LITTLE ROCK — Louie Saunders
arrived home after a trip to find all his belongings wrapped as Christmas gifts and spread around his Chicago apartment, a prank by his friends that required 16 people, 35 rolls of wrapping paper, eight hours and a spare key.
Sherry Johnston, 43, whose son, Levi, fathered former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s grandson, has been released from Alaska’s only women’s prison to serve out most of her three-year drug sentence under home confinement.
Chris Thomas, the top official in Sonoma County, Calif., has rescinded a ban on stars and angels on Christmas trees in county buildings and told employees in an e-mail that they are “encouraged to use your best judgment with respect to appropriate decorationsfor our public spaces.”
Thaddeus Bryce Fickel
of Hermiston, Ore., crashed his single-engine Cessna in Idaho’s Cottrell Mountains and was rescued by farmers who went to his aid in a tractor, guided by the light from his laptop computer screen.
Maria Jose Carrascosa, a woman convicted in New Jersey of custody interference for hiding her now 9-year-old daughter, Victoria, in Spain with the girl’s maternal grandparents since 2005 to evade a custody judgment favoring her ex-husband, has been sentenced to 14 years in prison, having been jailed the past three years in the case.
Jaime O. Perez, a Republican, is raising money for his bid to challenge Democratic Rep. Silvestre Reyes of Texas by selling tamales, $11.99 for a dozen.
Chen Shui-bian, Taiwan’s former president who is serving a life sentence after a court convicted him of corruption offenses in September, has been indicted on new bribery and money-laundering charges over allegations he received $19 million in bribes from bankers in connection with two merger deals.
Gary Grindler, the Justice Department’s deputy assistant attorney general in the criminal division, will become acting deputy attorney general effective Feb. 5, replacing David Ogden, who is planning to return to private law practice.
Archbishop of York John Sentamu, an Anglican cleric who was born in Uganda, condemned a proposed law in his native country that would impose the death penalty on some homosexuals, saying he was “opposed to the death sentence” and was “not happy when you describe people in the kind of language you find in this ... bill.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/25/2009