Two men who robbed the Windsor Smokers Discount with a gun and a knife and assaulted the clerk might have committed another robbery at a tobacco shop in West Hartford and police are trying to identify them.

One of the men had a gun and the other had a knife when they entered the store at 82 Poquonock Avenue in Windsor around 6:45 p.m. on Wednesday, November 25, assaulted the clerk, took all the cash from the register and fled, police said.

The clerk had to be treated for a minor injury.

One of the robbers was around 20 to 30 years old, thin and between 6-foot-2 and 6-foot-5. He was clean shaven and wearing a red hooded sweatshirt and had the hood over his head, police said.

The other robber is slim, 20 to 30 years old, between 5-feet-2 and 5-feet-6 and was wearing a black hooded sweatshirt pulled tight around his face with a mask underneath so that only the area around his eyes was showing.

Police believe the same men robbed the House of Tobacco, at 1253 New Britain Avenue in West Hartford, at 8:24 p.m. on November 21.

The description of the Windsor and West Hartford robbers is very similar, police said.

One had a gun and, the other had a knife. They hit the employee in the face and stole cash from the register as well as items from a customer in the store, then fled in a dark vehicle, possibly an SUV, according to police.

Police have released surveillance images from both robberies and ask anyone with information on either one to call the Windsor Police Department Detective LeGeyt at 860-688-5273 Ext. 546 or West Hartford Police Detective Ben DelMonte at 860-570-8877
 

A New Haven woman is accused of cashing her dead boyfriend’s pension checks for five years after his death and has been arrested after an investigation.

David Shea, who was a volunteer firefighter in North Haven, died in December 2010, but his girlfriend, Nancy Taneszio, never reported his death and fraudulently collected his pension, according to police. She is accused of cashing 57 checks, totaling $12,084, in the five-year-span.

Police began investigating in November of this year and arrested Taneszio on a warrant on Monday.

She was charged with first-degree larceny and is due in Meriden Superior Court on Dec. 10.

It’s not clear if she has an attorney.

Michelle Obama — alongside family dogs Bo and Sunny — received this year's White House Christmas tree in keeping with an off-and-on tradition that has taken hold since the first tree was placed inside in the 1800s.

Arriving in a horse-drawn carriage on Friday, Nov. 27, the tree was destined for the Blue Room, where it will be adorned for the holidays. The president uses the Blue Room, which is located in the center of the State Floor of the White House, as a formal reception area to receive guests.

The decoration of the Blue Room tree is a White House tradition — like the Presidential Turkey Pardon or the Easter Egg Roll.

But there is some dispute over who brought the first tree into the White House. Many say it was Franklin Pierce, the 14th president, in the 1850s. But according to the White House Historical Association, the first documented tree was placed in the Yellow Room by Benjamin Harrison in 1889.

These first trees were not put up every year or by every president.

"Trees were put up for the joy of children," said William Bushong, chief historian for the WHHA. "If the president didn’t have young children or grandchildren in the house, they didn’t put a tree up in many cases."

President Grover Cleveland, who had young children during his time in office, was known for his elaborately decorated topiaries. During his second term, he became the first to use electric lights in decorating his Christmas tree.

Not all presidents were as enthusiastic, including 26th president Theodore Roosevelt.

As an avid conservationist, Roosevelt saw the cutting of trees for Christmas as potentially damaging to forests. According to the National Christmas Tree Association, the farming of Christmas trees as a crop didn't begin until the 1950s, long after Roosevelt's days in the White House.

Roosevelt's son Archie disagreed, and a popular anecdote from that time period is that he snuck a tree into his bedroom for the holiday.

During the Taft presidency that the tree migrated to its permanent home in the Blue Room. President William Howard Taft and his wife Helen were away for the holiday in 1909, and left the decorating to their children. The kids decided to place the tree in the Blue Room, and subsequent first families followed suit.

