Florida

Four arrested, charged in theft of moon rocks

Three student employees and another man were charged with stealing a safe full of moon rocks and meteorites from the Johnson Space Center in Houston and trying to sell them, the FBI said Monday.

The items offered for sale by the suspects were kept in a 600-pound safe that was noticed missing July 15, space center spokesman Kyle Herring said. The safe contained lunar samples from every Apollo mission.

Undercover FBI agents arrested Thad Roberts, 25, Tiffany Fowler, 22, and Gordon McWorter, 26, on Saturday in Orlando. They are charged with conspiracy to commit the theft of government property and transportation in interstate commerce of stolen property.

Shae Saur, 19, was arrested in Houston, and charged with conspiracy, FBI officials said.

Roberts, Fowler, and Saur have been fired from the space center, Herring said.

Connecticut

UConn student charged with keeping anthrax

A University of Connecticut student was charged Monday with keeping anthrax in a campus laboratory but authorities said he will not be prosecuted if he completes a pretrial diversion program.

Tomas Foral, 26, faces up to 10 years in prison for possessing a biological agent. However, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in West Hartford said he would be allowed to participate in a program that could include community service.

“I have no choice,” Foral said. “It would be very expensive to go to trial. It would be unaffordable to me.”

Two vials containing anthrax-infected animal tissue from the 1960s were found in a freezer in the laboratory Nov. 27, five days after the fifth and final death from last fall’s anthrax attacks. Investigators said Foral had been told to destroy the samples, but kept them instead.

California

Wildfire burns buildings, forces evacuations

A wind-whipped fire grew to 7,500 acres Monday after burning 10 structures and forcing more than 400 people to flee an area south of Sequoia National Park.

Among the evacuees were several hundred Boy Scouts and residents of Johnsondale, 130 miles north of Los Angeles.

Elsewhere across the West, a fire that threatened 65 homes in southern Oregon grew to 92,000 acres and National Guard troops were sent to help. Gov. John Kitzhaber conducted an aerial tour of Oregon’s wildfires and called the battle “a war.”

“What is at risk here is hundreds of billions of dollars in natural resources,” said Kitzhaber, who called on Congress to devote more resources to making forests healthy throughout the West.

New Jersey

DARE officer charged with dealing club drugs

A DARE officer who spent the past year warning elementary school students about the dangers of drugs was arrested at his home over the weekend. The charge: selling drugs.

Narcotics investigators with the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office on Friday seized 414 Ecstasy pills and 50 bottles of ketamine, an animal tranquilizer known as “Special K,” from the Hackensack home of Michael Hurley, 32, an eight-year veteran of the Bayonne Police Department, Bergen Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said.

Both are party drugs, commonly taken at trendy nightclubs by young people.