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According to official reports, a Florida man was sentenced to 18 1/2 years in prison on Thursday for killing his father by slashing his throat.

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel has reported that Erin Atac, 30, of Lighthouse Point avoided the maximum penalty of 30 years for manslaughter despite having once told police "I'd do it again and again, if I could, no hesitation."

It was also reported that Atac was convicted in February by a jury that passed up on finding him guilty of first-degree murder.

They will contest the parole of one of the convicted killers at an upcoming hearing, say the survivors of two Illinois police officers murdered in 1967.

The Chicago Tribune reported on Wednesday that Henry Michael Gargano, now 77, and two other men killed Northlake police Detective Sgt. John Nagle and Officer Anthony Perri and wounded two other officers in the course of a bank robbery on Oct. 27, 1967.

It has been reported that a community in the Chicago area has approved a resolution making English its official language and endorsing Arizona's new immigration law.

The Chicago Tribune reported on Thursday that members of the local government in Homer, a township of 30,000 people northwest of Chicago, say the measure that passed this week is not racist or aimed at immigrants from any particular part of the world.

The Vatican said on Thursday that the Catholic Church's statute of limitations on child sexual abuse has been extended to 20 years after a victim's 18th birthday.

Catholic News Service has reported that the church, wracked in recent years by priest sex abuse scandals, also reclassified possession of child pornography, equating it with sexual abuse of children. That means priests proved to have used child pornography can be defrocked.

The changes were part of a revision of "Delicta Graviora," a document defining crimes against the church.

It is cracking down on teachers who use the classroom to spread support of terrorism, says the government of Saudi Arabia.

Gulf News has reported on Thursday that officials said more than 2,000 teachers have been transferred to administrative positions in two years after they were found to be proselytizing for al-Qaida.

A test of the new containment cap on the well gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico has stopped the flow of crude, a BP official said on Thursday.

BP engineers closed all three valves on the massive containment cap and oil stopped spewing into the water a mile below the surface for the first time since April 20, when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, killing 11 workers.

BP Vice President Kent Wells said during an interview with NPR, "We will be monitoring the pressure carefully every 6 hours. It was quite something to see."