Midday Roundup: Remembering John Willke, pro-life pioneer

He led the charge. Dr. John C. Willke, a pioneer in the pro-life movement, died at his home Friday. He was 89. An obstetrician, he practiced medicine in Cincinnati, Ohio, for 40 years. Willke founded the Life Issues Institute and served as president of the National Right to Life Committee for 10 years. He and his late wife, Barbara Willke, wrote the Handbook on Abortion in 1971, an early pro-life text that sold more than 1.5 million copies and inspired a generation of anti-abortion activists.

Overdose on campus. Eleven students from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., were hospitalized with symptoms of overdose after taking MDMA, or “Molly.” Middletown police told the Hartford Courant that the drug was distributed to students on campus Saturday night. Police are trying to find the source and determine whether the drugs were part of a “bad batch.” MDMA, which also is found in the drug ecstasy, causes euphoria and enhanced sensation and is known for its use at nightclubs and parties. Misinformation that it is a “safe” drug with few harmful side effects has contributed to its increased use among young people, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Mall security. The Somalia-based Islamist terror group al-Shabaab issued a call over the weekend for attacks on U.S. shopping malls, including the Mall of America. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson warned shoppers to be vigilant but said he did not think any actual plots against malls were in the works. Al-Shabaab is responsible for the 2013 attack on the Westgate shopping center in Nairobi, Kenya, that killed more than 60 people.

Speaking out. The parents and brother of Kayla Mueller, the 26-year-old American aid worker who was captured by ISIS and died in captivity, said the United States underestimated the terror group at great cost. “We’ve let them get too powerful. They just thought of them as a gang or thugs. But again … we are so isolated in America, we are so in our own little area, that we don’t see what is going on over there,” Marsha Mueller told NBC’s TODAY show in the family’s first public interview. Kayla’s brother, Eric, said it became harder to negotiate her release after the United States traded five detainees for the Taliban-captured U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. After that, ISIS leaders’ demands grew. “That was pretty hard to take,” Carl Mueller, Kayla’s father, said of Bergdahl’s release.