In the news

Jalal Talabani, Iraq’s president, is responding to treatment and recovering “faster than expected” from a stroke, according to a statement released by his office after French newspaper Le Figaro reported last week that he was “clinically dead.”

Nadav Nirenberg, 27, a New York City trombonist who left his iPhone in a cab on New Year’s Eve and later learned someone was using it to send creepy messages to women with a dating app, posed as a woman on the service to lure the thief to his Brooklyn apartment and reclaimed his phone while brandishing a hammer and offering $20 to the thief, who bolted.

Jean-Claude Duvalier, 61, former dictator of Haiti also known as “Baby Doc” who returned to his country after 25 years in exile in France, was reissued his diplomatic passport by Haiti’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, according to his lawyer, Reynold Georges.

John W. Copeland, an 85-year-old Denver man accused of swatting a 66-year-old parking monitor over the head with his cane, was released from jail and faces a lesser felony charge after the Denver district attorney’s office reviewed the case against him.

Louis Segna, a 51-year old landlord living in Brooklyn and who police say was so annoyed by street noise that he placed 403 phony 911 calls during the past two years, including a bogus tale of a subway explosion, to draw police to the scene, was arrested and charged with false reporting and reckless endangerment.

Jeffery Delice, 20, who police say jumped the fence of a Miami home while naked and began choking a Rottweiler, was shot and taken to a hospital after a scuffle with the homeowner, and faces several charges.

Myrna White, a Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport spokesman, said the tick-tick-ticking of a bag left at an AirTran kiosk that led police to cordon off a section of the north terminal while a bomb squad responded turned out to be nothing more than a passenger’s toothbrush.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/06/2013

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