Midday Roundup: Dogs pick up fresh scent in hunt for escapees

Hot on the trail. Schools and a highway near a New York state prison have closed as the manhunt for two escaped killers continues. More than 450 law enforcement officers are involved in the search for Richard Matt and David Sweat, who broke out of a maximum-security unit at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, N.Y., overnight Friday. Authorities believe that a scent picked up by search dogs about 3 miles from the prison belongs to the convicts. “We need to find these escapees,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said at a Wednesday press conference. “They are dangerous men. They are killers. They are murderers. There’s no reason to believe they wouldn’t do it again. They’re going to be more desperate than ever.”

Unreported threat. A French prosecutor told reporters today that some doctors felt the co-pilot who crashed a Germanwings jet was unfit to fly, but they did not tell his employers because of German patient secrecy laws. Co-pilot Andreas Lubitz had seen seven doctors within the month before the March 24 crash, including three appointments with a psychiatrist, Marseille Prosecutor Brice Robin said. Some of the doctors felt Lubitz was psychologically unstable, but “unfortunately that information was not reported because of medical secrecy requirements.” The prosecutor also said Lubitz had vision problems and feared blindness.

Heir apparent. Details of the succession plan for 84-year-old 21st Century Fox CEO Rupert Murdoch have been announced, and it looks like he will hand responsibility for his media empire to his son James Murdoch, 42. The younger Murdoch will take over as CEO of Twenty-First Century Fox Inc. Another Murdoch son, Lachlan, 43, will serve as co-executive chairman with his father. The fate of company as Rupert Murdoch ages has been a source of speculation and concern for investors for a number of years. The Murdoch family owns controlling interest in the Fox News Channel, Fox broadcast network, and 20th Century Fox movie studio.

Ending credits. Christopher Lee, a British actor known for portraying screen villains from Dracula to the wicked wizard Saruman in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, has died at age 93. Lee appeared in more than 250 movies, though British fans remember him best as the vampire Count Dracula in the gory horror movies of Hammer Films in the 1950s and 1960s. Born in 1922, Lee served in as an intelligence officer in the Royal Air Force in World War II. Lee never retired and was scheduled to act in a film in Denmark later this year.

Kept waiting. Russian President Vladimir Putin showed up 70 minutes late to a brief meeting with Pope Francis on Wednesday at the Vatican. In a 50-minue sit-down in the pope’s study, Francis urged Putin to work toward peace in war-torn Ukraine. The pope asked that all parties commit to enforcing the ceasefire, which Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine have repeatedly violated. The pontiff stopped short of blaming Russia for the violence, though he has often called for peace in Ukraine.

Temperature log. The earth might have beenslowly getting hotter over the past 100 years, but some climatologists point to data that shows warming has stopped in the recent past. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) omitted that data from satellites, ships, and ocean buoys in a paper released last month. “No matter what NOAA does, they take raw data in this case showing no warming for the past 18 years, and they fiddle with it until they get their desired result, which is warming,” said climatologist Sterling Burnett of the Heartland Institute. A NOAA spokesman told Fox News that temperature collection techniques have problems, and the general trend is still warming, regardless of periodic stops.

WORLD Radio’s Mary Reichard and The Associated Press contributed to this report.