In the news

Barbara Byrd-Bennett, the chief of Chicago Public Schools, has asked principals to disregard an order to pull the graphic novel Persepolis out of schools, but she said the book, which includes a page depicting a man being whipped, burned and urinated on, should no longer be included in the district’s curriculum for seventh-graders.

Toyo Ito, a 71-year-old Japanese architect, has won the 2013 Pritzker Architecture Prize, because his “architecture has improved the quality of both public and private spaces,” said U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who served on the jury for the award.

Monica Conyers, a former Detroit City Council member and wife of U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., is working for Metrotech Collision in Detroit while serving the remainder of her federal prison sentence for corruption at a halfway house, said the auto-body shop’s owner, Sam Hussein.

Aideed Abdullahi Ilkohanaf, the chief justice of Somalia’s Supreme Court, said there was not enough evidence to support a ruling that reporter Abdiaziz Abdinur Ibrahim offended national institutions by interviewing a woman who said she was raped by security forces, and the court overturned Ibrahim’s conviction.

Staff Sgt. Eddy Soto has been sentenced to four years in prison for raping a female trainee at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, making him the ninth trainer convicted in the case.

President Francois Hollande of France, on the anniversary of an attack in Toulouse in which a radical Muslim killed three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi and three paratroopers, said the country is tightening its intelligence-gathering to prevent such attacks, which he likened to the Holocaust.

Mohammad Hasan Tarighat Monfared, who was made caretaker of Iran’s Health Ministry in December, has been named the official health minister.

Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., the chairman of the House Permanent Select Intelligence Committee, said “pressure is mounting” for action other than sanctions to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, rejecting a statement by President Barack Obama that Iran is at least a year away from the technology.

Ayman Sharawneh, 53, a Palestinian prisoner who had refused food since July to protest his 38-year sentence, has agreed to end his fast under a plea bargain that will confine him to the Gaza Strip for the next 10 years.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 03/18/2013

Upcoming Events