January 2013 Archives

Police rescued a 16-year old girl from a Saint Paul house fire on Thursday, The Star Tribune reported.

The girl was not breathing when firefighters found her in a second-floor bedroom filled with smoke. Firefighters started to resuscitate the girl and sent her to Regions Hospital, where she was then transferred to the hyperbaric chamber at Hennepin County Medical Center, The Pioneer Press reported.

The fire, which started in the house's kitchen, was reported by a neighbor who saw smoke coming from the house. The girl was the house's only occupant at the time, The Star Tribune reported.

The fire's damages total at about $10,000. Officials have not yet determined the fire's cause, The Pioneer Press reported.

A special education teacher was charged with molesting children on Wednesday, after being confronted by La Crescent students, The La Crosse Tribune reported.

Five La Crescent Montessori Academy students confronted Jason David Barker, 37, earlier this month. He is now charged in Houston County District Court with second-degree criminal sexual conduct and fifth-degree sexual conduct with children under 13 years old, The Pioneer Press reported.

The criminal complaint of one student said Barker put "his hands down the back of her pants, lifted her shirt, rubbed her belly and touched her breasts," The La Cross Tribune reported.

Barker previously was convicted of felony criminal damage to property in 1995 in Ramsey County and faces felony charges for threatening to stab a Winona County couple, The La Crosse Tribune reported.

Barker said he sometimes pushed the "boundaries in teaching", but denied ever molesting his students, The Pioneer Press reported.

A plane crashed Tuesday in the fog outside of Kazakhstan's largest city, Almaty, killing all 21 passengers, emergency officials said as reported by The New York Times.

This crash, being the second of its kind in two months, revitalized aviation safety concerns in Kazakhstan, almost all of whose airlines are banned from traveling to Western Europe, The Star Tribune reported.

The pilot's second attempt to land the plane in heavy fog lead to the crash, The Star Tribune reported. Yuri Ilyin, the deputy head of the emergency department for Almaty, found no evidence of mechanical malfunction, The New York Times reported.

In response to the event, President Nursultan Nazarbayev said, "[o]n behalf of the people of Kazakhstan and myself, I express deep condolences to the bereaved families," The New York Times reported.