In the news

Friday, February 1, 2013

Vice President Joe Biden said after a meeting with Senate Democrats that while curbing guns won’t ensure an end to mass slayings, it will reduce firearm deaths, adding that lawmakers can take steps “that have virtually zero impact on your Second Amendment right to own a weapon for both self defense and recreation but can save some lives.”

Ed Koch, 88, a former mayor of New York City, has been moved to New York-Presbyterian/Columbia hospital’s intensive-care unit for closer monitoring of the fluid in his lungs and legs, his spokesman said.

Andre “Loki Boy” Barbosa, 23, a squatter who gained notice in December after he invoked Florida’s adverse-possession law, which allows someone to gain title to a property if he is living there, maintaining it and paying the taxes, has been served with eviction papers at the Boca Raton mansion he has been inhabiting.

Geraldo Rivera, 69, who hosts a weekend show on Fox News Channel, said on his New York radio show that he is considering running for the U.S. Senate in New Jersey as a Republican.

Timothy Bonner, 40, who had been arrested on an assault charge, broke out of a Burgettstown, Pa., police station holding cell by knocking the cell door off its hinges, authorities said, adding that detectives found Bonner at a bar, where he had ordered a beer.

Jack Yankowitz

has filed a lawsuit against New York City and its Police Department on behalf of the family of Wilson Reyes, a 7-year-old boy whose family said he was handcuffed and falsely accused of stealing $5 from a schoolmate.

Mandi Smith, 26, has been reunited with Pooka, her Chihuahua-dachshund mix, 18 months after the then-5-month-old puppy disappeared from her Fort Campbell, Ky., yard and a couple of weeks after the now-2-year-old dog turned up in New Mexico.

Joshua Middleton, 23, has been charged in St. Charles, Mo., with stealing more than $15,000 worth of copper from as many as 27 vacant homes.

Richard Finkbiner of Brazil, Ind., has agreed in court papers to plead guilty to federal charges of child exploitation, extortion and possession of child pornography over allegations he tricked more than a dozen teenagers into stripping or performing sexual acts for him via webcam and then used recordings of those sessions to coerce them into making even more explicit videos.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/01/2013