In the news

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Angela Merkel, 59, the German chancellor, cracked her pelvis during a skiing accident in the Swiss Alps and will have to cut back on her work schedule for the next three weeks, her spokesman said.

Sasheer Zamata is the newest cast member on NBC’s Saturday Night Live, which has been criticized recently for a lack of diversity, and, with the Jan. 18 episode, will become only the fifth black female cast member on a show that’s had more than 130 regular cast members since its 1975 debut.

Marie Harf, a State Department spokesman, said the department’s use of the name “Myanmar” in a message marking the Southeast Asian nation’s Independence Day doesn’t reflect a change in U.S. policy and that the U.S. government officially still refers to the country as Burma.

Mary Kay Letourneau, the ex-teacher who made headlines after she had sex with her 12-year-old student, was briefly jailed in Seattle for failing to appear in court for a suspended driver’s license case.

Rep. Jim Gerlach, a six-term moderate Pennsylvania Republican who represents a district anchored in Philadelphia’s western suburbs and rural areas on either side of Reading, said he will retire from Congress at the end of this term and that it’s “simply time for me to move on to new challenges and to spend more time with mywife and family.”

Martin Walsh, 46, was sworn in as Boston’s mayor, succeeding Thomas Menino, the city’s longest-serving chief executive, who retired after more than two decades in office.

Gil Voigt, a southwest Ohio teacher recently suspended without pay, said he is challenging allegations that he told a black student who said he wanted to become president that the nation doesn’t need another black president.

Joe Rickey Hundley, who pleaded guilty to slapping a crying toddler on an Atlanta-bound flight last February, was sentenced to serve eight months in federal prison.

Mark Zmuda, a former vice principal at a Catholic school in Washington state, said in a YouTube video that he was fired for marrying his male partner and that the school’s leader suggested he could get a divorce to keep the job.

Pope Francis offered another gesture to Catholics who are estranged from the church, saying at the Vatican, as he celebrated the feast day of Epiphany, that he respects them but that God is waiting for them.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/07/2014