in Washington Heights, unraveled after it was infiltrated by two undercover cops last fall, officials said.

Word had spread in the neighborhood that anyone visiting the clinic could make a quick buck if they were willing to milk minor car accidents for big medical bills, NYPD Lt. Edwin Martinez said.

The undercover cops, introduced to the St. Nicholas doctors by a confidential informant, only had to show the clinic’s personnel an NYPD accident report.

They were then coached through getting $10,000 worth of bogus treatment - billed to the insurance companies with kickbacks all around, Martinez said.

Everyone took a piece of the pie, Martinez said, with the lion’s share going to the accused owner and operator Gregory Vinarsky, who lives in a luxe pad on the upper East Side.

Vinarsky, along with two doctors and 11 other participants - including medical technicians and an acupuncturist - were swept up yesterday. All pleaded not guilty to insurance fraud charges.
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NEW YORK — A 72.22-carat diamond, so large it could fill a tablespoon, is expected to bring up to $13 million when it goes on auction next month.

Cut from an original rough diamond, the D-color, flawless gem is prized for its pear shape and GIA-graded excellent polish and symmetry. D-color is actually colorless and considered the most highly valued.

It was previewed in Manhattan on Monday and will be offered on April 10 at Sotheby’s Hong Kong galleries, which estimates its value at $10 million to $13 million. The buyer has the privilege of naming the stone.

Sotheby’s said the most expensive diamond and jewel sold at auction, the pear-shaped, 100.10 carat Star of Season, brought $16.5 million in May 1995.

Joshua Irizarry is all of 12 years old. That hardly stopped him from applying for the job of football coach at West Virginia University.

Insisting it was a “completely serious offer,” the Connecticut boy outlined his skills in a letter to West Virginia president Mike Garrison when the job opened in December. They included “making up new plays to fool defenses in local sandlot games.”

The kid also has an eye for marketing.

“Consider the publicity your campus would receive,” he wrote in the letter. “I understand this would be a move more suited for a team like Temple, but I am just asking for your consideration.

“Don’t think of this as hiring a 12-year-old kid from a nowhere town, but think of this as hiring a dedicated football mind trying to help a team,” he said. “I would work for any conditions you would wish to provide.”

In the end, Garrison settled for what he assured the boy was “an equally qualified candidate” to succeed Rich Rodriguez, who quit in December for the same post at Michigan. Former WVU assistant coach Bill Stewart now holds the title.

But in February, the president honored the boy’s two alternative requests — a written response and an autographed photo of his favorite Mountaineer, freshman running back Noel Devine.
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Japan is investigating a possible defect in Apple Inc.’s iPod after one of the popular digital music players reportedly shot out sparks while recharging, a government official said Wednesday.

An official at the trade and economy ministry, which oversees product problems, said a defect is suspected in the lithium-ion battery in the iPod Nano, model number MA099J/A. He spoke on customary condition of anonymity, saying he is reiterating a ministry position.

The problem surfaced in January in Kanagawa Prefecture southwest of Tokyo, and Apple reported the problem to the ministry in March. No one was injured, the official said. Other details weren’t available.

Apple Japan did not contest the ministry statement but declined further comment. Nano players are sold all over the world, and it was still unclear where else besides Japan the suspected model was sold, said Masayoshi Suzuki, an Apple spokesman in Tokyo.

The ministry has instructed Apple Japan to find out the cause of what it is categorizing as a fire and report back to the government.

The iPod was assembled in China, but it was unclear who made the lithium-ion battery, the ministry official said.

Lithium-ion batteries have been blamed for a series of blazes in laptops recently that have resulted in massive global recalls.

The ministry said Apple has shipped about 425,000 iPods of the same suspected model were shipped into Japan. It was unknown how many have been sold and how many might still be in stores.
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When Manuel Uribe went out on a date, he made all the necessary arrangements: a forklift to carry him out of the house and a flatbed tow truck big enough to haul the formerly half-ton man and his bed to a party.