According to WhiteHouse.gov, there were only two occasions where the tree was not in the Blue Room since 1961. In 1962, Jacqueline Kennedy moved the tree to the Grand Foyer. In 1969, Patricia Nixon did the same. According to the White House Historical Association, Nixon's reasoning was "so people going by on Pennsylvania Avenue can see [it]."

The White House Historical Association credits first lady Lou Henry Hoover with starting the tradition of an annual tree in 1929. Before then, trees were not necessarily erected yearly and it wasn't the first lady's responsibility.

In fact, according to Bushong, "there really wasn’t much of a hoopla really made about Christmas. It was just a private quiet time during the holidays for the family."

Instead, a reception on New Year's Day was the big event of the winter months. After receiving congressmen, diplomats, and members of the military, the White House would open its doors to the public.

"Thousands of people would come in and shake the hand of the president on New Year's Day," said Bushong. The tradition, however, was discontinued in 1932.

Nearly 30 years later, first lady Jacqueline Kennedy updated the White House Christmas by beginning the convention of decorating the tree with a distinct theme. Her first tree in 1961 was themed "Nutcracker Suite" after the ballet.

Other themes have tied into initiatives by the first ladies. Nancy Reagan, for example, had participants in a drug treatment program help decorate her trees. Barbara Bush had a tree decorated with books to promote literacy.

When receiving the Blue Room tree this year, first lady Michelle Obama told tree farmers Jay and Glenn Bustard that, "This is the tree that we use to honor our military." Her previous holiday decorations also featured dedications to members of the military and their families.

The Bustards grew this year's tree on their farm in Landsale, Pennsylvania. They won the NCTA's National Christmas Tree Contest last July.

The contest picks two winners every two years, and since 1966 these winning farms have supplied the Blue Room trees. Next year's tree will come from Whispering Pines Tree Farm in Oconto, Wisconsin.

A Muslim advocacy group called on the FBI Wednesday to investigate as a hate crime an incident in which an apparently bullet-riddled copy of the Quran was found outside an Islamic clothing store.

The Los Angeles-based Council on American-Islamic Relations said the owner of Al-Farah Islamic Clothing in Anaheim, California, found an English translation of the Quran pierced with multiple holes and hanging on the front door of the store Tuesday morning.
 
The store owner contacted CAIR-LA and the Anaheim Police Department, which is investigating the incident as a possible hate crime, Anaheim police Sgt. Daron Wyatt said.

Several months ago, an unidentified individual shattered a store window. Police are investigating whether the two incidents are related.
 
"Anyone has the right to be a bigot, but when that bigotry is expressed through the targeting of individuals or businesses through acts of intimidation similar to a cross burning, it crosses the line into criminal behavior," said CAIR-LA Executive Director Hussam Ayloush. "If you shoot up a Quran on your own property, that is bigoted freedom of expression. If you deliver that bullet-riddled Quran to a Muslim home or business, that is an act of intimidation and a hate crime."

FBI officials are reviewing the incident.

Ayloush noted that in 2003, the United States Supreme Court ruled that acts of intimidation like KKK-style cross burnings may be prohibited if the perpetrator is carrying out the burning to intimidate or terrorize.

He said the Anaheim incident appeared to be part of an "unprecedented" spike in anti-Muslim discrimination and hate crimes in the wake of the recent terror attacks in Paris.

Muslim leaders have reported recent vandalism, threats and other hate crimes targeting mosques in Nebraska, Florida, Texas, Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, Ohio, New York and other states.
 
Nyree Arabian contributed to this report.

Rudy Giuliani, New York City's mayor at the time of the Sept. 11 attack, said there were "pockets of celebration" in the boroughs following the terror attacks that brought down the World Trade Center towers more than 14 years ago.

Giuliani said that there could have been as many as 40 people celebrating after the attacks during an interview with CNN's "New Day" on Tuesday, but added that he thought presidential candidate Donald Trump was "exaggerating" when he said he saw thousands of Muslims cheering after the attacks.

“We did have some celebrating,” Giuliani said on CNN. “That is true. We had pockets of celebration, some in Queens, some in Brooklyn.” 

