■ Brazil
Mother-in-law confesses
Police have arrested a 52-year-old woman accused of hiring a hitman who kidnapped and killed her daughter-in-law on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. A police investigator said on Friday that Solange Viana confessed to ordering the slaying of her daughter-in-law, a 26-year-old schoolteacher, for less than US$500 after investigators told her that her son could go to jail. "She says she committed the crime because of her sick love for her son. She alleges her son was humiliated in the relationship," said Joel Fernandes, head of homicide investigations in the Vilar dos Teles municipality. Fernandes said the couple had split up but had been trying to make up when the wife was killed.
■ United States
`Undercover Kitten' killed
Fred, a tabby who found fame as "The Undercover Kitten," has died in a traffic accident, the Brooklyn district attorney's office said on Friday. Fred was a rescued stray when law enforcers enlisted him in February. He posed as a would-be patient to help police nab a man pretending to be a veterinarian. He got his due at a news conference, where he sported a tiny badge on his collar. The 15-month-old feline also received a Law Enforcement Appreciation Award. Fred ran out Moran's back door into her yard on Wednesday while Moran was attending to two elderly dogs. Neighbors found his body in the road later that morning.
■ United States
Lefties earning more
Left-handed men, often seen as having an advantage over right-handed counterparts in sports like tennis, also enjoy much better paydays, a new study says. Left-handed men with at least some college education earned 15 percent more than similarly educated right-handers, while those who finished college earned about 26 percent more, wrote Christopher Ruebeck of Lafayette College, and Joseph Harrington and Robert Moffitt of Johns Hopkins University in a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
■ United States
Anti-war activist hospitalized
Anti-war demonstrator Cindy Sheehan was hospitalized for dehydration and exhaustion after fasting for more than a month and protesting earlier this week in 38oC weather, friends and relatives said. Sheehan was hospitalized after friends picked her up on Friday afternoon at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, where she arrived after spending several days in Seattle at the Veterans for Peace Convention, said friend Tiffany Burns. Sheehan, who has been on a liquid diet as part of the nationwide ``Troops Home Fast'' hunger strike, had been treated and released from a Seattle emergency room on Thursday night.
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