Los Angeles: Missing girl found safe at health clinic

A 4-year-old girl who disappeared from a park during the weekend was found safe at a medical clinic Tuesday, police said.

A staff member at St. John’s Well Child Center called police after recognizing Jessica Cortez, according to Officer Jack Richter. The woman who brought the girl to the clinic was taken into custody, Richter said.

The girl was later taken to a hospital, where she was reunited with her family.

Police said it was too early to call the woman in custody a suspect. They are still investigating the child’s disappearance and whereabouts.

Florida: Children’s agency secretary resigns

Kathleen Kearney, the embattled secretary of the Department of Children & Families, resigned abruptly Tuesday, leaving Florida’s social service agency largely as she found it: enmeshed in scandal and struggling to find an identity that will satisfy its many critics.

Gov. Jeb Bush announced Kearney’s departure from the perennially troubled agency late Tuesday in Tallahassee. The governor accepted her resignation four months after the agency’s worst recent failure, the disappearance of a 5-year-old Miami foster child, Rilya Wilson.

Bush made no mention of a possible successor, other than to say he will “soon appoint a new leader.”

Wisconsin: Parental notification a contraceptive turn-off

Nearly half of the young girls surveyed in Wisconsin said they would quit going to Planned Parenthood if their parents had to be told they wanted prescribed contraceptives, according to a study.

The study suggested that parental notification could lead to more teen pregnancies, abortions and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

Congress and 10 states, including Wisconsin, have considered legislation requiring that parents be informed if their children are seeking prescribed contraceptives, the study noted.

The study appears in today’s edition of the Journal of the American Medical Assn.

New Jersey: Princeton removes dean after Yale Web site flap

A Princeton University dean will be removed from his job and offered another at the school after accessing Yale University’s admissions Web site without authorization, Princeton’s president said Tuesday.

Stephen LeMenager, associate dean and director of admissions, had been on paid administrative leave. He had said he accessed the site to see how secure it was.

Yale officials said they found 18 unauthorized log-ins to their site that were traced to computers at Princeton. That included 14 from the admissions office, three from students elsewhere on campus and one from a Yale applicant who used a Princeton computer.