In the news

Saturday, February 8, 2014

Rob Ford, the Toronto mayor who acknowledged last year that he had smoked crack cocaine while in a drunken stupor, wants to remove a rainbow flag at City Hall that protests Russia’s law restricting gay-rights activities, and hoisted a Canadian flag in his office window in response.

Zhang Yimou, one of China’s best-known film directors, and his wife paid more than $1.2 million in fines for having three children in violation of China’s strict family-planning rules.

Jim Bakken, spokesman for the University of Alabama at Birmingham, announced the school is suspending high school tours of its anatomy lab after a senior took a photo of herself with a cadaver and posted it on Instagram.

Lisa McIntire, a feminist writer in California, received apologies from the Golden Key International Honor Society and the Bank of America after she received a credit-card offer that referred to her as “Lisa Is A Slut McIntire.”

Philip Kienholz, 29, of Erie, Pa., must stand trial on charges that he assaulted his dentist with a tire iron because the doctor prescribed antibiotics instead of pulling a tooth.

Jevons Brown, 58, a St. Louis man who pleaded guilty to mailing cat feces to a local company where he couldn’t find work, has been sentenced to two years of probation.

Kristen Smith of Denver was charged with kidnapping her half sister’s newborn boy from a Wisconsin home hours after police discovered the infant in a storage crate outside an Iowa gas station, alive and well in single-digit temperatures.

Brian Church, Jared Chase and Brent Vincent Betterly, who went to Chicago to protest the 2012 NATO summit, were acquitted of breaking Illinois’ state terrorism law but convicted on lesser arson counts.

Roy Cooper, North Carolina’s attorney general and a Democrat, said he’s decided to appeal a federal court ruling that struck down part of a law requiring abortion providers to describe an ultrasound to women seeking to terminate pregnancies.

Kenneth Bae, a U.S. citizen detained in North Korea for 15 months, has been returned to a labor camp, prompting worries about his health, his sister, Terri Chung, said.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/08/2014