The Arizona Charter Athletic Association state championship baseball game wasn’t played Thursday night because Mesa Prep’s second baseman is a girl. Paige Sultzbach, a freshman, is playing baseball because her high school doesn’t offer girls softball. But the school Mesa Prep was to face in the final, Our Lady of Sorrows Academy, said its boys would not compete against a team with a girl and forfeited the game - and the state title - to Mesa Prep. ”As a Catholic school, we promote the ideal of forming and educating boys and girls separately during the adolescent years, especially in physical education,” Our Lady of Sorrows said in a statement.

The Yemeni branch of al Qaeda now has “a whole outfit designated to target the U.S. homeland,” according to a source closely working with U.S. intelligence agencies and the military. In addition, the U.S. now believes Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is working on “several types of bombs” that could get past airport x-ray screening machines. The bomb technology is aimed at targeting the U.S., according to the source. Although the group has not yet succeeded in any of their bomb plots against the U.S., there are several bomb makers and a group of would-be suicide bombers inside the group, which operates out of rudimentary training camps in southern Yemen.

Russia’s security service has foiled a plot to attack the 2014 Winter Olympics in the Black Sea city of Sochi, state media reported Thursday. Authorities arrested three men this week in Georgia’s breakaway republic of Abkhazia on charges of plotting the attack in a joint operation with Abkhazian security services, the Russian National Anti-Terrorism Committee said, according to the state-run RIA Novosti news agency. The three are suspected of being ringleaders of a regional cell of the North Caucasus-based terrorist group Caucasus Emirate. Police seized weapons, including three portable surface-to-air missiles, two anti-tank guided missiles, a mortar and a flamethrower.

Adam Mayes — accused of murder and kidnapping in a case involving a Tennessee mother and her three daughters — has died, FBI spokesman Joel Siskovic said late Thursday. The two sisters he allegedly kidnapped were found alive, law enforcement sources said. There had been conflicting reports about whether Mayes was dead or alive after he reportedly shot himself in Union County, Mississippi. Daniel McMullen, FBI special agent in charge in Jackson, Mississippi, said that officers with the Mississippi Highway Safety Patrol and state Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Parks rescued Alexandria and Kyliyah Bain, “alive and unharmed.”

A man from Cornwall who blinded his girlfriend by gouging her eyes has been jailed for life. Shane Jenkin, 33, of Sea Lane, Hayle, admitted inflicting grievous bodily harm on Tina Nash, 31. Jenkin had watched a DVD featuring eye gouging the night before the attack on 20 April 2011, Truro Crown Court heard. Judge Christopher Clark said the attack was one of “extreme violence with catastrophic consequences” and ordered Jenkin to be detained in a secure unit. The minimum term was fixed for six years.

Rebekah Brooks, a former newspaper editor and News Corp. executive, told a UK inquiry into press ethics Friday that she had received commiserations from Prime Minister David Cameron when she resigned last summer. Brooks said the message, along the lines of “keep your head up,” was among a number of “indirect messages” of sympathy that top politicians sent to her. Brooks resigned as chief executive of News International, the British arm of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., in July amid public outrage over claims of widespread hacking by staff at its News of the World newspaper.

This is the final WHCS news for the Academic Year, and we at WHCS would like to thank everyone for listening to our shows, visiting our website, and complaining about our sometimes poor weather reports.  Also, WHCS would like to thank me for reading the news every Friday (I hope Caroline read that out loud), and also thanks to Kristen and everyone else who helped with the news throughout the semester.  Farewell, and come back next semester for a new version of the WHCS News Desk.