President Barack Obama, in comments about how race has affected his political standing, said, “There’s some folks who just really dislike me because they don’t like the idea of a black president,” but added that he thinks others give him “the benefit of the doubt” because of his race.
Brandie Grimes Emerson, 39, of Muscle Shoals, Ala., was arrested after police said she stole floral arrangements and other items left at grave sites in Alabama, Tennessee and Mississippi, then attempted to sell the stolen goods online.
Mostafa Bakry, an Egyptian journalist who claims the U.S. is leading a conspiracy to assassinate military chief Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, backed off threats that Americans would be “slaughtered in their homes” if such an attempt were made, saying he is “opposed to any violence.”
Jeffrey Cutlib , 64, a registered sex offender who pleaded guilty to two murders in the 1970s and one in 1993, was sentenced in Oregon to life in prison with no chance for parole.
David Silvester, a councilman from Britain’s United Kingdom Independence Party, was suspended by the party after defying instructions not to give interviews about a letter he wrote to the Henley Standard in which he said the U.K. had been beset by storms since the government legalized gay marriage.
John Goldman and Marcia Goldman, California philanthropists, are giving San Francisco $105,000 to pay for the Make-A-Wish Foundation event in which Miles Scott, a 5-year-old boy with leukemia, got to fight villains and rescue a damsel in distress as “Batkid.”
Gen. Ricardo Restrepo of Colombia said after a cocaine bust that officials are unsure how traffickers were able to hide 700 pounds of the drug by mixing it into 12 sacks of asphalt, but the process required “very expert” knowledge.
Jay Newnum, 41, a Fishers, Ind., poker blogger, was sentenced to a probation program after he was caught stealing nearly $700 at a Connecticut casino by using chopsticks to pull cash out of a hole in a card dealers’ locked tip box.
John Wisniewski, the New Jersey Democrat leading the probe of traffic jams orchestrated by Gov. Chris Christie’s aides, said his panel also plans to examine Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer’s allegation that Christie withheld disaster-recovery funds because she wouldn’t support a politically connected real estate development.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/20/2014