Los Angeles
Nitric acid stolen from chemical company
Police were searching Wednesday for a truckload of nitric acid stolen from a chemical distribution company on New Year's Eve.
The acid was in five 100-pound metal canisters that had been loaded onto a truck in preparation for shipment, said police Cmdr. Garrett Zimmon.
It was not known if the thief knew the truck's contents, Zimmon said.
"It appears this is not an act of terrorism," Zimmon said. "The investigation scene leads us to believe this is just a burglary."
The truck was taken Monday from Del Amo Chemicals Co. The theft was not immediately discovered because of the holiday, Zimmon said.
Nitric acid is a highly corrosive liquid that can be mixed with other agents to make fertilizers and explosives.
Hawaii
Maui beach reopens day after shark attack
A Maui beach reopened Wednesday, one day after a California man reported being bitten by a shark about 100 yards offshore.
Thomas Holmes, 35, of Los Angeles, said he needed about 35 stitches for cuts he suffered on his buttocks and thigh after the shark bit him once.
Holmes said he and his girlfriend were snorkeling in 40 to 50 feet of water off Olowalu Beach when they saw what appeared to be a 6-foot tiger shark and began swimming toward shore.
"I pulled my head out of the water and looked back," Holmes said Wednesday. "He was four feet away and his mouth was open."
Police closed a more than one-mile stretch of shoreline after the incident.
Pennsylvania
Nineteen-year-old becomes town's mayor
Christopher Portman spent his first night as mayor having dinner at home with his parents and watching his girlfriend lead cheers at a high school basketball game.
The 19-year-old Republican was sworn in Wednesday as the first teen-age mayor of Mercer, a western Pennsylvania borough with 2,391 residents.
"I'm thrilled and ready to take on this job," said Portman, a freshman at Westminster College in New Wilmington, about 15 minutes away. He will earn $1,875 a year.
Mercer's mayor doesn't have much power, serving mostly as a tiebreaker for borough council votes and as overseer for the police.
Portman defeated 55-year-old Councilman Kenneth Vernon and another young candidate, John Kish, 19, in the Republican primary. He also won the Democratic nomination with a write-in vote.
Kentucky
Repeal sought on law requiring smoking areas
Kentucky's major cities want state legislators to repeal a law that required indoor smoking areas in public buildings.
"It's an unfunded mandate a lot of cities didn't know they had," Sylvia Lovely, executive director of the Kentucky League of Cities, said Wednesday. The league includes some 350 municipalities.
The General Assembly in 1994 pre-empted local governments on public smoking. A law enacted that year had the effect of precluding bans on smoking in public buildings. Smoking could be restricted, but a ventilated space had to be created for smokers.
The law did not apply to private businesses. It has been ignored in many towns, Lovely said.
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