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NEW YORK — Firefighters say a blaze that burst through windows in a Manhattan apartment building sent 45 people to hospitals, 30 of them firefighters.

The Fire Department says two civilians have life-threatening injuries, and a third is seriously hurt. All the other victims' injuries are considered minor.

Investigators are working to determine what started the three-alarm blaze Thursday evening. It began on the third floor of a 26-story apartment building on Grand Street, on the Lower East Side.

Firefighters and residents say dense, black smoke seeped through the building, making it hard to breathe. FDNY Deputy Chief James Daley says two firefighters became disoriented in a burning apartment, but they were able to escape.

Besides the people taken to hospitals, two other civilians were hurt but declined treatment.

LOS ANGELES — A Texas woman who said she was forced to remove a nipple ring with pliers in order to board an airplane called Thursday for an apology by federal security agents and a civil rights investigation.

"I wouldn't wish this experience upon anyone," Mandi Hamlin said at a news conference. "My experience with TSA was a nightmare I had to endure. No one deserves to be treated this way."

Hamlin, 37, said she was trying to board a flight from Lubbock to Dallas on Feb. 24 when she was scanned by a Transportation Security Administration agent after passing through a larger metal detector without problems.

The female TSA agent used a handheld detector that beeped when it passed in front of Hamlin's chest, the Dallas-area resident said.

Hamlin said she told the woman she was wearing nipple piercings. The women then called over her male colleagues, one of whom said she would have to remove the jewelry, Hamlin said.

Hamlin said she could not remove them and asked whether she could instead display her pierced breasts in private to the female agent. But several other male officers told her she could not board her flight until the jewelry was out, she said.

She was taken behind a curtain and managed to remove one bar-shaped piercing but had trouble with the second, a ring.

"Still crying, she informed the TSA officer that she could not remove it without the help of pliers, and the officer gave a pair to her," said Hamlin's attorney, Gloria Allred, reading from a letter she sent Thursday to the director of the TSA's Office of Civil Rights and Liberties.

Hamlin said she heard male TSA agents snickering as she took out the ring. She was scanned again and was allowed to board even though she still was wearing a belly button ring.

"After nipple rings are inserted, the skin can often heal around the piercing, and the rings can be extremely difficult and painful to remove," Allred said in the letter.

Hamlin filed a complaint, but the TSA's customer service manager at the Lubbock airport concluded the screening was handled properly, Allred said.

Allred said she might consider legal action if the TSA does not apologize.

On its Web site, the TSA warns that passengers "may be additionally screened because of hidden items such as body piercings, which alarmed the metal detector."

"If you are selected for additional screening, you may ask to remove your body piercing in private as an alternative to a pat-down search," the site says.

Hamlin would have accepted a "pat-down" had it been offered, Allred said.

Hamlin was publicly humiliated and has "undergone an enormous amount of physical pain to have the nipple rings reinserted" because of scar tissue, Allred said.

"The conduct of TSA was cruel and unnecessary," Allred wrote. "The last time that I checked a nipple was not a dangerous weapon."

TSA spokesman Dwayne Baird said he was unaware of the incident. There is no specific TSA policy on dealing with body piercings, he said, "as long as it doesn't sound the alarms."

If an alarm does sound, "until that is resolved, we're not going to let them go through the checkpoint, no matter what they're wearing or where they're wearing it."

People routinely pass through security wearing wedding rings without problems, and it might take a larger bit of metal to trigger an alarm, Baird said.

YONKERS, N.Y. — Police say four teenagers have been arrested in a bizarre assault and robbery that began with one of them dancing in his underwear behind a Yonkers fast-food restaurant counter while another videotaped him.

Police Capt. Daniel Daly says the suspects told investigators they were "only clowning around" at the Central Park Avenue McDonald's on Wednesday, but the violence was no joke.

Police say the teens punched and kicked a manager when he tried to stop them, and then beat up another employee who tried to intervene. Police say the suspects also took a worker's wallet.

One of the teens was arrested on robbery and assault charges, and the rest on assault charges.

A message left at the McDonald's early Friday wasn't immediately returned.

JAKARTA, Indonesia — Indonesian police say they are investigating the deaths of 21 people who drank a concoction labeled an herbal remedy.

Lt. Col. Yatim Suyatmo said Friday officers had yet to determine whether the brew was deliberately poisoned or inadvertently contaminated during production.

The victims in the town of Jambi on Sumatra island all died over the last two weeks, he said. He said the drink was made in a local factory.

Scores of companies in Indonesia produce pills and drinks labeled as herbal remedies or tonics. The government, which is seeking to regulate the sector, say many contain unspecified chemicals.

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — A Florida elementary school student was tasered Thursday after punching a school security officer during a fight.

The incident began when teachers at the Moss Elemenary School in Orange County confronted an 11-year-old girl for allegedly attempting to push another student into ongoing traffic outside the campus, MyFOXOrlando.com reported.

Authorities say the young female ignored the teacher and walked inside the homeroom, where she was again approached by teachers over her behavior. The student responded by thowing a desk and chair and attempting to spit on the instructor, according to MyFOXOrlando.com.

Donna Hudepohl, a school resource officer called to remove the troubled girl from the classroom, was allegedly pushed and punched in the face during a struggle to restrain her.

Hudepohl responded by tasering the girl.

The student was charged with battery on a law enforcement officer, disrupting a school function as well as resisting with violence and is being held at the juvenile detention center. The officer was being treated for a possible broken nose.

