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A 16-year-old punk accused of killing an Indiana man during an apparent robbery smirked and laughed in front of a pack of news cameras as he walked into a courtroom on Thursday. The hard-hearted teen, Simeon Adams, joked with another inmate as he was led before a judge at a Marion County courthouse to face a slew of charges in the senseless murder of Nathan Trapuzzano on April 1. Prosecutors say Adams put a gun to Trapuzzano, 24 — who was expecting a daughter next month with his newlywed bride — and ordered him behind a tire store in Indianapolis,...

A combination of a heavy debt load and a dramatic decline in demand and prices for coal pushed Richmond-based James River Coal Co. into Chapter 11 bankruptcy court protection. The company, which filed for Chapter 11 protection on Monday along with more than 30 of its subsidiary businesses, said in court filings Tuesday that it lost an estimated $16 million in 2013, as coal volumes and revenue dropped dramatically from 2012 to 2013. “The debtors’ businesses have reached the point of unsustainability absent utilization of the tools presented by Chapter 11,” James River Coal Chairman, President and CEO Peter Socha...

Health Plan Premiums Are Skyrocketing According To New Survey Of 148 Insurance Brokers, With Delaware Up 100%, California 53%, Florida 37%, Pennsylvania 28%13 Health insurance premiums are showing the sharpest increases perhaps ever according to a survey of brokers who sell coverage in the individual and small group market. Morgan Stanley’s healthcare analysts conducted the proprietary survey of 148 brokers. The April survey shows the largest acceleration in small and individual group rates in any of the 12 prior quarterly periods when it has been conducted. The average increases are in excess of 11% in the small group market and...

GARY, Ind. - Federal agents raided a northwestern Indiana township trustee's office Thursday, although they stayed mum on the reasons for the raid. FBI agents were joined with officers from the Indiana State Police and the IRS in a sweep of Calumet Township Trustee Mary Elgin's office in Gary on Thursday. Call 6 Investigator Kara Kenny found a 2011 audit of the trustee's office that raised concerns about the township's finances, including nine employees with take-home cars.

The State of Indiana is reopening discussions with Midwest Fertilizer and Fatima Group about a multi-billion fertilizer plant in Posey County. Governor Mike Pence says the decision comes after the group and government of Pakistan took steps to make it more difficult for terrorists to obtain the company's products. Pence pulled state support for the project last year. Economic Development Coalition of Southwest Indiana Chief Executive Officer Greg Wathen says the company hopes to begin construction later this year.

A 16-year-old was today arrested and charged over the murder of Nathan Trapuzzano, the newlywed who was shot dead as he took a morning walk. Simeon Adams, known by the nickname 'Red', is alleged to have confessed to a friend that he shot Nathan once in the stomach - after the newlywed, who was expecting his first child, reached down to his shoes as Adams made him strip during the robbery. Adams' friend Marvell Robinson told detectives he was woken up by the alleged shooter on the morning of April 1 at his home in Indianapolis. Adams told him: 'Man...

It's not likely the race for president in 2016 will pit former Florida Republican Gov. Jeb Bush and former Democratic Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol predicted. "I'm willing to go out on a limb," Kristol told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Tuesday. "I think there's no way there will be a Bush-Clinton race in 2016."

GARY, Ind. (AP) — U.S. Steel has temporarily halted steelmaking at its massive northwestern Indiana mill because the ice-covered Great Lakes have cut off its access to vital iron ore and other raw materials. The company said in a letter to its customers that it has idled the Gary Works complex's blast furnaces and steelmaking operations "due to unforeseen and unprecedented ice conditions on the Great Lakes" after the Midwest's frigid winter, The Times of Munster reported (http://bit.ly/QMW0D4 ). "These severe ice conditions have not occurred on the Great Lakes for more than three decades," the letter states. Treacherous ice...

100 agents make a man prove that he obtained his collection properly.WALDRON, IN — Around 100 FBI agents swarmed an elderly man’s house in rural Indiana.  The Federal government has set up a command post with trucks and military-style tents.  The feds showed up to sort through his lifetime collection of world artifacts that he had gathered over the course of his 91 years.   The agents claim they want to make sure he “acquired the items properly” — effectively making him prove his innocence — even though the man has not been accused of breaking any laws. Don Miller,...

Thousands Of Artifacts Seized At 91-Year-Old Indiana Man's Home Federal agents, art experts and museum curators descended on the home of a 91-year-old man in central Indiana on Wednesday to take control of a huge collection of artifacts from Native American, Russian, Chinese and other cultures. FBI Special Agent Robert Jones told reporters that the collection's cultural value "is immeasurable," reports RTV6 The Indy Channel.

