Also on today’s menu:
Soldier Detained After Fleeing To North Korea
Russia Attacks Port City In Ukraine
Pompeii Continues To Reveal Itself To Archaeologists
Former Laconia resident Stacie Marie Laughton, 39, also a former state representative from Nashua, has been linked to another Nashua resident involved in the sexual exploitation of children.
Police investigating Lindsay Groves, 38, who was charged last month with taking nude photos of children at the Creative Minds Early Learning Center in Tyngsborough, Massachusetts, and texting them to another person, allegedly found more than 10,000 text messages between Groves and Laughton, discussing and transferring photographs of children who appear to be three to five years old.
Laughton resigned from the New Hampshire House last December after being charged with stalking Groves.
Laughton is believed to be the first transgender person elected to the state legislature in 2012, but she resigned before taking her seat after reports surfaced about her 2008 convictions for identity fraud and falsifying evidence. She successfully ran again in 2020 and was re-elected in 2022, shortly before being jailed on the stalking charges.
The sexual exploitation of children charge could lead to a sentence of as much as 30 years in prison.
Soldier Detained After Fleeing To North Korea
Twenty-three-year-old Travis King, the American soldier believed to be in custody in North Korea, had been on his way back to the United States after being released from a detention facility in Seoul where he had been held for allegedly punching a Korean national in a nightclub and then kicking the back door of the police car while screaming “foul language” at the officers who had apprehended him.
He had been released after two months in jail and was being escorted to the airport for a flight back to the U.S. when he allegedly approached an American Airlines official to say his passport was missing. An airline employee escorted him out of the departure area, at which time he left the airport.
He managed to join a tour of the demilitarized zone between the north and south, then ran across the border into North Korea.
Russia Attacks Port City In Ukraine
Having withdrawn its willingness to allow grain exports from Ukraine by sea, Russia attacked port infrastructure in the southern city of Odessa with drone and missile strikes overnight.
The action follows an attack on the Kerch Bridge, which links Russia with the Crimean Peninsula, which President Vladimir Putin has blamed on Ukraine.
Russia also reported evacuating more than 2,200 people from four villages in Crimea because of a fire at a military facility.
Pompeii Continues To Reveal Itself To Archaeologists
Generations of archaeological exploration have revealed only about two-thirds of the ancient city of Pompeii, destroyed by the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, with the latest finds including a kitchen shrine adorned with serpents, a bakery, more exquisite frescos, and even a depiction of something that looks very much like a pizza, perhaps a precursor of what we know today.
The newly explored area amounts to a city block of 32,000 square feet, lying behind the houses with frontage along Via Di Nola, a main thoroughfare.
The dig also revealed additional human skeletons — people caught while trying to escape from the disaster, whose bodies became encased in volcanic ash that preserved them through the years.
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