In the news

President Barack Obama

said in his weekly radio and Internet address that his nominee to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mary Jo White, and his pick for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Richard Cordray, will crack down on those whose irresponsible behavior threatens the economy and the middle class.

President Almazbek Atamabyev

of Kyrgyzstan has approved legislation toughening the penalty for the broadly practiced custom of bride-kidnapping in the former Soviet Central Asian nation, with prison sentences for forcing women into marriage now ranging up to 10 years as opposed to the previous maximum of three.

Ed Koch, 88, New York City’s mayor from 1978-89, was sent home after a weeklong stay in a hospital for fluid in his lungs and swollen ankles, and was told to reduce his salt intake.

Hugo Chavez, the 58-year-old Venezuelan president, has begun additional treatment after surviving complications from cancer surgery in Cuba more than six weeks ago, Venezuela’s government said.

Ashley Broadway, who is married to Lt. Col. Heather Mack, an Army officer at Fort Bragg, N.C., and who was recently denied membership in its officers’ spouses club, received an invitation to become a full member on the same day Broadway also learned that she’d been named Fort Bragg’s 2013 “Military Spouse of the Year” by Military Spouse magazine.

Kirill Bartashevitch, 51, of St. Paul, Minn., who recently purchased an assault rifle out of fear of an impending gun ban, threatened his teenage daughter with it because she was getting two B’s in school rather than straight A’s, according to a criminal complaint.

John Robert Murphy, 31, was sentenced to 140 years in prison for robbing and sexually assaulting an Oklahoma City restaurant worker after she made him a free sandwich in May.

Maria Miller, the culture minister in British Prime Minister David Cameron’s government, said of legislation to legalize same-sex marriage that “we feel that marriage is a good thing, and we should be supporting more couples to marry.”

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, will host a campaign fundraiserfor Republican Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey next month at the technology billionaire’s home in Palo Alto, Calif.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/27/2013

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