NEW YORK — Tiffany Rubin had all but given up hope of ever seeing her abducted child again when she received an anonymous tip through her MySpace page. Someone had spotted her 7-year-old son and ex-boyfriend in South Korea.

On Easter Sunday, the Queens special education teacher caught a 15-hour flight. She sneaked into her son's school, found Kobe Lee in a classroom, disguised him with a wig and sought refuge in the American embassy before bringing him home to Queens Wednesday.

"It's great," Rubin said. "I never thought this day would come."

Her nightmare began on Aug. 21, after her ex-boyfriend Jeffrey Salko disappeared with their child after a visit.

At the time, he had joint custody of his son but was facing up to six months in jail for not paying child support. The boy lived with his mother and saw his father on alternate weekends.

Kobe's court appointed law guardian, Joseph Fredericks, had recommended Rubin receive sole custody of the boy.

"They were constantly at war over this child," Fredericks said of the parents, who had separated when Kobe was four months old.

After Salko disappeared with her child, Rubin was afraid her ex, born in South Korea, had taken the boy abroad.

"I was just basically panicking," Rubin said. "I was hoping they were still in the United States."

Her fears were realized when she hacked into Salko's e-mail account, she said. She discovered an e-mail he had sent to a friend saying he was flying to South Korea — and wasn't coming back.

Rubin, 30, wanted to hire a private organization that specialized in recovering lost children, but couldn't afford the steep fees.

Mark Miller, founder of the American Association for Lost Children Inc., a Christian charity that recovers missing children, convinced her to put him on the case — free of charge.

"She was so distraught," Miller said. "Her whole world was taken from her."

Almost 800,000 children are reported missing each year, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. About one-quarter of them are abducted by family members.

The FBI issued a warrant for Salko's arrest. But Rubin didn't get her big break until January.

She received a message on her MySpace page from someone who had seen her son and knew where he went to school.

Shortly after, she received a phone call from Kobe telling her he missed her. Salko was on the line.

Rubin said her son "wasn't aware he had been kidnapped."

Shortly after, she flew to South Korea with Miller and Bazzel Baz, Chief Executive Officer of the Association for the Recovery of Children, to recover Kobe.

Rubin was nervous, but Miller and Baz had done several of these missions before.

The men surveyed the school while Rubin waited in the hotel. Security seemed to be lax there, Rubin said, and the next day she went to her son's classroom and called his name.

"I was like, oh my God," said Kobe. "I can't believe she's here."

Rubin explained who she was to her son's teacher and said she needed a minute to speak with him. Then mother and son walked out of the building and hailed a cab to the American embassy.

As an added precaution, she made Kobe wear a wig, so anyone looking for them would think he was a girl.

On the following day, mother and son returned home.

"He's doing good, watching cartoons and wanting to play video games," Rubin said. But "he's a little worried that his dad's going to take him again."

FBI spokesman Matthew Bertron said the bureau was attempting to work with South Korea to secure Salko's arrest and extradition. Calls to his family Thursday went unanswered.

CHARLEVILLE-MEZIERS, France — A French man accused of the serial murders of seven women and girls refused to speak at the opening of his trial Thursday unless the judge emptied the courtroom.

His wife is being tried at the same time, accused of complicity in five of the killings.

Michel Fourniret, 65, is charged with kidnapping, rape and murder in the crimes committed in France and Belgium between 1987 and 2003. The victims, aged 12 to 21, were strangled, shot or stabbed with a screwdriver.

It is one of the biggest serial killing cases ever tried in France, and drew comparisons with Belgium's notorious pedophile Marc Dutroux, sentenced to life in prison in 2004 for a series of child kidnappings, rapes and murders.

Fourniret appeared in a glass-enclosed defendants' box alongside his wife, Monique Olivier, 59, who is suspected of helping lure the victims. Both face life in prison if convicted.

Fourniret struck a defiant pose on day one of the trial. When the judge asked him to identify himself, he held up a piece of paper with the words "Without a closed courtroom, staying tightlipped."

The judge did not appear to respond.

Fourniret also passed to the judge a rolled paper tied in a red ribbon, which his lawyer said was a message to the victims' families. He asked that the judge read it, and the judge declined.

Defense lawyer Pierre Blocquaux told the court Fourniret did not want to be defended by him or his two other lawyers.

Olivier appeared to be cooperating and answered the judge's opening questions about her identity. She looked for a long time at the families and did not react as crowds of photographers snapped her image as she entered.

Her lawyer, Jacques Delandes, said she planned to apologize to the victims' families.

Jean-Maurice Arnould, lawyer for the family of slain 12-year-old Elisabeth Brichet, said the family was not expecting an apology from Fourniret.

"He's a man without conscience," he said.

Elisabeth's father said he did not want to hear Fourniret's account of his daughter's murder.

"We don't want new facts of the crimes; for us it's already hardly bearable," Francis Brichet told The Associated Press. The child's body was found along with that of 21-year-old Jeanne-Marie Desramault in the wooded grounds of Fourniret's former property in northern France.

An array of exhibits sat in the courtroom including a shotgun, two revolvers, a screwdriver and various pieces of rope.

Belgian police detained him in June 2003 after his bungled kidnapping of a 13-year-old girl. The girl gave authorities his license plate number after she managed to unbind her hands and escape from the back of Fourniret's van.

Belgium extradited Olivier to France in 2005 and Fourniret in 2006. Judicial officials in both countries decided the case should be tried in France because six of victims were French citizens.

Investigators suspect Fourniret may also have been involved in several other murders, as well.

Hundreds of reporters attended the proceedings, which were broadcast on three screens inside the courthouse.