Giuliani had previously told interviewers at MSNBC that he had heard reports of celebrations, but didn't personally see anyone cheering on the attacks. 

During Tuesday's interview, he cited a specific incident where a family that was attacked after reportedly celebrating the attack.

“We had one situation in which a candy store owned by a Muslim family was celebrating that day, right near a housing development, and the kids in the housing development came in and beat them up,” he said. “Both facts were corroborated to be true.”

The comments come as controversy swirls around Trump's comments last month, when he said at a rally in Birmingham, Alabama, he saw "thousands and thousands people" cheering in Jersey City "as that building was coming down."

Reporters and politicians have taken umbrage with the claim, with the fact-checking website Politifact rated the statement a "pants on fire" falsehood.

Speaking on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, the Republican people declined to take back the statement.  

"I saw it. So many people saw it ... So, why would I take it back? I'm not going to take it back," he said. 

Asked where he witnessed this, Trump replied, "I saw it on television. I saw clips."

A former Bridgeport police officer who claimed someone left a racist memo on police letterhead in his mailbox at headquarters in February admitted to writing the letter himself and has been charged with filing a false report, according to police.

Former Officer Clive Higgins reported that he found a racist hate letter in his police mailbox the morning of Monday, Feb. 9 and feared for his life because of it.

The letter, printed on paper marked with the department's official letterhead, started off with "WHITE POWER" and went on to say "Officer Clive Higgins doesn't belong here in this Police Department" and "These Black Officers belong in the toilet."

A month earlier, Higgins was acquitted in connection with a 2011 police brutality case in which officers were caught on camera beating a suspect at Beardsley Park and shooting him with a stun gun. Two other officers were convicted, but a federal jury found Higgins not guilty.

"He's not getting his gun or his badge back. He didn't even support his fellow Officers in Court," the letter stated. "Where were you Higgins ?? You better watch your back.. We know where you live."

The report of the racist letter prompted the Bridgeport Guardians, a minority officers' organization, to hold a news conference, calling the letter "racial, insensitive and threatening." They said it was the most recent of at least three hateful notes to circulate within the department within a year.

State police were called in to investigate and reviewed surveillance from the station, which they said showed Higgins typing and printing documents just before going into the room where he said he found the letter, according to the report.

While Higgins said he feared for his life, surveillance showed him smiling and talking when he returned from the room, according to state police.

After investigators presented him with the photographs, Higgins began rubbing and shaking his head and admitted to typing the letter in the booking room himself and printing it out before calling the Bridgeport Guardians, according to paperwork filed in Superior Court.

When questioned during the investigation, officials from the Bridgeport Guardians said they had no idea who wrote the letter and that the person who did should be charged, according to police.

Higgins, who resigned from the department on July 6, has been charged with falsely reporting an incident. He was released on a written promise to appear and is due in court on Dec. 16. It wasn't immediately clear if he had an attorney.

Each year, millions of woman go for a mammogram. The radiologist sees something suspicious, orders a follow-up x-ray or ultrasound, and it turns out to be nothing.

It's distressing, takes up a lot of time and can cost money.

But a new study suggests women who got a false positive were 39 percent more likely to get breast cancer over the next 10 years than women who simply got a negative result on a mammogram, Louise Henderson of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and colleagues found, NBC News reported. 

Women whose x-rays looked serious enough to get them sent for a biopsy were 76 percent more likely to later have an actual breast cancer diagnosis, they reported in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.

"We also found that women with a history of a false-positive result continued to have an increased risk of developing breast cancer 10 years after experiencing the false-positive result," Henderson said in a statement. 

If Republican political insiders are fretting about Donald Trump's impact on the party if he becomes the nominee, they need to start convincing their voters, NBC News reported.

According to a new national Quinnipiac poll, 73 percent of Republican voters say Trump would have a good chance of defeating the eventual Democratic nominee.

That's compared with 63 percent of GOP voters who say this about Marco Rubio, 59 percent who say it about Ted Cruz and 55 percent who say it about Ben Carson.

