In the news

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Arlene Magdanz, a substitute teacher from California, was found to be the only heir to a fortune of gold coins discovered by a cleaning crew in the home of Walter Samaszko Jr., a reclusive cousin who quietly stashed away a treasure worth $7.4 million before he died this year.

Stephen Hawking

and other scientists are calling for the pardon of computer pioneer and code-breaker Alan Turing, who helped win World War II but later was prosecuted for homosexuality, asking in a letter published in the Daily Telegraph that British Prime Minister David Cameron formally “forgive the iconic British hero.”

David Player, who prosecutors say controlled the affairs of a mentally disabled man and gave him a small amount of money to have his hand cut off to collect$670,000 in an insurance payout, has been sentenced to 14 years in prison in South Carolina.

President Hugo Chavez, 58, of Venezuela is recovering satisfactorily in Cuba after his fourth cancer-related operation and has spoken with relatives, Information Minister Ernesto Villegas said.

Rodney Alcala, a onetime contestant on The Dating Game who is on death row in California after being convicted of killing five people, has pleaded guilty in Manhattan to two murders there in 1971 and 1977.

Balazs Lenhardt, an independent Hungarian lawmaker formerly of the far-right Jobbik party, was briefly detained by police for disturbing the peace after he burned an Israeli flag at a protest attended by about 100 people in Budapest.

Derek Johnson, a longtime judge for the Superior Court of California in Orange County who said a rape victim “didn’t put up a fight” and that her sexual assault was only “technical,” has been admonished by the state Commission on Judicial Performance, which said his remarks seemed outdated, insensitive and possibly biased.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/16/2012