(Reuters) ? Authorities in Maine believe a toddler who vanished a week before Christmas was abducted from her home by a still-unidentified person and are offering a $30,000 reward for information leading to the young girl's location.
The reward, put up by private citizens and linked to 20-month-old Ayla Reynolds' disappearance from her father's Waterville home, is the state's largest ever in a missing persons case, Maine Department of Public Safety spokesman Stephen McCausland told Reuters on Tuesday.
Authorities are checking new leads in the case that has come under a national spotlight after a TV segment about it aired on the Fox network's "America's Most Wanted" program over the weekend, Waterville police said.
Officials say the girl was last seen December 16 when her father, Justin DiPietro, who had custody of Ayla, put her to bed in her room.
DiPietro reported Ayla as missing from the house early the next morning, and hundreds of police officers, game wardens and local residents have been searching the area for her since.
Sporadic snowfall in Waterville, located 20 miles north of the capital Augusta, has hampered the large-scale search at times, police said.
Waterville Police Chief Joseph Massey said at a press conference Monday that officials don't believe the girl left home by herself, but police haven't disclosed whether they suspect a stranger, a family friend or a relative took her away.
The statement marked the first time in the 10-day-old case that investigators said someone took her out of the house.
"I don't want to speculate beyond that, because we do not know who took Ayla out of that house and under what circumstances she was removed," Massey said.
Typically, he said, the longer a missing person investigation continues, the more concerned officials become for the safety of the individual, particularly children.
Deputy Chief Charles Rumsey said in a phone interview on Tuesday that police are steadily receiving new leads and investigators and searchers are continuing their work, but he could not say whether officials viewed any leads in the case as promising.
Authorities say they have interviewed numerous family members in Waterville and outside the area. DiPietro said Ayla, who is 2 feet and 9 inches tall and weighs 30 pounds, was wearing polka-dot pajamas with the phrase "Daddy's Princess" on them, and she had a cast on her left arm, broken in a recent fall.
The toddler had been living with her father after her mother, Trista Reynolds, checked herself into a 10-day rehabilitation program, police said.
Following rehab, Reynolds, on the day before Ayla was last seen, had filed papers seeking sole custody of the girl.
"I am very hopeful that the offer of a large monetary reward may serve to spur someone to make the phone call we desperately want to receive -- the call that will lead us to Ayla Reynolds," Massey said.
(Reporting by Zach Howard; Editing by Lauren Keiper and Jerry Norton)
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The controversial third-person action game that has riled up parents and politicians for 10 years has finally jumped the gap from consoles to Apple?s iOS platform. That?s right, this is THE Grand Theft Auto III, the game in which you can steal cars, pick up prostitutes and get hunted down by the cops. It?s the PlayStation 2 title that took the world by storm, shrunk down to the size of your iPhone or iPad. Obviously, it?s more for adults than children.
Another classic ported from the video game consoles of yesterday is Sonic CD, hailing from all the way back in 1993. Optimized for touch controls and packing a ton of classic side-scrolling Sonic action, this is a must-have for platforming fans and a great port from a developer, Sega, whose other games brought to iOS from other platforms can sometimes leave something to be desired.
Taking a page from physics-based arcade games like Angry Birds is Snoticles, a game in which you control as many as four somewhat gross cartoony characters in a title that?s all about flinging things at other things to earn points. All four of your heroes (ones a pimple, ones a ball of snot and the other two are kind of unidentifiable) throw different implements of destruction and their weapons have different properties. You?ll have to use the right tool for the job to get maximum points as you clear each level of enemies by blowing up the ?alpha? enemy in each one.
There are lots of brick-breaker titles in the iTunes App Store, but not all of them are free ? or at least partially free. Atari?s Breakout: Boost, on the other hand, comes with its first five levels for free. It also packs plenty of classic arcade action. You control a plate with by sliding your finger around, bouncing a ball toward the top of the screen and using it to break a bunch of bricks planted up there. The more you blast, the more points you earn.
Finger foods are great for holiday parties, and the varieties you can make are almost endless. All you need are 3 ingredients: a base, spread, and garnish. Mark Bittman's finger-food combination generator (like a flowchart for foodies) suggests hundreds of possibilities. 