The real estate mogul also received 27 percent of Republican voters' support while Dr. Ben Carson, in a virtual tie with Trump four weeks ago, dropped to third place to tie with Cruz, receiving 16 percent support of GOP voters.

A man was found bloody and with a fractured skull in the middle of the road in New Haven on Tuesday night and police are trying to determine what happened to him.

Police found Dennis White, 37, of Bridgeport, lying in the road at Davenport Avenue and Elliot Street at 10:52 p.m. on Tuesday and said he had several injuries, but what caused them is a mystery.

An ambulance rushed White to Yale–New Haven Hospital, where he is in critical condition.

Doctors who’d examined him said it appears White was struck and dragged by a vehicle, but detectives from the major crimes division and the crash investigation team found no evidence at the scene that White was struck there.

Police said they received no reports of a crash and have found no witnesses. Now, they are trying to figure out where White was injured, how he got to Davenport Avenue and Elliot Street and who hurt him.
Detectives ask anyone, including people from outside New Haven, with information that could help investigators to call 203-946-6304.

The recently-installed leader of the Taliban was injured in a shootout between senior members of the militant group in Pakistan, an official told NBC News.

Sultan Faizi, a spokesman for the Afghan first vice president, said Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour had been hurt.

An official Taliban spokesman, however, denied that the incident took place. "This is totally baseless," Zabihullah Mujahid said.

The Taliban typically denies reports that could hurt its standing. It had denied for some two years that reclusive, longtime leader Mullah Omar had died.

As Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel rejected calls for his resignation on Wednesday, the uproar over the police shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald continued and protesters increased their pressure on Emanuel to step aside.

A group called the Coalition For a New Chicago said the city was as embarrassed by Emanuel as Toronto was by its former Mayor Rob Ford, who admitted to smoking crack. The group wants Emanuel to leave office.

Aother group of activists, The Black Youth Project 100, said in a statement that the firing of Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy on Tuesday was only one step that Emanuel needed to take to hold himself and the city accountable for systemic violence against black people. Now Emanuel and Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez must resign, the group said.

Also calling for their resignation, in an opinion column in The New York Times, was Bernard Harcourt, a former law and political science professor at the University of Chicago who is now a professor at Columbia University.

And at the premiere of Spike Lee’s new movie “Chi-Raq” on Tuesday, the director said McCarthy’s departure would not be the only one.

Lee predicted “some more heads are gonna roll.”

“We have a process,” he said. “It’s called the election. The voters spoke. I’ll be held accountable and responsible for my actions and decisions I make and that’s how I approach it. I never shrink from the responsibility of making what I think are the very tough decisions to move the city forward.”

Demonstrators have taken to the streets in Chicago following the release of a video showing McDonald being fatally shot 16 times as he walked down the middle of Pulaski Road. Critics are demanding to know why the city did not release the video early in the year, in what some are calling a cover-up that helped Emanuel win his re-election battle.

Last week, 13 months after McDonald’s killing, Officer Jason Van Dyke was charged with murder, a delay that also prompted calls for Alvarez's resignation.

Former Chicago alderman Dick Simpson, now a political science professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said that he did not think Emanuel would resign unless he lost so much support that he was unable to accomplish anything. Members of the black and Latino caucuses on the City Council have called for the resignations of McCarthy and Alvarez but not of Emanuel, Simpson said.

“We have never impeached a mayor," he said noting that the city has had some scoundrels in office. He also said that the City Council has acted as a "rubber stamp" for Emanuel. 

There is no procedure in Illinois to recall a mayor, Simpson said.  

Alvarez, who is up for re-election next year, is in trouble in her primary challenge, he said. He said he thought it likely that she could lose. 

Police are investigating after a pit bull was struck and killed by a car hours after its owner tried to give the dog to an animal shelter.

Police put up fliers looking for the woman who went to an animal shelter, looking to leave the dog, claiming it was vicious and she couldn’t handle it anymore, according to police.

However, the shelter would not take it the dog and instead gave her a list of alternative animal rescues that take in vicious dogs, police said.

