Stacey Campfield, a Republican state senator in Tennessee who wrote on his blog that “Democrats bragging about the number of mandatory sign ups for Obamacare is like Germans bragging about the number of manditory sign ups for ‘train rides’ for Jews in the 40s,” said he stands by his comments.

Robert Bentley, the Republican governor of Alabama, where executions are at a standstill because of a shortage of a drug needed for lethal injections, said he is against switching back to the electric chair when the state resumes executions.

Michelle Knight, 33, one of the three women held captive in a Cleveland house before escaping last year, said on NBC’s Today that she forgives Ariel Castro, the man who kidnapped and tortured her for nearly a decade and who later committed suicide in prison.

President Barack Obama said as he began talks with President Ismail Omar Guelleh of Djibouti that his administration is signing a long-term lease for a military outpost in Djibouti that has been key to projecting U.S. power from the Horn of Africa.

Diana Balderas Castaneda, 48, of Donna, Texas, pleaded guilty in McAllen to one count of vote-buying, admitting she paid voters to ensure they cast ballots in favor of school board candidates in southern Texas.

Bernard Johnson, 47, a former pastor of St. Paul Christian Methodist Episcopal Church on Chicago’s South Side, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for taking out credit lines in the church’s name and making personal purchases for more than $50,000 from 2008 to 2010.

Gerry Adams, 65, the leader of Sinn Fein and a member of the Irish Parliament, was released from police custody in Northern Ireland without charge after four days of questioning about the 1972 murder of a mother of 10.

Diana Durand, 48, a Houston woman romantically linked to indicted Republican U.S. Rep. Michael Grimm of New York, pleaded innocent to charges she lined up straw donors for him to circumvent campaign-contribution limits.

Shimon Peres, 90, who is wrapping up his seven-year term as Israel’s largely ceremonial president, told the Yediot Ahronot newspaper that he and his late wife, Sonya, decided to go their “separate ways” after he insisted on running for the presidency in 2007.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 05/06/2014