Illinois: Students’ lawsuits fight hazing suspensions

A second student suspended after participating in a videotaped hazing incident filed a lawsuit Tuesday to prevent the punishment from being enforced.

The girl, listed as Jane Doe, filed the lawsuit in Cook County Chancery Court against William Eike, Glenbrook North High School’s dean of students.

The lawsuit came as the school announced it has now suspended 32 seniors, 28 girls and four boys, for their involvement in the incident. School officials would not say what role the boys played.

Within hours of Monday’s disciplinary decision, senior Marnie Holz, 18, filed a lawsuit. A judge Tuesday agreed to expedite consideration of Holz’s request and set a hearing for today.

Kentucky: Second suspect charged with murder of student

A man who allegedly watched an acquaintance rape, beat and try to smother a university student found burned in her dorm room was charged Tuesday with murder.

Stephen Soules, 20, was arrested late Monday, a day after Lucas Goodrum, 21, was charged with the same crime in the May 7 death of Katie Autry.

The 18-year-old student was found May 4 in her burning dormitory room at Western Kentucky University and died three days later at a hospital.

The affidavit said the two men attended a party the night of May 3 at the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity house on the campus in Bowling Green.

Both Soules and Goodrum are from Scottsville, about 20 miles southeast of Bowling Green; neither was a student at the university.

San Francisco: Suit seeks Oreo ban

Children in California may have to give up their Oreos if a lawsuit filed by a San Francisco public interest lawyer is successful.

The lawsuit, filed last week in Marin County Superior Court, seeks a ban on the black and white cookies, arguing the trans fats that make the filling creamy and the cookie crisp are too dangerous for children to eat.

Stephen Joseph said he filed the suit against Nabisco, the maker of Oreos, after reading articles that said the artificial fat is hidden in most packaged food, though consumers have no way of knowing.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, which contain trans fats, are present in about 40 percent of the food on grocery store shelves.

Cookies, crackers and microwave popcorn are the biggest carriers of trans fats, which are created when hydrogen is bubbled through oil to produce a margarine that doesn’t melt at room temperature and increases the product’s shelf life.

Oregon: County calls off job for Klingon interpreter

Sorry, potential Klingon interpreters.

Officials in Portland have said they won’t be needing your services, after all.

The office that treats mental health patients in Multnomah County had included Klingon on a list of 55 languages that could be spoken by incoming patients.

But the inclusion of the Star Trek language drew a spate of tongue-in-cheek headlines.

And now the county has rescinded its call, stressing that it hasn’t spent a penny of public money on Klingon interpretation.

County officials had previously said that no patient had ever come in speaking only Klingon, but that the county would pay a Klingon interpreter in the unlikely case one actually was needed.

In recent years, Klingon has gone from being a fictional tongue for the Star Trek television and movie series to a complete language, with its own grammar, syntax and vocabulary.