In the news

Diane Lyons

said she doesn’t think she “went too far” when she asked that Carrollton, Ohio, police be called after she caught her 6-year-old daughter shoplifting a package of temporary-tattoo stickers, adding, “You’ve got to catch them when they first start if they do something wrong.”

Samuel Chai Cho Oh, 65, a pastor who founded California Union University in Fullerton in 1979, has been charged in federal court with conspiracy to commit visa fraud over allegations that he charged foreigners cash to help get them student visas to attend the Christian university he owns, but many of them never took classes.

Former President Jimmy Carter, who angered many Jews with his 2006 book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, said in an open letter that he was offering an Al Het, a prayer said on Yom Kippur that signifies a plea for forgiveness “for any words or deeds of mine” that may have upset the Jewish community.

T.I ., the Atlanta rapper whose real name is Clifford Harris Jr., has been released from a federal prison in Forrest City, Ark., where he has been since May serving his sentence of a year and a day for illegal firearms possession and possessing a gun as a convicted felon.

Teresa Heinz, 71, the wife of 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, said she is being treated for breast cancer discovered during her annual mammogram.

Roberto Carlos Magalhaes, 30, and his lover, Angelina Ribeiro dos Santos, 47, have been charged in Brazil with attempted murder after needles were pushed into Magalhaes’ 2-year-old stepson, who later required surgeries to remove them from his intestines, liver and bladder, in what authorities say was an attempt to kill the child to get back at Magalhaes’ wife.

Stephen Cummings Jr ., 26, has been arrested after New Hampshire police say he stole an ambulance idling outside a Laconia hospital and then had to be subdued with a stun gun after being tracked down 18 miles away.

Kristy Lee Roshia, 35, has been charged in Hawaii with threatening a family member of the president after Secret Service agents say she called their Boston office and said she knew where the Obamas would be staying during a coming holiday visit and would “blow away” first lady Michelle Obama.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/24/2009

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