■ UNITED STATES
School filled with chickens
Monday mornings are hard enough. Imagine finding 50 chickens running loose in your school. Workers arriving about 5:30am to open Northeast High School in Philadelphia found dozens of hens and roosters wandering around the hallways. The birds were apparently brought to the school sometime over the weekend, said school district spokesman Fernando Gallard. "We don't know where the chickens came from or who they belong to," Gallard said. The floors were covered with droppings and chicken feed. Most of the school's 3,600 students were sent home for the day because the school required extensive cleanup, he said.
■ UNITED STATES
Boy scout on trial for murder
A 16-year-old boy scout accused of killing his parents and two brothers in their home was indicted on Monday in Towson, Maryland, on four counts of first-degree murder. Nicholas Browning is also charged with using a handgun in a crime of violence. His attorney, Joshua Treem, did not respond to an e-mail request seeking comment. The Brownings were slain in Cockeysville early Feb. 2. According to police, Nicholas Browning then spent the night and most of the next day with friends before he returned and reported finding his father's body. He was charged after confessing to police and telling investigators where he had stashed the weapon, a handgun belonging to his father, authorities have said.
■ UNITED STATES
Immigration driving numbers
Immigration will drive the nation's population sharply upward between now and 2050 and will push whites into a minority, projections by the Pew Research Center showed on Monday. "If current trends continue, the population of the United States will rise to 438 million in 2050, from 296 million in 2005," an increase of nearly 50 percent, the study by the Washington-based think-tank said. More than 80 percent of the increase will come from immigrants arriving in the country and their US-born children, who will make up nearly one in five Americans by 2050 compared with one in eight in 2005, it said.
■ UNITED STATES
Contest looks at presidents
Men have begun a beard-growing competition that's partly a presidential look-alike contest as Delaware, Ohio, celebrates its 200th birthday. The current, clean-shaven resident of the White House is not the inspiration. Instead, it's the nation's 19th president, Rutherford B. Hayes, born in Delaware in 1822 and typically pictured with long, wiry whiskers. The competitors all started on Sunday with clean slates. They were photographed with shaved chins and obtained permits to register in the contest, to be judged July 5.
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