Combined briefs package

HUNGARY

Suspected war criminal dead at 98

A man whose name figured prominently on an authoritative list of suspected Nazi war criminals died over the weekend in Budapest at the age of 98 while awaiting trial, his lawyer said Monday. Laszlo Csatary was charged in June with having “intentionally assisted the unlawful executions and tortures committed against Jewish people” for his role in the deportation of Jews from the ghetto in Kassa, now called Kosice, in eastern Slovakia, prosecutors said. He had denied the accusations.

EGYPT

Police postpone sit-in dispersal

Supporters of toppled President Mohammed Morsi increased the pressure on Egypt’s interim leadership by defiantly flooding into two protest camps Monday, prompting police to postpone moving against the 6-week-old sit-ins because they feared a “massacre.” Authorities, however, showed no signs of meeting key demands by Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood to release top Islamists who have been detained and face criminal investigations.

NORTH CAROLINA

Governor signs elections bill

Gov. Pat McCrory has signed into law a fiercely contested initiative making sweeping changes in how and when the state’s voters can cast their ballots. Hours after Monday’s signing, the American Civil Liberties Union announced it and two other groups had filed a lawsuit challenging the legislation. Republicans said the legislation is meant to prevent voter fraud, which they claim is both rampant and undetected. But non-partisan voting rights groups, Democrats and libertarians suggested the true goal was to suppress voter turnout, especially among blacks, the young, the elderly and the poor.

GEORGIA

Race claims tossed in Deen lawsuit

A federal judge Monday threw out race discrimination claims by a former Savannah restaurant manager whose lawsuit against Paula Deen has already cost the celebrity cook a valuable chunk of her culinary empire. Lisa Jackson, who is white, sued Deen and her brother, Bubba Hiers, last year saying she suffered from sexual harassment and racially offensive talk and employment practices that were unfair to black workers during her five years as a manager of Uncle Bubba’s Seafood and Oyster House. Deen is co-owner of the restaurant. The ruling lets stand Jackson’s claims that Hiers sexually harassed her.

ILLINOIS

Study eyes link to induced labor, autism

The biggest study of its kind suggests autism might be linked with inducing and speeding up labor, preliminary findings that need investigating since labor is induced in increasing numbers of U.S. women, the authors and other autism experts say. It’s possible that labor-inducing drugs might increase the risk — or that the problems that lead doctors to start labor explain the results. These include mothers’ diabetes and fetal complications, which have previously been linked with autism. The government-funded study was published online Monday in JAMA Pediatrics.

MEXICO

Six killed in attack on family

Gunmen burst into a home in the western state of Michoacan and opened fire, killing six people and wounding 10, officials said Monday. State prosecutors said the shooting Sunday night in the town of Tuxpan targeted a family that had fled threats from members of organized crime in the state of Mexico. The family had fled the state of Mexico in January for Michoacan, which is one of the most violent states in nation and the center of a struggling federal government effort to reassert state control.

CALIFORNIA

Brown signs transgender-student bill

California on Monday became the first state to enshrine certain rights for transgender kindergarten-through-12th-grade students in state law, requiring public schools to allow those students access to whichever restroom and locker room they want. Gov. Jerry Brown announced that he had signed the bill, which also will allow transgender students to choose whether they want to play boys’ or girls’ sports. The new law gives students the right “to participate in sex-segregated programs, activities and facilities” based on their self-perception and regardless of their birth gender.