In brief: Retrial sought in N.Y. case of boy missing since 1979

NEW YORK – A prosecutor says in a television interview he intends to ask for a retrial in the case of a New Jersey man who confessed to choking a 6-year-old New York City boy missing since 1979.

Pedro Hernandez in 2012 admitted killing Etan Patz, who disappeared while walking to school May 25, 1979, and whose body hasn’t been found.

Hernandez’s murder trial ended in a mistrial this month after jurors said they were deadlocked on the 18th day of deliberations. The defense had argued his confession was false.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. spoke Monday on MSNBC’s “The Cycle” about a June 10 court date in the case.

Students with traumatic pasts sue school district

LOS ANGELES – Students with violent and traumatic pasts sued the Compton Unified School District on Monday, alleging they are legally disabled and the school has failed to meet their educational needs.

The lawsuit, believed to be the first of its kind in the nation, contends that under federal educational rules and the Americans with Disabilities Act, the district should establish special mental health and other services to help students with “complex trauma.”

Trauma “stems from such causes as exposure to violence and loss, family disruptions related to deportation, incarceration and/or the foster system, systemic racism and discrimination, and the extreme stress of lacking basic necessities, such as not knowing where the next meal will come from or where to sleep that night,” according to the lawsuit.

The Compton district has nearly 26,000 students in 40 schools. The city south of downtown Los Angeles struggles with violence and poverty, recording 25 homicides and hundreds of other violent crimes in the past 12 months, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of three teachers and five teenage students who had been transferred or kicked out of schools for disciplinary problems.

10-year-old girl drowns in pool aboard cruise ship

A 10-year-old girl drowned in a swimming pool aboard a Norwegian Cruise Line ship off the Carolinas and the ship immediately sailed to a nearby port in Florida, the U.S. Coast Guard said Monday.

Petty Officer 2nd Class Nate Littlejohn told the Associated Press that the girl drowned Sunday afternoon aboard the Norwegian Gem while it was in Atlantic waters 75 miles east of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Littlejohn said ship’s officials reported the death to the Coast Guard and that the vessel then sailed to Port Canaveral, Florida, arriving about noon Monday. He didn’t identify the child or give further details of circumstances surrounding the death.

Picariello said the Norwegian Gem had left New York on Saturday on a scheduled seven-day cruise to Florida and the Bahamas.

Colombia flood, mudslide leave at least 58 dead

SALGAR, Colombia – An avalanche of mud and debris roared through an alpine town in western Colombia before dawn Monday, killing at least 58 people in a flash flood and mudslide triggered by heavy rains.

Residents were stirred from bed in the dead of the night by a loud rumble and neighbors’ shouts of “The river! The river!” as modestly built homes and bridges plunged into the Libordiana ravine. Survivors barely had enough time to gather their loved ones.

“It was rocks and tree trunks everywhere,” Diego Agudelo told the Associated Press, adding that never in 34 years living next to the ravine had he suspected such a tragedy was possible.

“The river took out everything in its path,” the construction worker said, including the back part of his home.

The disaster hit around 3 a.m. local time in the town of Salgar, about 60 miles southwest of Medellin.

Dozens of rescuers supported by Black Hawk helicopters evacuated residents near the ravine for fear of another mudslide.

Nigeria’s military destroys Boko Haram forest camps

YOLA, Nigeria – The Nigerian military says it destroyed 10 Boko Haram forest camps over the weekend, but the Islamic extremists killed a man and abducted several women as they attacked a recently recaptured town, according to witnesses.

Soldiers killed many militants and captured heavy weaponry in Saturday’s offensive in northeastern Sambisa Forest, said spokesman Maj. Gen. Chris Olukolade of the Ministry of Defense. One soldier was killed by a land mine when troops overran 10 Boko Haram camps, Olukolade said.

This comes after a surge in attacks by the Islamic extremists including suicide bombings, assaults on a business school and villages and a repelled nighttime raid by hundreds of fighters on the biggest military base in northeast Nigeria.

Olukolade and other Nigerian officials had said Boko Haram’s main fighting force was trapped in the vast Sambisa Forest following a 14-week multinational offensive that drove them out of dozens of towns and villages where they had declared an Islamic caliphate.