U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, who turns 76 today, will seek a seventh term in 2014, setting up a Republican primary that pits an incumbent who has delivered billions of dollars to his home state against state Sen. Chris McDaniel, 42, a Tea Party-backed challenger who says federal spending is out of control.
President Barack Obama declined during an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews to take sides in the potential battle to be his successor in the White House, saying that both Vice President Joe Biden and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton would rank among the greatest to ever hold those jobs.
Stephen Dawson, a 38-year-old Australian state lawmaker, and his domestic partner, Dennis Liddelow, 39, dressed in matching suits and ties, embraced and kissed in front of Australia’s Parliament House in one of the nation’s first same-sex marriages.
Hans Lipschis, a 94-yearold man deported from the U.S. for lying about his Nazi past, was released from custody after a German court said it had serious doubts he is fit to stand trial on accusations that he had been a death-camp guard.
Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian prime minister, hinted in a television interview that members of a punk band, former tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and others widely referred to as political prisoners will not be freed in Russia’s coming amnesty, the nation’s biggest in 20 years.
Greg Terry and wife Stacye, a Hermitage, Tenn., couple who stopped at a McDonald’s drive-thru for breakfast, wound up instead with a bag containing thousands of dollars in cash packaged for a bank deposit and had a good laugh and even took photos of the cash before returning it.
Qiang Wang, 34, also known as Jeffrey Wang, a New York City antique dealer who pleaded guilty to conspiracy for smuggling artifacts made from rhinoceros horns from the U.S. to China and Hong Kong, was sentenced in Manhattan to three years in prison, plus three years’ supervised release.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/07/2013