LITTLE ROCK — Clifford Boyson, 66, of Davenport, Iowa, was reunited with his 70-year-old sister, Betty Billadeau, 65 years after foster care separated the siblings, thanks to 7-year-old Eddie Hanzelin, the son of Boyson’s landlord, who found Billadeau by searching Facebook and was presented with a $125 check in appreciation.
Jiroemon Kimura, a 115-year-old man in Kyoto, Japan, has inherited the title of world’s oldest person after 115-year-old Koto Okubo died after holding the title for two weeks.
President Francois Bozize of the Central African Republic has signed a decree removing Prime Minister Faustin Archange Touadera, one of the steps called for in a peace deal with rebels who had seized the north of the country.
Clinton Romesha, a former active-duty Army staff sergeant from North Dakota, will receive the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military decoration, for “courageous actions” in Afghanistan in 2009, the White House said.
Gen. Ali Moayedi, head of Iran’s anti-narcotics police, told Iranian newspapers that about 30 drug smugglers and addicts are identified and arrested every hour and that more than 2,835 pounds of drugs are confiscated each day in the country that lies on a major drug route between Afghanistan and Europe.
Patricia Ruiz, owner of the Milagros Caninos sanctuary in Mexico City, says a dog named “Pay de Limon,” or “Lemon Pie,” was fitted with prosthetic limbs and can run and jump again after his two front legs were cut off, likely by drug traffickers who used him as practice for mutilating humans.
Karen Yeakel, a former employee of Stellar Travel in Bellevue, Wash., has been charged with wire fraud after being accused of stealing nearly 3.7 million airline miles from clients to buy 135 flights for her family and using the credit cards of some clients to buy $180,000 worth of plane tickets.
Boris Johnson, mayor of London, was among the invited passengers aboard the Met Locomotive 1, a 19th-century steam engine that was sent down London’s Metropolitan Line to mark the 150th anniversary of the world’s oldest subway.
Rafia al-Issawi, the Iraqi finance minister and a central figure in more than two weeks of protests by minority Sunnis against the Shiite-dominated Baghdad government, escaped uninjured after attackers bombed his convoy as the Sunni official was heading to Fallujah to meet with tribal leaders.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/14/2013