In the news

Malala Yousufzai, the 15-year-old Pakistani school girl who was shot in the head by Taliban militants in October after advocating for girls’ education, is in stable condition after undergoing two successful operations, which lasted five hours, to reconstruct her skull and restore her hearing at Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital, according to the hospital where she is being treated.

Sen. Mike Johanns, a Nebraska Republican, told the Lincoln Journal Star in a telephone interview that he will vote to confirm former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense.

Clayton Watts, a 17-year-old from South Carolina who is accused of ambushing and killing his 59-year-old grandmother with help from two friends after offering to pay his pals $5,000 to kill the grandparents who raised him because they were too strict, has been charged with murder along with Shaderius Cohen, 19, and Marquaes Buchanan, 18.

Gen. James Amos, head of the U.S. Marine Corps, told reporters at a defense conference in San Diego that most Marines support the Defense Department’s lifting of the ban on women in combat, but he added: “I think from the infantry side of the house, you know they’re more skeptical. It’s been an all-male organization throughout the history of the U.S. Marine Corps so I don’t think that should be any surprise.”

Deniece De Priester, 39, a pilot living in East Windsor, N.J., who safely landed her sputtering six seater on the icy Hudson River recently, told The Associated Press that Chesley Sullenberger’s 2009 landing of a US Airways flight on the river gave her confidence as her plane dropped toward the water, adding: “I thought of Sully. He did a good job, let me try to make another good job of it.”

William Simmons, 51, a five-time wing-eating champion known as “El Wingador” who last won Philadelphia’s Wing Bowl in 2005 when he gnawed through 162 chicken wings, has been indicted in New Jersey on cocaine distribution charges, according to The South Jersey Times.

Yevgeny Makhno, a judge in Russia’s Far East who was caught on video falling asleep several times in court during the fraud trial of a businessman, who was first sentenced to five years in prison by the judge but will now get a new trial, was forced to resign and claimed he was not snoozing but listening with his eyes closed.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/04/2013

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