Ohio

Same-sex couples prepare to register

Today is the first day in Cleveland Heights that gay and straight unmarried partners can be named in a domestic registry.

Voters approved the registry in November with 55 percent of the vote.

Domestic registries have been created by councils and state legislatures elsewhere: The Vermont Legislature created the nation’s first law recognizing the relationships of same-sex couples, and California created a statewide registry for same-sex couples and gave them some of the legal standing of married spouses.

The opening of the Cleveland Heights registry also comes less than a week after the Ohio Legislature passed a far-reaching ban on gay marriage.

The registry is not legally binding.

Washington, D.C.

Slain teen believed to be shooting witness

Police said a 14-year-old girl was shot to death and her friend wounded after being targeted because their assailant thought the slain girl had witnessed a killing the day before.

Jahkema Hansen, 14, and an unidentified 12-year-old girl were found Friday in a townhouse near the U.S. Capitol.

Franklin Thompson, 22, was arrested Saturday and charged with first-degree murder in the slaying.

The shooting of the two girls was in an area where two men were shot to death last Sunday.

Cmdr. Michael Anzallo, chief of detectives for the District of Columbia police, said Jahkema was killed because her killer thought she was a witness in the first of two shootings in the same area Sunday.

Arizona

Negotiators optimistic about prison standoff

As a prison standoff began its second week Sunday, negotiators were getting “increasingly more compliant responses” from two inmates holding a correctional officer hostage in a prison watch tower, a prison official said.

The change in the inmates is “a sign that negotiations have been effective,” said the Arizona Department of Corrections official, Ivan Bartos.

One guard, a man, was released Saturday.

Negotiators spoke by phone with the other guard, a woman, around midday Sunday, and she told them she was all right, said Department of Corrections spokesman James Ahlers.

The pair were taken hostage Jan. 18 at the Arizona State Prison Complex-Lewis in Buckeye, west of Phoenix.

New York City

Passenger boards plane with stun gun, knife

Baggage screeners at LaGuardia Airport were being grilled Sunday on how they let a woman board a Denver-bound jet with a stun gun and a knife in her purse, officials said.

The unidentified passenger told police she accidentally brought the weapons on board Spirit Airlines Flight 1153 on Saturday and did not realize it until the plane was in the air.

“Once she found out what happened, she reported it immediately,” said Mike Fierberg, a spokesman for the federal Transportation Safety Administration.

The woman noticed the contraband in her purse after the plane made a short layover in Detroit, said Spirit Airlines spokeswoman Laura Bennett.

“She immediately went, ‘Omigod, I’m not supposed to have these here,’ and called the flight attendant over,” Bennett said.