LITTLE ROCK — Andre Birotte Jr ., 43, who for six years has served as the Los Angeles Police Department’s inspector general, has been tapped by President Barack Obama to become the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles.
Sara Morton-Greiner, 10, was suspended by her Commack, N.Y., middle school for taking peppermint oil to school and distributing it to other students, an act the district said on its Web site amounted to handing out “an unregulated over-the counter drug.”
John Runowicz, a former New York University chemistry department administrator, pleaded innocent to passing off more than 13,000 receipts mined from a liquor store’s trash as spending on lab supplies and college events, finagling $409,000 in bogusreimbursements.
Kathleen Yap, 71, who dropped out of college in the 1950s to get married, finally finished her studies, graduating magna cum laude from the University of Georgia with a degree in English, and was applauded by a text message from her son that read, “Great, congrats - now get a job.”
Robert Slatkin, a New York man, left his wallet with $5,000 in cash in its billfold sitting on a Bloomingdale’s scarf display while Christmas shopping, but said it was recovered in 15 minutes with the money untouched.
Takuo Toda, a Japanese paper-airplane virtuoso, set a world record for a handlaunched craft made with only paper by sending a plane on a 26.1-second flight in a fly-off in Tokyo and vowed to break the 30-second mark.
Julie Corey, a Massachusetts woman who was found in a homeless shelter in Plymouth, N.H., with a child who had been cut from the womb of 23-year old Darlene Haynes, pleaded innocent to murdering Haynes.
Terry Lee Shields, 55, a bus driver for the Los Alamitos, Calif., School District, was sentenced to 151 years to life in prison for molesting and taking pornographic photographs of three girls, ages 5, 7 and 11.
Hazel Burdick, 101, who 10 years ago helped revive the practice of giving canes to a town’s oldest resident, a publicity gimmick made famous by the now-defunct Boston Post newspaper, was given a gold-tipped stave by Williamstown, Mass., as the oldest person in the city of 8,000.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/28/2009