In the news

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the majority leader, condemned on the Senate floor the billionaire Republican contributors Charles and David Koch as “un-American” as he questioned the veracity of ads from Koch backed groups that feature individuals sharing stories about the apparent hardships they’ve faced because of the health-care overhaul.

Daniel Kowalski, 21, a suburban Chicago man accused of operating a methamphetamine lab, appears in his booking photo wearing a T-shirt for the fictional Los Pollos Hermanos chicken restaurant featured in Breaking Bad, the television drama about a methamphetamine manufacturer.

Derek Hester and Daniel Zoelzer, police officers in Midland, Texas, were suspended for three days without pay after they spent weeks competing to see who could take the most cardboard signs away from homeless people, even though panhandling doesn’t violate any city law.

Miles O’Brien, PBS’ science correspondent, said his left arm was amputated above the elbow after an apparently minor injury while on assignment in Asia worsened and put his life in jeopardy.

Doug Terfehr, spokesman for Pizza Hut Corp., announced the permanent closing of an eatery in Kermit, W.Va., where a district manager was caught on surveillance video urinating into a metal sink in a food preparation area after business hours.

Tony Mack, 48, the Democratic mayor of New Jersey’s capital city, Trenton, was removed from office by a judge, 19 days after a jury found him guilty of corruption as part of a government sting.

Ron Davis and Lucia McBath, the parents of slain teen Jordan Davis, said that on March 10 they will join the parents of slaying victim Trayvon Martin and the widow of a man shot in a Florida cinema to talk with legislators about the state’s so-called stand your ground law.

Ammar Asim Faruq Harris, 27, a self-described pimp, was sentenced to 16 years to life in a Nevada prison in a rape and robbery case that served as a prelude to his death-penalty trial later this year in a Las Vegas Strip shooting and crash that killed three people.

Chuck Hagel, the defense secretary, said at the opening of a defense ministers meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels that European allies must start bearing more of the burden of modernizing NATO or it risks becoming irrelevant.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/27/2014

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