LITTLE ROCK — George Zimmerman, the former neighborhood watch volunteer charged with second-degree murder in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in a Sanford, Fla., gated community, has filed suit against NBC in a Florida court, contending that the network edited his 911 call to police after the shooting to make it sound as if he were “a racist and predatory villain.”

James Pachokas

has been charged in Greeley, Colo., with arson and reckless endangerment over allegations that he spit flaming streams of lighter fluid at two other men.

Jeb Bush, the former GOP governor of Florida, has been named the next chairman of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, a job held by his father, former President George H.W. Bush, from 2007-08, and held by former President Bill Clinton for the past four years.

Mo Yan, this year’s winner of the Nobel Prize in literature who has been criticized for his membership in China’s Communist Party, said during a news conference in Stockholm that censorship is as necessary as airport security checks.

Gen. Lloyd Austin III, the current vice chief of staff of the Army who oversaw the final troop withdrawal in Iraq, has been chosen by President Barack Obama, pending Senate confirmation, to head the U.S. Central Command and direct the end of the U.S. combat role in Afghanistan.

Dina Manfredini, 115, of Johnston, Iowa, has been named the world’s oldest living person by Guinness World Records, after the death of 116-year-old Bessie Cooper of Georgia.

Jim Letten, 59, the nation’s longest-serving U.S. attorney, in the job since 2001, has resigned from the Eastern District of Louisiana even as an investigation continues into possible misconduct bytwo of his top deputies, who have admitted anonymously posting criticism of judges and comments about cases on the website of the Times-Picayune.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/07/2012