In the news

Ben Bernanke, the outgoing Federal Reserve chairman, took a moment at the Brookings Institution to reflect on some “very intense periods” during the 2008 financial crisis, similar to trying to keep a car from going over a bridge after a collision.

Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, accused former Defense Secretary Robert Gates from his Capitol office of being “out to make a buck” with a memoir that Reid said “denigrates everybody, everyone, Secretary [of State Hillary Rodham] Clinton, the president, [Vice President] Joe Biden, me.”

Ed Gillespie, a former lobbyist, ex-Republican National Committee chairman and onetime aide to President George W. Bush, formally launched his campaign for a U.S. Senate seat representing Virginia, a position now held by Democrat Mark Warner.

Mubarak Ibrahim, 28, was whipped 20 times in a northern Nigerian Islamic Shariah court after his sodomy conviction, the first of a gay man in Nigeria since President Goodluck Jonathan signed a bill that further criminalizes homosexuality under the West African nation’s Western-style penal code.

Pervez Musharraf, the retired Pakistani general and former president who is facing a high-treason trial, needs to go to the U.S. for further medical treatment after a heart scare, a lawyer representing him said.

Albrecht Muth, 49, a German man who pretended to be an Iraqi army general and often boasted of his political and diplomatic connections, was convicted in Washington of killing his 91-year-old socialite and journalist wife, Viola Drath, in August 2011.

Edward Bryant, 40, a Baltimore man wanted in the theft of eight Hermes handbags from a Texas home that were worth $200,000, has been arrested, according to the Maryland State Police.

Charlie Roberts, spokesman for Utah’s tax commission, said newly married gay couples can jointly file their taxes for 2013 in the state where a federal judge struck down the state’s gay marriage ban Dec. 20 before the U.S. Supreme Court put a halt to the marriages Jan. 6.

Corey Knowlton, a North Texas man who paid $350,000 for the right to hunt an endangered African black rhinoceros, told Dallas television stations WFAA and KTVT that he’s had to hire full-time security because of death threats after his name was leaked on the Internet.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/17/2014

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