President Michael Higgins of Ireland signed into law the country’s first bill on abortion, legalizing the practice in exceptional cases where doctors deem a woman’s life is at risk.
Nelson Mandela, the 95-year-old former South African president and anti-apartheid figure hospitalized since June 8, remains in critical but stable condition in a hospital but is continuing to show improvement, said the office of President Jacob Zuma.
Bill Daley, a former White House chief of staff who is the brother and son of former Chicago mayors, officially stepped into the 2014 Illinois governor’s race by filing paperwork with state election officials, making him the only announced Democratic challenger to Gov. Pat Quinn.
President Shimon Peres of Israel took part in a ceremony to open a Latvian museum honoring a couple who saved some 50 Jews from extermination in Nazi-occupied Latvia.
Kisha Curtis, 29, of Irvington, N.J., pleaded guilty to an animal-cruelty charge after authorities say her dog was found starved and near death, wrapped in a plastic bag and thrown down a building’s garbage chute.
Tom Hoffman of Dallas said he’s shocked to receive a nearly $67,000 erroneous water bill a few months after a similar computer error that the city blames on a bad water meter.
Brad Shearer, 49, a south-central Pennsylvania man, helped save the life of 18-year-old Brooke Spence, whose sport utility vehicle flipped over in underbrush by a creek and trapped her for 18 hours before Shearer noticed the vehicle while getting ready to grill on his deck.
Gina McCarthy, President Barack Obama’s new chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, told an audience at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Mass., that curbing climate-altering pollution will spark business innovation, create jobs and strengthen the economy.
Alberto Martinez, 32, was sentenced in New Jersey to 50 years in prison for fatally beating college student Vincent DeSario, 19, with a baseball bat in 2010 because he thought the teen had laughed at him.
Bob McDonnell, the Republican governor of Virginia, said on his monthly radio-listener call-in show that he will return a Rolex watch and other gifts given to him and his family by a major campaign donor and businessman who lavished the family with items over the years.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 07/31/2013