Fisher-Price is recalling parts of over 2 million infant swings across the U.S., Canada and Mexico due to a serious suffocation risk, following reports of five infant deaths.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission warned that all models of Fisher-Price’s Snuga Swings should never be used for sleep or have bedding materials added. The product’s headrest and seat pad body support insert can increase risks of suffocation, the notice published Thursday said.

There have been five reports of deaths involving infants between 1 to 3 months old when the product was used for sleep, according to the commission. In most of those incidents, which took place from 2012 to 2022, bedding material was added to the product and the babies were unrestrained.

Consumers are urged to immediately cut off the headrest and remove the body-support insert before continuing to use the swing. New York-based Fisher-Price, a division of California toy giant Mattel, is providing a $25 refund to consumers who remove and destroy those parts of the product. Instructions can be found on Mattel’s recall website.

Montana businessman sentenced in Capitol riot

A Montana business owner and supporter of former President Donald Trump has been sentenced to two years in federal prison for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol that interrupted certification of the 2020 Electoral College vote.

Henry Phillip “Hank” Muntzer, 55, of Dillon, was also sentenced Thursday to a year of supervised release and ordered to pay $2,000 in restitution.

Muntzer was arrested two weeks after the siege based on social media posts and videos taken inside the Capitol, according to court records.

He was found guilty in February of obstructing an official proceeding and civil disorder, both felonies, following a bench trial before U.S. District Court Judge Jia M. Cobb.

Georgia poll workers settle defamation case

Two Georgia election workers have reached a settlement in their defamation lawsuit against a Missouri-based conservative website that falsely accused them of fraud in the 2020 presidential election, according to a court filing earlier this week.

The lawsuit against The Gateway Pundit, its owner Jim Hoft and his brother Joe Hoft “has been resolved to the mutual satisfaction of the parties through a fair and reasonable settlement,” lawyers for Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss said Friday.

Monday’s filing in St. Louis City Circuit Court didn’t give any terms of the settlement, but said actions under the agreement are supposed to be completed by March 29. Both sides asked a judge to postpone the case until then, when they expect to request a dismissal.

Nearly 70 articles cited as defamatory in the lawsuit were no longer available Friday on The Gateway Pundit website, The Associated Press found.

Ukrainian journalist dies in Russian captivity

Viktoria Roshchina, a Ukrainian journalist who went missing in August 2023 while reporting from territories occupied by Moscow’s forces, has died in Russian custody, Ukrainian officials said.

Roshchina, 27, had reported at great risk from areas in southern Ukraine and had reportedly traveled to eastern Ukraine to document the Russian occupation there.

Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, said Thursday he had received official documentation from Russia confirming that Roshchina had died in captivity, adding that the exact circumstances surrounding her death remain unclear.

Russian authorities have not commented on the reports.

The news of her death outraged the international journalism community, with several organizations calling on Russian authorities to promptly investigate what happened.

Roshchina worked as a freelance reporter for several independent Ukrainian publications, including Ukrainska Pravda and Hromadske.

21 killed in Pakistan mine attack

Gunmen killed 21 miners and wounded six others in Pakistan’s southwest, a police official said Friday, drawing condemnation from authorities as a search was launched for the assailants.

The latest attack in restive Balochistan province came days ahead of a major security summit being hosted in the capital.

The gunmen stormed the accommodation at a coal mine in Duki district late Thursday night, rounded up the men and opened fire, police official Hamayun Khan Nasir said. He said the attackers also fired rockets, lobbed grenades at the mine and damaged machinery before fleeing.

No group claimed immediate responsibility for the attack, but suspicion is likely to fall on the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army, which targets civilians and security forces.

U.S. wholesale inflation flat in September

Wholesale prices in the United States were unchanged last month in another sign that inflation is returning to something close to normal after years of pressuring America’s households in the wake of COVID-19.

The Labor Department reported Friday that its producer price index — which tracks inflation before it hits consumers — didn’t move from August to September after rising 0.2% the month before. Measured from a year earlier, the index rose 1.8% in September, the smallest such rise since February and down from a 1.9% year-over-year increase in August.

Excluding food and energy prices, which tend to fluctuate from month to month, so-called core wholesale prices rose 0.2% from August and 2.8% from a year earlier, up from the previous month’s 2.6% increase.

Teen sentence affirmed in teacher’s death

An Iowa teen who pleaded guilty to beating his high school Spanish teacher to death with a baseball bat must serve 35 years in prison before the possibility of parole, the state’s high court reaffirmed Friday.

Willard Miller was 16 when he and another teen killed Nohema Graber, a 66-year-old teacher at Fairfield High School, in 2021. Miller was sentenced last year to life in prison with a mandatory minimum number of years served, but he appealed his sentence to the Iowa Supreme Court, arguing it’s unconstitutional to sentence juvenile offenders to a minimum term before parole eligibility.

The state Supreme Court on Friday unanimously upheld the district court’s decision.

Miller and Jeremy Goodale, who was sentenced to life in prison with parole eligibility after 25 years, killed Graber on Nov. 2, 2021, in a park where the teacher routinely walked after school. Prosecutors said the teens were angry at Graber because of a bad grade she had given Miller.

Ky. woman arrested after body parts found

Authorities arrested a Kentucky woman after someone found a dismembered body in her mother’s backyard and officers later found human remains in a pot in the home’s oven that “was still warm.”

A man who was hired to work on the property in Mount Olivet, about 50 miles southeast of Cincinnati, called authorities Wednesday after finding the body in the backyard, the Kentucky State Police said. Officers saw the dismembered corpse in the grass, a bloody mattress nearby, and blood stains on the back porch and the back door’s threshold, according to an arrest citation.

Police obtained a search warrant for the home and called in a special response team, but a woman inside the house, 32-year-old Torilena May Fields, refused to come out. Police deployed gas inside the house and conversed with Fields using a robot, and she exited without further incident late that night, state police said. She had blood on her face, hands and clothing, according to the citation.

Woman pleads guilty to turtle smuggling

A woman from China pleaded guilty on Friday to attempting to smuggle 29 eastern box turtles, a protected species, across a Vermont lake into Canada by kayak.

Wan Yee Ng, 41, was arrested on the morning of June 28 at an Airbnb in Canaan, Vt., as she was about to get into an inflatable kayak with a duffle bag on Lake Wallace on the Canadian broeder, according to a Border Patrol agent’s affidavit filed in federal court.

The agents searched her heavy duffle bag and found 29 live eastern box turtles individually wrapped in socks, the affidavit states. Eastern box turtles are known to be sold on the Chinese black market for $1,000 each, the affidavit stated.

She pleaded guilty on Friday to one count of unlawfully attempting to export and send 29 eastern box turtles out of the United States, contrary to law.

— From news services