Cadets

The Air Force Academy said that 24 freshman cadets had now admitted cheating on a test, and that 12 others were under investigation but denied wrongdoing. Two-thirds of the cases involve athletes, Air Force Academy spokesman Johnny Whitaker told the Gazette of Colorado Springs. Cadets obtained answers to an upcoming test and forwarded them through an Internet social group and private computer messages.

All 4,000 Air Force cadets will be confined to campus this weekend following a scandal in which 28 freshmen are suspected of cheating on a test, school officials said. The entire corps will remain on school grounds to reflect on the Air Force Academy's honor code, which forbids lying, cheating, stealing or tolerating those who violate it. The alleged cheating was reported Feb. 2 on a basic-knowledge test required for first-year cadets.

Cadet Hammond Hand Jr., a marine biologist on the faculty of UC Berkeley for more than 50 years and founding director of the Bodega Marine Laboratory in Northern California, died Nov. 29. He was 86. Hand died of cancer at his home in Salmon Creek, near Bodega Bay, according to the university's media relations office. "Cadet was one of the last great scholars familiar with all the animals along the American Pacific coast," James Carlton, a professor of marine sciences at Williams College in Massachusetts and a former student of Hand, said Friday.

A military jury sentenced a Coast Guard cadet to six months in prison and kicked him out of the service Wednesday for extorting sexual favors from a classmate. Cadet Webster M. Smith, the first student court-martialed in the academy's 130-year history, was acquitted of rape but had faced up to five years and seven months for extortion, sodomy, indecent assault and other charges.

A U.S. Coast Guard cadet accused of rape and other sex offenses against three women went on trial in the first student court-martial in the academy's 130-year history. Webster Smith, 22, pleaded not guilty to seven charges stemming from accusations made by three female cadets. He is accused of raping his girlfriend, forcing another cadet to perform oral sex on him, and grabbing and kissing a third cadet.

Frankie Thomas, a popular stage and screen juvenile actor in the 1930s who gained widespread fame on TV in the early 1950s as the star of "Tom Corbett, Space Cadet," has died. He was 85. Thomas, who later became a leading recreational bridge instructor and an author, died Thursday of respiratory failure at Sherman Oaks Hospital, said his stepdaughter, Julie Alexander. The Manhattan-born son of actors Frank M. Thomas and Mona Bruns, Thomas established himself on Broadway in the early 1930s.

The Police Department has begun assigning cadets to patrol "crime hot spots" for one month of field training as part of the Police Academy curriculum, the mayor's office said Wednesday. More than 40 police cadets will fan out to neighborhoods in the San Fernando Valley starting today. Patrolling on foot will allow cadets "to gain hands-on community policing experience" and increase the police presence in neighborhoods, the mayor's office said.

A cadet at the Coast Guard Academy will face a court-martial on rape and other charges, the first such trial in the institution's history, the school said Wednesday. Webster M. Smith, 22, faces nine charges including rape, sodomy, extortion and assault. He had faced misconduct accusations from seven female cadets, ranging from rape to improper touching. Rear Adm. James C. Van Sice, the academy superintendent, dismissed five charges Wednesday, including indecent assault and one sodomy charge.

A male senior at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy has been charged with sexually assaulting six female cadets in the campus barracks and elsewhere. Webster M. Smith, 22, of Houston was separated from the rest of the student population after the first complaint was filed with administrators Dec. 4, the academy said. Smith, a linebacker on the academy's football team, was charged Feb.

A Jewish father of two Air Force Academy cadets sued the Air Force on Thursday, saying senior officers and cadets illegally imposed Christianity on others at the school. The lawsuit was filed in federal court by Mikey Weinstein, an academy graduate and outspoken critic of the school's handling of religion. Over the last decade or more, the lawsuit claims, academy leaders have fostered an environment of religious intolerance at the Colorado school, in violation of the 1st Amendment.