“Obviously, the shelter can’t release that to somebody who wants to accept a pet, adopt a pet, because the liability is tremendous,” Sgt. Dave Tammaro, of the West Haven Police Department, said.

Later on Saturday, animal control officers received reports of a roaming pit-bull near Maltby Lake and looked for the animal, but it was too late.

“Ultimately, a car struck and killed the pit bull on Derby Avenue,” Tammaro said.

Within hours of posting a flier of the dog’s owner on Facebook, police knew who she was. When they contacted her, she said she gave the dog to someone else before leaving the state and moving to Florida, police said.

Some people on social media have criticized the shelter for not taking in the pit bull.

“We don’t have the facilities. We don’t have the resources to take all these animals and, especially if someone comes in and says, ‘Hey my dog is vicious.’ That’s not the city’s responsibility to take your dog that was mistrained.” Tamarro said.

Charges against the owner of the pit bull are pending as the investigation continues, according to police.

The U.S. special operation forces headed to Iraq won't be sitting on the sidelines in the fight against ISIS — they'll be in combat, a top military official said Wednesday.

"A raid is a combat operation, there's no way around that," said Colonel Steve Warren, the Baghdad-based spokesman for the Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve.

Warren said the new force will add about 100 "highly skilled commandos" to the roughly 3,500 already in Iraq, thus "raising the force cap."

The missions will be "exceptionally well-planned" and "very well-targeted," Warren said.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced the deployment on Tuesday during a hearing before the House Armed Services Committee.

Target Corp. agreed to pay $39.4 million to resolve claims by banks and credit unions that said they lost money from the retailer's 2013 data breach.

The preliminary settlement, filed on Wednesday, resolved a class-action claim from lenders seeking to hold Target responsible for their costs to reimburse fraudulent charges and issue new credit and debit cards. And if approved by the U.S. District Court in St. Paul, Minnestota, Target will pay the money to various banks and credit unions.

Target has said at least 40 million credit cards were compromised in the breach, and that as many as 110 million people may have suffered the theft of personal information such as email addresses and phone numbers. The Minneapolis-based retailer has taken steps to avoid a recurrence, including being among the first U.S. retailers to install microchip-enabled card readers at all stores. 

People reacted on social media as a mass shooting took the lives of at least three people and left dozens hurt at a San Bernardino treatment center for people with developmental disabilities.

Just after 11 a.m., San Bernardino City Fire department tweeted reports of a 20 victim shooting incident in the city of San Bernardino at a social services facility.

Several victims in the shooting started tweeting their reactions from the scene shortly after the shooting took place.

Upwards of 14 people have been confirmed dead. While police are currently containing the active shooting area, nearby office buildings are on lock down. All schools in the San Bernardino Unified School District are on lockdown following the attacks, according to school officials. The nearby Colton Joint School District is not sending kids on certain bus routes. 

Families and friends of citizens working near the location started tweeting their concerns.

Many members on Twitter started tweeting and posting prayers on thoughts for the victims.

#SanBernardino and #PrayforSanBernardino were trending on Facebook Wednesday.

The active shooter situation unfolding Wednesday in Southern California reminded President Barack Obama of a pattern of mass shootings he said "has no parallel anywhere else in the world."

Obama made the comment during an interview on camera with CBS News even before police confirmed that at least 14 people were killed at a social services facility in San Bernardino. Hundreds of police officers were searching for up to three suspects after gunfire erupted at the 11 a.m. PT.

"My hope is that we're able to contain this particular shooting and we don't yet know what the motives of the shooters are, but what we do know is that there are steps that we can take to make Americans safer," Obama said.

Obama was quickly briefed on the situation, and Democratic presidential candidates spoke out against the violence as well on Twitter.

Extending his condolences to the shooting's victims, Obama told CBS that some measures could quickly be taken to curtail the frequency of mass shootings in the U.S.: "Common sense gun safety laws, stronger background checks" and preventing people who are on the no-fly list from buying firearms, because now "there's nothing we can do to stop them."
 