But even the open road wasn’t big enough to handle Uribe’s dream of celebrating a budding romance and his success in losing about 440 pounds.

Uribe was halfway to a picnic near his Monterrey-area home on Sunday when one of the posts holding a sun-shielding tarp over his bed hit an overpass.

Uribe’s blood pressure dropped so much his doctors advised him not to go on and the celebration - being documented by about two dozen photographers and reporters from around the world - was canceled.

“We were going to celebrate that I’ve been losing weight for two years and that it was my girlfriend’s birthday,” Uribe said in a telephone interview. “The saddest part was that I couldn’t fulfill my dream of taking my girlfriend out to eat.”

Uribe says that after losing weight on a high-protein diet he started two years ago, he’s down to about 800 pounds.

Last year, Uribe left his house for the first time in five years. Six people pushed his iron bed on wheels out to the street as a mariachi band played and a crowd gathered to see the man who once weighed 1,235 pounds).
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Life jackets are made for people, not dogs. So, when Randy Earl’s small boat capsized while he was fishing with his dog Lacy, a black spaniel mix, he stayed in the water with his life jacket while making sure Lacy was OK.

“When the boat flipped over, I put the dog on top of the boat,” Earl told The Dominion Post of Morgantown.

While waiting for someone to rescue them on Mason Lake in northern West Virginia, Earl clung to the 12-foot boat’s hull. The water temperature was about 50 degrees, said J.M. Crawley, a senior conservation officer for the Division of Natural Resources.

Another fisherman, Jan Thorn, watched from shore as a state trooper paddled out to rescue Earl and Lacy.

“He asked the state trooper to take the dog first,” Thorn said. “It was very touching.”

Earl, 53, said Lacy means a lot to him and his wife since they lost both of their children in a car accident 15 years ago.

“That dog is like a child to us,” he said.

A dolphin swam up to two distressed whales that appeared headed for death in a beach stranding in New Zealand and guided them to safety, witnesses said Wednesday.

The actions of the bottlenose dolphin — named Moko by residents who said it spends much of its time swimming playfully with humans at the beach — amazed would-be rescuers and an expert who said they were evidence of the species’ friendly nature.

The two pygmy sperm whales, a mother and her calf, were found stranded on Mahia Beach, about 500 kilometers (300 miles) northeast of the capital of Wellington, on Monday morning, said Conservation Department worker Malcolm Smith.

Rescuers worked for more than one hour to get the whales back into the water, only to see them strand themselves four times on a sandbar slightly out to sea. It looked likely the whales would have to be euthanized to prevent them suffering a prolonged death, Smith said.

“They kept getting disorientated and stranding again,” said Smith, who was among the rescuers. “They obviously couldn’t find their way back past (the sandbar) to the sea.”

Along came Moko, who approached the whales and led them 200 meters (yards) along the beach and through a channel out to the open sea.

“Moko just came flying through the water and pushed in between us and the whales,” Juanita Symes, another rescuer, told The Associated Press. “She got them to head toward the hill, where the channel is. It was an amazing experience. The best day of my life.”

Anton van Helden, a marine mammals expert at New Zealand’s national museum, Te Papa Tongarewa, said the reports of Moko’s rescue were “fantastic” but believable because the dolphins have “a great capacity for altruistic activities.”

These included evidence of dolphins protecting people lost at sea, and their playfulness with other animals.

“We’ve seen bottlenose dolphins getting lifted up on the noses of humpback whales and getting flicked out of the water just for fun,” van Helden said.

“But it’s the first time I’ve heard of an inter-species refloating technique. I think that’s wonderful,” said van Helden, who was not involved in the rescue but spoke afterward to Smith.

Smith speculated that Moko responded after hearing the whales’ distress calls.

“It was looking like it was going to be a bad outcome for the whales … then Moko just came along and fixed it,” he said. “They had arched their backs and were calling to one another, but as soon as the dolphin turned up they submerged into the water and followed her.”

After the rescue, Moko returned to the beach and joined in games with local residents, he said.