News Nearby: Mother Charged in Commack Grad's Murder

Port Jefferson

Life, according to Joe Edley, three-time National Scrabble Championship winner and Port Jefferson resident, is like a bag of tiles. His metaphor purposefully mirrors the one so famously quipped by Tom Hanks when he played a simple-minded man expounding folksy wisdom while inadvertently changing history.

"Scrabble is so much like life," Edley, 64, when he was gunning for a fourth national title. "Learning how to play is like [that quote from] Forrest Gump, 'you never know what you're gonna get' when you put your hand in the bag of tiles."

This year, Edley will be trying again to capture his elusive fourth Scrabble championship. First he’ll have to get passed Nigel Richards, the current national and world champion who will be there defending his title.

Three Village

State lawmakers on Tuesday joined doctors and parents at to announce  new legislation that requires hospitals to offer pertussis booster shots to new parents and caregivers to protect their babies' health.

The law stopped short of requiring parents to get the vaccine because lawmakers said they thought it would be going too far.

According to Stony Brook University President Dr. Samuel L. Stanley Jr., who is a specialist in infectious diseases, pertussis was a leading cause of death among infants and children until regular vaccination reduced it to about 1,000 U.S. cases a year by the mid- to late-1970s. However, he said, pertussis is on a comeback, with approximately 27,500 cases reported in the U.S. in 2011.

Commack

Albany Sheriff's offices has arrested Tracy Zetsche, 52, and charged her with second-degree murder of her son, 22-year-old Gabriel Philby-Zetsche.

An autopsy on a Commack graduate found dead in his upstate New York apartment Monday morning revealed he was killed and his body went undiscovered for five days. Philby-Zetsche was a 2009 Commack High School graduate, according to his personal Facebook page.

Kings Park

After a few flight changes and travel delays, John Paradine finally had the chance to welcome home his son from a seven-month long deployment to Afghanistan.Paradine said it was not only the thrill of seeing him after so long, it was the relief of seeing him in one piece.

Twenty-year-old Marine Lance Corporal Cory Paradine was deployed to Afghanistan in last year. During his time there, he was injured during an IED explosion.