Florida

90-year-old earns belated diploma

After outliving three husbands and letting seven decades pass since her last high school class, Uceba Babson decided it was time to go back to school.

She took part in a graduation ceremony Tuesday night, a few months after her 90th birthday. She received a rousing standing ovation, a bouquet of red roses and a congratulatory letter from Gov. Jeb Bush.

Babson — born before World War I broke out, before Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic Ocean, before women won the right to vote — now has new stories of getting to school.

“I studied and studied, and then I learned I actually passed,” Babson said.

The Adult Education Center helps students as young as 16 study for their high school equivalency diploma and helps others take exams and brush up on their English or writing skills.

Boston

Town stops marrying out-of-state gay couples

Under pressure from Gov. Mitt Romney, Provincetown officials backed down Wednesday and said they would stop issuing marriage licenses to out-of-state gay couples.

Provincetown, a gay tourist spot on Cape Cod, was one of four communities that openly defied Romney’s order not to let nonresident gay couples wed when same-sex marriage became legal May 17 in Massachusetts.

Romney said such marriages were forbidden under a 1913 state law that bars all unions that would not be legal in a couple’s home state. The Republican also threatened unspecified legal action against clerks who violate his instructions.

Provincetown issued 217 gay marriage licenses last week, 14 to out-of-state couples who do not intend to move to Massachusetts.

Florida

Conviction reversed in autistic child’s death

A retarded teenager convicted of drowning a 5-year-old autistic boy was granted a new trial by an appeals court Wednesday because he was not specifically told he could have an attorney present during questioning.

The 4th District Court of Appeals threw out the manslaughter conviction of Gorman Roberts, who was sentenced to three years in prison for the death of Jordan Payne. Jordan drowned in a neighborhood canal in Pompano Beach in 2002.

At Roberts’ trial, prosecutors argued that he pushed Jordan, who was unable to talk or swim, into the 3 1/2-foot-deep water. Neither Roberts, then 17, nor the two 10-year-old boys who also were present went for help. The boy’s body was found a day later.

The defense said that the boy fell into the water during roughhousing along the banks of the canal.

New Jersey

Police arrest animal-rights advocates

Seven animal-rights advocates were arrested Wednesday on charges they organized a campaign of intimidation and harassment against a company that tests pharmaceuticals on animals.

Prosecutors said the group Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty USA and its members employed vandalism, stalking, computer hacking, and blitzes of e-mail, telephone calls and faxes to put pressure on Huntingdon Life Sciences, a British company that has laboratories in New Jersey.

U.S. Atty. Christopher Christie called the group’s members “violent fanatics.”

The conspiracy charge against all the defendants carries up to three years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Three of the advocates also were charged with stalking, which is punishable by up to five years. The animal-rights group itself also was indicted.