In the news

Friday, February 14, 2014

Melvin Morse, 60, a Delaware pediatrician, was convicted of waterboarding his companion’s daughter by holding the child’s head under a faucet to research near-death experiences involving children.

Sexy Crabtree, 41, an Ohio woman who loathed being named Sheila and wanted a moniker that reflected her personality, had the change approved after telling a judge her husband and teenage daughters were in favor of the switch.

George Osborne, the United Kingdom’s treasury chief, warned that Scotland cannot continue using the pound as its currency if its citizens vote to leave the U.K. this year, saying, “The pound isn’t an asset to be divided up between the two countries after breakup as if it were a CD collection.” Matthew Ondo, a 30-year-old Pittsburgh man, is facing animal-cruelty charges after being accused of using a machete to decapitate his mother’s Chihuahua, a crime he said was committed by the devil, Allah or “the Mexican,” according to a criminal complaint.

Makenzie Wethington, a 16-year-old Texas girl who is recovering from severe injuries after falling more than 3,000 feet in a sky-diving accident, said she blacked out when she was unable to correct a parachute malfunction and doesn’t remember hitting the ground, adding, “I think I went into shock.”

Borko Ilincic, 33, a Serbian who is a suspected member of the so-called Pink Panther gang of jewelry thieves believed to be responsible for hundreds of robberies across the world, was arrested in Spain.

Robert Thomas Jr., 37, of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, was indicted on federal charges after being accused of trying to pay an undercover officer $400 to buy a 10-year-old girl to keep at home for sex.

Sheri Raphaelson, a New Mexico judge, discovered that an injured man she stopped to help at an accident scene was a defendant due in her courtroom and said other people on their way to court stopped to help as well, adding that she might have to recuse herself from their cases, because “if I could make all of their charges go away, I would.”

Adam Howe, 26, was arrested in a burglary in Chula Vista, Calif., after detectives found a phone at the crime scene that held a self-taken photo of Howe and then found items believed to be stolen from Hilltop Tabernacle Church among his belongings.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/14/2014