In the news

Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska announced on her website that she now supports gay marriage, becoming the third Senate Republican to do so and taking a position also shared by the Senate’s two independents and most of its Democrats, except for Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Mark Pryor of Arkansas, who remain opposed.

Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, the Italian fashion designers, were convicted in Milan of failing to declare the equivalent of about $268 million through a Luxembourg company to authorities and were each given a suspended jail sentence of one year and eight months and ordered together to pay a penalty of about $670,000.

Ariel Castro, 52, the Cleveland man accused of kidnapping three women and holding them in his home and raping them over a decade, was given an Aug. 4 trial date.

Joe Biden, the vice president, used a ceremony unveiling a statue of 19th-century abolitionist Frederick Douglass in the Capitol to renew the call for equal voting rights for people who live in the nation’s capital.

Candace Scott, an unemployed teacher in College Station, Texas, who spotted a clear bag with a blue zipper on the road while driving and thought it contained a dirty diaper, stopped anyway, found about $20,000 in hundred-dollar bills, which she turned in at a nearby bank, and was rewarded with a $500 credit gift card.

Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize winner, and U.S. Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., were among those honored in Washington with the 2013 Jefferson Awards, which honor public service and were co-founded by former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

Pope Francis invited Alberto di Tullio, a 17-year-old boy with Down syndrome, up onto his open-top Mercedes at the end of his general audience at the Vatican, letting him spin around on the pontiff ’s white chair while tens of thousands of people looked on.

Adolfo Gomez, 53, a suburban Chicago man, was sentenced to 30 months in prison for binding and blindfolding two of his children a year ago in a Wal-Mart parking lot in eastern Kansas.

Vincent George Sr., 56, and his 35-year-old son Vincent George Jr., both pimps, were cleared in New York on sex-trafficking charges but were convicted on charges they laundered millions of dollars through music-recording and car-service businesses.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 06/20/2013

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