In the news

Friday, January 3, 2014

Rob Ford, the Toronto mayor stripped of his authority for smoking crack and hanging out with criminals, declared himself the best leader that Canada’s No. 1 city has ever had and filed for re-election.

Ryan Lee Carroll, a Florida man who won a raffle to watch the series finale of AMC’s Breaking Bad with the cast of the drama about a chemistry-teacher-turned-drug-kingpin, was charged on accusations of running a synthetic marijuana distribution operation from his Fort Myers home with two other men.

Barbara Bush, 88, the former first lady, was “doing great and responding well” while undergoing treatment at a Houston hospital for a respiratory-related problem, a family spokesman said.

Bill Nye, the star of TV’s Bill Nye The Science Guy who said in an online video last year that teaching creationism was bad for children, will visit northern Kentucky on Feb. 4 to debate evolution and biblical creation with Ken Ham, the founder of the Creation Museum, Ham wrote on his Facebook page.

Maureen Hinckley, along with her husband, Stephen, of Sterling, Mass., claimed a share of a $122 million Powerball jackpot drawing from Dec. 11, amounting to a lump-sum payment of $23.9 million after taxes.

President Barack Obama and New Zealand Prime Minister John Key teed off on a sunny and breezy morning at a golf course on Oahu, the Hawaiian island where Obama is renting a vacation home.

David Charles, 21, an Indianapolis man accused of stealing human brain samples from the Indiana Medical History Museum, was arrested after a San Diego man who bought some of the tissue on eBay became suspicious when he noticed the labels on the containers and alerted authorities.

William Bratton, 66, took over the nation’s largest police force for the second time in his career, pledging to keep New York City safe while also working to improve community relations, which he said have been strained by the police tactic known as stop and frisk.

Rana Al-Jamal, 30, whose father, Jamal al-Jamal, the Palestinian ambassador in Prague, died after a booby-trapped embassy safe exploded, disputed Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki’s claim that the safe had been untouched for more than 20 years, and instead said it had been in constant use and that her family believes her father’s death “is a crime.”

Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/03/2014