Pennsylvania

Mother delivers sextuplets

A woman gave birth to sextuplets Monday morning in Hershey, and the mother and babies were doing well, hospital officials said.

Kate Gosselin, 29, delivered her three sons and three daughters in her 30th week of pregnancy. The babies were delivered by Caesarean section at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, hospital officials said.

Sextuplets are rare. Hospital officials said that as of March 15, only 138 documented sets had been born worldwide. Kate Gosselin had been taking a fertility drug to conceive, her husband said.

The heaviest baby weighed 3 pounds 0.5 ounces; the lightest was 2 pounds 7.5 ounces.

Gosselin and her husband, Jonathan, 27, are also the parents of 3-year-old twins.

Jonathan Gosselin said the family’s church had offered to pay to expand their home. Various corporations also have made donations, he said.

Oklahoma City

Federal, state charges filed in child prostitution ring

Prosecutors announced state and federal charges against 19 people for alleged child prostitution and sex trafficking of children.

Pimps allegedly transported girls as young as 13 from Oklahoma — many of them runaways — to cities in Texas, Florida, Colorado, Pennsylvania and Arkansas for prostitution, said U.S. Atty. Robert McCampbell.

McCampbell said pimps recruited young girls and then controlled them through violence, threats and intimidation. As many as 13 underage girls, and several women over 18, were involved, he said.

Nine people were named in the felony federal indictments. A Wichita, Kan., man, Jason Edward Heard, 24, was among 10 people named in state charges.

The investigation was continuing and additional arrests are expected, authorities said.

Massachusetts

Seaside town votes to issue same-sex marriage licenses

Out-of-state couples will be able to receive marriage licenses in the seaside gay mecca of Provincetown after the city decided Monday to defy the governor’s residency edict, likely setting the stage for another gay marriage legal battle.

Gov. Mitt Romney immediately issued a statement Monday, threatening legal action against clerks who defy his interpretation of the law.

The Board of Selectmen in Provincetown, on Cape Cod, decided that gay couples who live outside Massachusetts still would be issued marriage licenses, as long as they attest that they know of no legal impediment to their union.

Romney’s office has told city and town clerks that out-of-state gay couples who do not plan to move to the state will be barred from marrying under a 1913 law that prohibits marriages that would be illegal in a couple’s home state.