Suspects in a mass shooting in San Bernardino, one man and one woman, were killed in a shootout with police, and a third suspect was detained, officials said Wednesday afternoon.

"These are people that came prepared. They were dressed in a way to indicate they were prepared. They had long guns not handguns," Police Chief Jarrod Burguan said.

Sources have confirmed to NBC4 that one of the attackers was Syed Farook.

At least 14 were dead, and 17 injured in the shooting.

SWAT teams were working to clear a home in Redlands of explosive devices after suspects may have been seen at that location. It was unclear if any devices were in the home, but one device was detonated at the Inland Regional Center where the shooting broke out.

It was not immediately clear what could have motivated the attack.

"We have no information at this point that this is terrorist related in the traditional way people are thinking. We have a domestic terrorist situation here," Burguan said.

Initial reports indicated that two may have fled the shooting in a dark-colored SUV, and investigators are asking people to have a heightened sense of awareness and report anything suspicious to local authorities.

Shortly thereafter, SWAT sandwiched in a black SUV riddled with bullet holes after an apparent shoot out with officers. The man and woman were killed.

"They came here with a purpose, they came here with an intent to do something."

It was unclear if the suspects said anything when they entered the Inland Regional Center, which serves people with developmental disabilities, in the 1300 block of S. Waterman Avenue in San Bernardino around 11 a.m. and began shooting.

Multiple agencies, including the FBI and ATF, were assisting with the investigation.

Seventy schools and multiple city, county and state buildings in the San Bernardino area have been placed on lockdown as the search for the shooters continues.

Lockdown on the San Bernardino City Unified School District schools and offices was lifted around 4:40 p.m., but the search for a possible third suspect continued.

Anyone with information is asked to call an anonymous tip line at 800-782-7463.

It's possible that a storm will be in the vicinity of the East Coast next week.

The threat of any kind of storm along the East Coast will generate buzz, so this is the "First Alert" of that potential.

The upper level energy that will trigger the formation of the surface low pressure center is still well out over the Pacific Ocean, so not much is known about the evolution of next week's storm.

The timing appears to be midweek. 

First Alert meteorologists are fairly confident in one thing: the lack of cold air.

Thus, there appears to be two options for Connecticut in this early stage of the game:

• Storm forms and misses, or storm doesn't form
• Storm forms, hits and brings rain

Welcome to December 2015, sponsored by El Niño.

A woman who was walking her dog in Mystic on Tuesday made a shocking discovery when she found two kittens inside of a cardboard box that was taped shut.

Groton police said the dog alerted the woman to the box in the area of Quaker Farm and Lambtown Roads.

“When the dog went closer to it, the box started meowing,” Lt. John Varone, of the Groton Town Police Department, said.

The woman turned the animals over to authorities, who said the approximately three-month-old male and female kittens appear to be healthy despite their circumstances.

Officials from Groton Animal Control said this kind of discovery is upsetting because there are alternatives for pet owners who can’t care for their animals.

“My first reaction is shock. Anybody could’ve called. I would’ve taken these kittens in,” Christine O’Brien, animal control officer for the Town of Groton, said.

Police are now trying to figure out who left the cats and why.

“We don’t know, we don’t like to presume. We just want to find out whose kittens they are and why they were left there,” Varone said.

The kittens will continue to receive medical attention before being can be offered for adoption, but animal control thinks it’ll be easy to find forever homes for the animals because of their lovable demeanor.

“They’re wonderful playful kittens. They were definitely somebody’s pet at some point,” O’Brien said. 

If police identify the animals’ owner and determine they were intentionally abandoned, that person could face animal cruelty charges, which are misdemeanors punishable by jail time and fines.

If you have any information about the kittens, call Groton Police. 

Nelson and Barbour Street in Hartford is blocked off as police investigate a shooting.

The station's Shotspotter detected multiple gunshots fired in the area of 135 Barbour Street.

The nature of any injuries is unknown, but police said the incident was non-life-theatening.