American Airlines Cutting Jobs & More in Today’s News

National- American Airlinesannounced Wednesday it plans to cut 13,000 jobs from their staff.  The airline is the third largest in the nation with 88,000 employees.  Most of the cuts will be in the maintenance operations department which will lose 4,600 jobs.  Other cuts will affect ground workers, flight attendants, management and pilots. 

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Health- A certain type of birth control was recalled by Pfizer, Inc.  Birth control is typically almost 100-percent effective.  However, about 1 million packets of Lo-Ovral-28 and its generic equivalent have been recalled because they were distributed with the pills out of order.  The company feels only about 30 packets were flawed.   The pills were made and shipped last year.

State- A multi-agency drug task force arrested 16 people on federal drug charges for allegedly taking part in a network that funneled cocaine in to the streets of Troy from New Jersey.  The charges include conspiracy to distribute cocaine between August and January.  Some of the defendants are from the Capital Region while some are out of state or from Queens.  All the defendants are expected to be arraigned Wednesday afternoon and could face up to life in prison.

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Albany- An attorney for the state Department of Civil Service pleaded guilty Wednesday to charges involving hate crimes.  58-year old James Hennessey, Jr. resigned on Tuesday from his six figure state job.  Hennessey initially faced 11 counts of second degree aggravated harassment for threatening multiple people over the phone.  He could now see 1 to 3 years in prison when sentenced in March.

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Sports- A legend to the boxing world passed away this week.  Angelo Dundee died Wednesday.  He was credited with helping motivate Muhammad Ali as well as training him and Sugar Ray Leonard.  He was inducted in the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1992 and was known most of being a supreme motivator.