A hostage situation was reported Thursday inside a Jacksonville, Fla. bank. The situation occurred after 9 a.m., when the suspect entered a Community First Credit Union location and took people inside hostage, Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office Public Information Officer Melissa Bujeda said. A caller claimed that one person has been shot — but authorities haven’t been able to confirm whether any shots have been fired. SWAT units and hostage negotiators were at the scene, Bujeda said.(nydailynews.com)…[+]

JoAnn Nieto was shocked when she encountered a racist comment a Colorado doctor had made about First Lady Michelle Obama while scrolling through her Facebook feed. Denver Health Medical Center doctor Michelle Herren posted an unflattering picture of FLOTUS under a status with a comment that read “Doesn’t seem to be speaking too eloquently here, thank god we can’t hear her!” Herren wrote that in response to Nieto’s friend who praised Obama. “Harvard??? That’s a place for “entitled” folks said all the liberals!” the doctor continued in the post.(goal.com)…[+]

The California mom who was allegedly kidnapped and tortured for three grueling weeks was afraid no one would help her when her captors eventually let her go because the chains she was wearing made her look like an escaped inmate.

Sherri Papini’s husband said his wife desperately tried to flag down motorists after she was dumped on the side of the road last week. She was still wearing a chain around her waist. “She said, ‘Well, maybe people aren’t stopping because I have a chain. It looks like I broke out of prison,’” Keith Papini told ABC News. “She tried to tuck in her chain under her clothes.” He added: “She screamed so much, she said she was coughing up blood.”(goal.com)…[+]

The man accused of beating a 3-year-old boy into a coma insisted that he fought to save the child’s life after an accidental bathtub fall, police sources said Wednesday.

Little Jaden Jordan remained on life support as his mother’s boyfriend, Salvatore Lucchesse, offered his defense against criminal charges in the stomach-turning case.

Lucchesse, accused of assault and acting in a manner injurious to a child, had four prior arrests and was named in a dozen NYPD domestic incident reports, the sources said.(nydailynews.com)…[+]

The family of President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Treasury secretary scored more than $3 million from Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme — and got to keep the cash even after that scam crumbled. A Madoff trustee sued the family of Steven Mnuchin in 2011 to claw back $3.2 million in fake profits they pocketed from Madoff’s con.

According to a complaint filed in federal bankruptcy court in New York, Mnuchin’s mother Elaine Cooper received $3,204,227 from Madoff’s massive Ponzi scheme, in which the former financier swindled nearly $65 billion from his Wall Street clients. It is the largest Ponzi scheme in American history. “Accordingly, Defendants have received $3,204,227 of other people’s money,” the complaint said.(nydailynews.com)…[+]

One of the five survivors of the plane crash in Colombia that killed 71 — most of them belonging to a Brazilian soccer team — said he dodged death because he followed safety instructions. Crew member Erwin Tumiri said that as many passengers panicked, he followed the guidelines repeated at the beginning of every flight. “I survived because I followed safety protocols. Before the crash, many got out of their seats and started to scream,” Tumiri said, according to Latin American news outlet NTN.(nydailynews.com)…[+]

If you’re curious if you’ll be alive in five years — and who isn’t? — a blood test may provide the answer.

A new study suggests that an inflammatory marker found in middle-aged adults may be a more reliable predictor of longevity than other previous methods. Inflammatory markers are known to be associated with cancer, chronic heart disease, strokes and other serious conditions. The greater the inflammation, the more serious the disease.

In this study, a team of researchers from France and the United Kingdom collected data between 1997 and 1999 on more than 6,500 men and women ages 45 to 69. Scientists looked at inflammation markers including interleukin-6 (IL-6), C-reactive protein (CRP) and alpha1-acid glycoprotein (AGP). Subjects were followed to 2015 to see if they had died. In prior research, AGP was found to be the strongest predictor of death within five years.(nydailynews.com)…[+]

Seventy-six passengers died Monday night after a chartered plane carrying a Brazilian soccer team to a final match lost power and crashed in Colombia, authorities said.

Rescue workers pulled five survivors from the wreckage site, south of Medellin. “I feel profound sadness,” Alejandro Martinuccio, an injured player from the Chapecoence team, told Argentina’s La Red radio. “The only thing I can ask is prayers for the companions who were on the flight,” he added, noting that his injury kept him from joining his team.

The short-haul airliner, operated by LaMia, departed from a layover in Santa Cruz, Bolivia with members of the first division team and its press corp, bound for the Jose Maria Cordova International Airport in Rionegro.(nydailynews.com)…[+]

President-elect Donald Trump has re-entered the election administration fray, tweeting that he was robbed of the popular vote win because of millions of illegal votes. He topped off the claim by calling out Virginia, New Hampshire and California for special shaming.

Millions voting illegally is a lot of people. That would require dozens of illegal voters in every single precinct in America. Dozens of illegal voters flooding every precinct in America would be noticed. Because not one credible instance of illegal voting on a large scale has surfaced from this past election, Trump’s claim is truly extraordinary. This is one of those times when Carl Sagan’s famous dictum that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” applies.(nydailynews.com)…[+]

A woman found her 72-year-old grandfather slain inside his ransacked Manhattan apartment after he failed to return her calls Sunday, cops said.

She discovered Philip Erby on the hallway floor of his East Harlem pad along E. 106th St. near First Ave. and called police around 8:30 p.m., authorities said. A police source described the attack as a drug-related robbery and said that marijuana and drug paraphernalia was found in Erby’s apartment. He had what police described as a laceration to the top of his head. Paramedics rushed Erby to Metropolitan Hospital Center but he could not be saved.(nydailynews.com)…[+]