New York City

Monkeys removed from tiny apartment

A troop of monkeys was carted out of an apartment Tuesday afternoon as their owner, a veterinary technician, stood by and wept over the loss of his “children.”

An anonymous report of animal abuse led police and officials from Animal Care and Control to the apartment of Orlando Lopez, 26, who crammed six monkeys, a tarantula, two dogs, two cats and fish into a two-room apartment.

“It’s like a wild kingdom in there,” a police officer said as Animal Control officials removed the 2-pound monkeys that lived in custom-made cages in the main room of Lopez’s apartment.

Lopez, issued a summons to appear before the Environmental Control Board, had been sleeping on a bed in his kitchen while the animals lived in the main room.

Chicago

Doctors issue new ear-infection guides

Two influential doctors groups published guidelines Tuesday seeking to limit use of antibiotics for ear infections in children.

The guidelines stress that about 80 percent of children with ear infections get better without antibiotics.

The guidelines encourage doctors to initially try pain relief and observation in otherwise healthy children with relatively mild ear infections if they can be assured of adequate follow-up. In such cases, antibiotics could be started if symptoms don’t improve in two or three days, the guidelines say.

The guidelines are a joint effort of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Family Physicians.

Los Angeles

Caltech grad student arrested in arson spree

A California Institute of Technology graduate student was arrested Tuesday in connection with an August arson and vandalism spree targeting 125 sport utility vehicles at four car dealerships, the FBI said.

William Cottrell, 23, used an alias when he e-mailed The Los Angeles Times, claiming to be a member of the eco-terrorist group Earth Liberation Front and offering specific details to prove his involvement in the firebombings, the FBI said.

Authorities searched Caltech classrooms and tracked the e-mails to Cottrell, a graduate student in the physics department.

Cottrell was arrested for investigation of arson and vandalism. He was ordered held without bail at a court hearing. If convicted, he faces a maximum of 40 years in prison, the U.S. attorney’s office said.

Washington, D.C.

Senator seeks reward for missing pilot info

Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., on Tuesday urged Pentagon officials to offer money and other incentives for information on a Navy pilot who was shot down on the opening night of the 1991 Gulf War.

Capt. Michael Scott Speicher, formerly of Kansas City, Mo., was declared killed in action hours after his plane went down. Years later, at the urging of Congress, the Pentagon changed his status to missing in action and then, in October 2002, “missing-captured.”

Offering a reward “is the least we can do,” Roberts wrote Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in a letter released Tuesday. Roberts suggested a reward of $1 million.

The Navy’s top admiral said last week that no evidence has emerged since the fall of Baghdad that Speicher was held in captivity.

Washington, D.C.

Blizzard of 1993 tops new winter storm scale

The superstorm of 1993 was the most devastating blizzard to strike the Northeast in at least a century, according to a new system that rates the impact of East Coast winter storms.

The new 1-to-5 rating system, somewhat similar to the scales for hurricanes and tornadoes, was announced Tuesday by winter experts from the National Weather Service and The Weather Channel.

In their study of 70 major Northeastern storms, only two — the storm of March 1993 and the January blizzard of 1996 — fell into the “extreme” category with a 5 rating.

The new Northeast Snowfall Impact Scale, or NESIS, is being published this week in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.

The ratings are designed to assess the impact of a storm after it is over, the way the Fujita scale is used to rate tornadoes.