LITTLE ROCK — The Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader who is in Memphis to receive the International Freedom Award from the National Civil Rights Museum, toured the motel where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and draped a white shawl over a wreath that hangs on the balcony where King was shot in 1968.
Melvin Blevins, 18, who videotaped himself forcing his 18-month-old niece to smoke marijuana, has been sentenced in U.S. District Court in Columbus, Ohio, to 10 years in prison.
Sarah Palin, the former GOP vice presidential candidate, spoke to more than a thousand investors and bankers at an annual conference in Hong Kong about financial markets, China-U.S. relations and health care in her first major appearance since she resigned as Alaska's governor in July.
Prince William
told the BBC that his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, is his inspiration, adding, "I think she has done a fantastic job and I look up to what she does."
Troy Dale West Jr ., 47, a white man accused of beating a black Army reservist in front of her daughter while yelling racial slurs at her outside a Cracker Barrel restaurant in Morrow, Ga., has been indicted on felony charges of aggravated assault, false imprisonment and first-degree cruelty tochildren.
Jenny Sanford, the wife of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford who separated from her husband in the wake of his affair with an Argentine woman, is writing an "inspirational memoir" to be published in May by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House Inc., the publisher said.
King Bhumibol Adulyadej, 81, Thailand's monarch who was admitted to a Bangkok hospital over the weekend with fever and fatigue, is improving with his temperature back to normal and his appetite returning, the palace said.
Arne Duncan, education secretary, told a forum in Manchester, N.H., that fathers need to be more involved in their children's education, saying, "When fathers step up, students don't drop out. ... When fathers step up, young folks have greater dreams for themselves."
Maria Refugia Camarillo, 72, a grandmother who ran a scheme for more than 20 years in which her family members married foreigners seeking to stay in the United States, was sentenced in Dallas to 44 months in federal prison.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 09/24/2009