In the news

Correction: An item below incorrectly identified the home of John Cunningham. He is from St. Louis County, Mo.

Bartolomeo Gagliano, an Italian serial killer who failed to return to prison after a two-day, good-behavior pass to visit his elderly mother, was recaptured in France after a manhunt, Italy’s justice minister said.

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, is donating 18 million shares of the company’s stock, worth about $985 million, to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, which gives grants to other nonprofit organizations that work in areas such as education and the environment.

Andrew Caleb Maberry of O’Fallon, Ill., a 19-year old dubbed the “I-55 bandit” for a string of robberies along the interstate in the St. Louis area, pleaded guilty to a federal bank-robbery charge and admitted robbing 10 banks in five states and taking roughly $29,000.

Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah, said the Shiite group is confident that Israel was behind the assassination of senior Hezbollah commander Hassan al-Laqis, whom he described as a “brother and friend since we were teenagers,” and said the killers “will be killed sooner or later.”

John Cunningham of St.Louis County, Ill., has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for killing his uncle, Lessie Lowe, in September 2012 during an argument over whether the cuts of pork they were planning to cook were steaks or chops.

Michael McDonnell and Dylan Patrick Smith, two men who helped save six people from drowning in New York during superstorm Sandy, were among 20 people honored with medals and financial grants for their heroism by the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission.

Muyej Mangez, Congo’s minister of the interior, said his government has suspended international adoptions of Congolese children because of allegations that some were abandoned by their adoptive parents while others were “sold to homosexuals.”

Army Spc. Ethan Harris surprised his mother,Indiana math teacher Kim Harris, with an early return home by masquerading as Santa Claus while she sat on his lap at a school-staff Christmas breakfast before pulling down his fake beard and revealing his identity.

Kabiru Sokoto, 30, the suspected mastermind of a 2011 Christmas Day bombing of a Catholic Church in Nigeria that killed 44 people, was sentenced to life in prison for other terrorist acts committed between 2007 and 2012.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/21/2013

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