A Montgomery County man’s felony murder conviction was upheld last week when the Second District Court of Appeals overruled an appeal from his conviction in the court of common pleas.

Following a jury trial, Levi Slaughter was convicted of felony murder with felonious assault as a predicate offense, discharging a firearm on or near a prohibited area, a firearm specification on each count and having a weapon under disability, which was tried to the bench.

The 10th District Court of Appeals recently rejected a man’s argument that he was coerced into entering a guilty plea and ruled that the trial judge’s participation in the plea bargaining process did not effect the voluntary nature of the plea.

Charles Williams Jr. attacked the guilty plea he entered in the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas and argued that it was not entered knowingly, intelligently and voluntarily because of judicial interference.

His case stemmed from the rape of a 14-year-old girl.

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — After decades of attempts to preserve portions of the old Mother Road, U.S. Route 66, comes an effort to preserve landmarks from the landscape: vintage advertising that touted everything from long-gone motels to car dealers to shaving cream.

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. intelligence officials are planning a sweeping system of electronic monitoring that would tap into government, financial and other databases to scan the behavior of many of the 5 million federal employees with secret clearances, current and former officials told The Associated Press.

The system is intended to identify rogue agents, corrupt officials and leakers, and draws on a Defense Department model under development for more than a decade, according to officials and documents reviewed by the AP.