Judge: Utah gay marriage can go on

SALT LAKE CITY

- A federal judge yesterday allowed gay marriage to continue in Utah, rejecting a request to put same-sex weddings on hold as the state appeals a decision that has sent couples flocking to county clerk offices for marriage licenses.

Judge Robert J. Shelby overturned Utah's ban on same-sex marriage Friday, ruling that the voter-approved measure is a violation of gay couples' constitutional rights. The state then asked him to put a stop to the weddings, but he rejected the request.

Shelby's ruling is far from the end of the legal wrangling. The state quickly filed a request with the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to put gay marriage on hold, and that court could have ruled as soon as last night.

NEW YORK

- A father threw his young child off the roof of a 52-story Manhattan apartment building in a murder-suicide on the first day he was allowed to be alone with the boy amid an ugly custody battle with the mother, police officials said yesterday.

Dmitriy Kanarikov picked up his 3-year-old son at 10 a.m. Sunday at a Manhattan police precinct - a neutral site negotiated in advance by the parents, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.

"He picked up the son and we all know now tragically he went to a building . . . [and] took the son to the roof," Kelly said. "All indications are he threw him off and that's when he jumped himself."

NEW YORK

- Target Corp. said yesterday that the Department of Justice is investigating the credit- and debit-card security breach at the retailer that's being called the second largest such incident in U.S. history.

The investigation comes after the discounter revealed last week that data connected to about 40 million credit- and debit-card accounts was stolen between Nov. 27 and Dec. 15.

The Department of Justice declined to comment on whether it's investigating the breach at Target, the nation's second largest discounter. But Target said it's cooperating with the probe.