International News brief

Juvenile authorities said Saturday that a 15-year-old has been charged with first-degree murder for the death of a 9-year-old central Missouri girl found in the woods two days after she went missing.

Police did not release the teen’s gender or name and provided few other details about the person suspected of killing Elizabeth Olten. Cole County Sheriff Greg White has said the teenage suspect is not related to Elizabeth but was acquainted with her.

Several hundred people braved soaking rain and cold weather to search a heavily wooded area near Elizabeth’s home after she was reported missing Wednesday evening. Police found Elizabeth’s body Friday afternoon after the suspect led them to a wooded area several hundred yards from her St. Martins house, White said.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan

Town’s capture symbolic

Soldiers captured the strategically located hometown of Pakistan’s Taliban chief Saturday after fierce fighting, officials said, the army’s first major prize as it pushes deeper into a militant stronghold along the Afghan border.

A suspected U.S. missile killed 22 people elsewhere in the northwest, but apparently missed a top Taliban figure, authorities said.

The battle for Kotkai town took several days and involved aerial bombardment as soldiers captured heights around the town. Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said troops were now ridding the town of land mines and roadside bombs.

Kotkai is symbolically important because it is the hometown of Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud.

PATERSON, N.J.

Burglars bungle break-in

Police in northern New Jersey nabbed three alleged burglars who fled an apartment with just $2 in change and left behind the keys to their getaway car.

Authorities say the gun-toting men entered an apartment in Paterson early Friday, expecting to find loads of money. Realizing they targeted the wrong residence after they woke up a man who then fought with them, the men fled with just a 3-foot, beer bottle-shaped piggy bank containing the coins.

Police soon arrived. After finding the keys in a bedroom, they used the car alarm to locate a vehicle in a nearby parking lot. Its registration led them to the alleged robbers, who were sitting in a taxi outside one suspect’s home.

POTTSVILLE, Pa.

Four face homicide charges

Two Hazleton men and two others have been ordered to stand trial on charges of beating a former friend to death last month.

After a hearing Friday in Schuylkill County Court, District Judge Anthony J. Kilker determined that there was enough evidence to order the four to stand trial in the death of 21-year-old Anthony Locascio of Hazleton. His body was found Sept. 15 in a wooded area near Brandonville.

The defendants are 20-year-old Shane Roof, formerly of Palmerton; 19-year-old Andrew Tutko II, of McAdoo; and two Hazleton residents, 19-year-old Jeffrey Gombert and 25-year-old Curtis Foose. They are charged with criminal homicide, aggravated assault, robbery, simple assault and one count of conspiracy on each of the charges.