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Feds: Shop owner, partners laundered $10M

BLOOMSBURG -- Town shop owner Paul Chomiak and three others sold drugs and laundered more than $10 million in proceeds, federal investigators allege. Chomiak and others sold drugs misbranded as novelties "not for human consumption," a 35-page federal indictment alleges. The defendants knew the drugs were being used to achieve "euphoric, psychoactive effects and stimulant effects" similar to marijuana and other illegal drugs, the indictment says.

Windsor Foods to shut down

BLOOMSBURG -- A frozen-food plant that employs 160 people will shut down early next year, a company spokeswoman says. The employees at Windsor Foods' Bloomsburg plant on West 11th Street were told Friday that the Houston-based corporation is "streamlining its Italian food manufacturing footprint" and plans to shutter the local plant in late February or early March, said company spokeswoman Lynn Hall. They are working with employees to find other jobs, either locally or at Windsor's other eight facilities, Hall said.

Fire burns house

MIFFLINVILLE -- A fire broke out in an East Third Street home while the homeowner was eating at McDonald's, neighbors said. The fire broke out around 9:30 a.m. and damaged the first floor of Terry Miller's house in the 200 block of East Third Street, they said. Miller told neighbors that he had shut everything down before leaving to have breakfast. But something started on fire. Smoke was coming from a vent when Sgt. Marc Fedder of the South Centre Township police arrived, Fedder said.

Teen charged in killing stayed after class, student says

DANVERS, Mass. (AP) -- A teacher who was allegedly killed by one of her students had asked him to stay after school the day she was killed, a classmate said Thursday, as students met with grief counselors and tried to come to grips with the slaying of the popular teacher. Philip Chism, 14, was charged with murder Wednesday in the death of Colleen Ritzer, a 24-year-old math teacher at Danvers High School. Rania Rhaddaoui sat two seats away from Chism in Ritzer's Algebra I class, the final class of the school day. She said Chism was drawing in a notebook rather than taking notes Tuesday.

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