A 24-year-old man, shot dead during an early morning walk in Indianapolis on Tuesday, had been excitedly awaiting the arrival of his first baby. Nathan Trapuzzano was shot in the stomach during what police believe was an attempted mugging outside a tire shop at 5.50am. As police intensified their search for two suspects, seen on security camera footage running from the scene, it was revealed that Mr Trapuzzano's wife, Jennifer, is due to have a baby girl next month. Mr Trapuzzano, a computer programmer for Ivy Tech Community College, was found injured outside the Tron Tire Shop, Fox 59 reported....

<p>The FBI has swooped into an elderly man’s Indiana home and seized thousands of artifacts he collected — he says legally — during his decades of travel to hundreds of destinations, including Haiti, Australia, New Guinea and Peru.</p> <p>Donald Miller, 91, accumulated the artifacts over the past 80 years, said FBI Special Agent Robert Jones, during a news conference.</p>

INDIANAPOLIS – FBI agents have seized thousands of artifacts from Native Americans, Russia, China, and other nations from a 91-year-old man's private collection in rural central Indiana. The items, which also came from Haiti, Australia, New Guinea and Peru, were collected by Donald Miller of Waldron over eight decades, FBI Special Agent Robert Jones said at a news conference. "The cultural value of these artifacts is immeasurable," Jones said while refusing to disclose details of any of the individual items taken from Miller's property. Some items were acquired improperly, but Miller, who traveled extensively, obtained others legally or before laws...

LOGANSPORT, Ind. - A fast-moving virus that has infected hogs across half of the nation since it was first detected in the U.S. less than a year ago has become rampant in Indiana, agriculture officials say. Porcine epidemic diarrhea virus, or PED, has infected farms in 43 of Indiana's 92 counties, according to March 14 data from the Indiana State Board of Animal Health. Twenty-six other states have reported cases of the virus as of March 12, the National Animal Health Laboratory Network indicates. While the flu-like sickness doesn't affect people and is not a food safety concern, it can...

It should come as no surprise The New York Times would bury news of a conservative victory over President Obama on page eight. The lead paragraph said it all: Senate Democrats, bowing to united House Republican opposition, dropped reforms of International Monetary Fund governance from a Ukraine aid package on Tuesday. The real question is whether this was merely a moment in time or a seminal shift in how congressional Republicans will approach future showdowns. And to be clear, future showdowns are inevitable if we are to achieve any conservative policy victories. Before going further, it is important to explain...

Move Could “Open the Floodgates” Against National Standards Indiana Governor Mike Pence burst into the headlines with his announcement that Indiana will be the first of 45 states to opt out of the national education standards known as Common Core. “I believe when we reach the end of this process there are going to be many other states around the country that will take a hard look at the way Indiana has taken a step back,” Pence said, “designed our own standards and done it in a way where we drew on educators, we drew on citizens, we drew on...

The conservative group Club for Growth has changed gears and is supporting establishment GOP candidates in primaries. Launched a decade before the tea party made life difficult for moderate Republicans, the club quickly rose to the political forefront while supporting challengers to incumbent Republicans who it felt were not conservative enough, according to the National Journal. In 2012, the fiscally conservative organization backed tea party candidate Richard Mourdock’s challenge to Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar and vilified veteran Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch for his voting record. The group also targeted 10 moderate House Republicans. But the political action committee has suddenly...

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Senator, when Obamacare was at issue, a month ago, when it came to a continuing resolution to funding the government you supported a filibuster of other Senators, who demanded that you had to have a change or the abolition of Obamacare as a condition for funding the government. In retrospect do you think that was a good strategy? But even more importantly --looking ahead, the deadlines are coming up, the resolution's going to run out, we're going to hit the debt ceiling soon -- would you be prepared to use same tactic as we approach the new deadlines?...

With the stroke of Gov. Mike Pence's pen, Indiana became the first state to back off implementing a set of national standards for grade-school education. The standards, known as Common Core, had been adopted by 45 states, but have lately unleashed a political fight that blurs party lines. "'I believe our students are best served when decisions about education are made at the state and local level,' said Pence in a release about Senate Bill 91. " 'By signing this legislation, Indiana has taken an important step forward in developing academic standards that are written by Hoosiers, for Hoosiers, and...

Indiana’s experiment with Common Core is over. Gov. Mike Pence signed legislation today requiring the state to come up with its own academic standards, making Indiana the latest state to pull its support for the national education standards known as Common Core.