• Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church and a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, consecrated a new, $106 million church owned by Russia near the Eiffel Tower in Paris, a project that has drawn criticism for its construction in secular France and as the country's relations with Russia have soured.
• Buzz Aldrin, the 86-year-old former astronaut who was the second man to walk on the moon, attributed his medical evacuation from Antarctica, which he was touring with his son and manager, to altitude sickness, from which he was still recovering in New Zealand.
• Joe Bartley, an 89-year-old army veteran and widower who made headlines in Britain after placing a newspaper ad seeking work -- saying he was "dying of boredom," that his building has a community area but "not a soul comes in" and that when he returns home there's "nobody to talk to" -- has started a job at the Cantina Kitchen & Bar in Paignton, England.
• Charlie Knudsen, 69, of Pittsburgh had some items sold at auction that were tied to the late inventor Thomas Edison, such as keys to the New Jersey lab where Edison invented the phonograph and some of the light bulbs that he perfected, which together brought in more than $60,000.
• Tikeemah Lassiter, 19, of Clinton, N.J., faces an animal-cruelty charge after someone posted a video on social media of her throwing a cat -- which survived -- out of a third-story window.
• Clarence Tucker, who was sworn in as fire chief in Akron, Ohio, two days before a house fire killed two adults and two girls in a home that authorities said did not contain smoke detectors, said he wants to make sure every home in the city has the devices.
• David Boies, a lawyer, is set to argue before a federal appeals court this week that under California law and international treaties, a $30 million painting, looted by Nazis after a Jewish couple fled Germany ahead of the Holocaust and currently in a Spanish museum, belongs to the couple's great-grandchildren.
• Charles Crowson, a spokesman for Wal-Mart, announced a Pella, Iowa, store's reopening after a pickup crashed into the store days earlier, killing three people.
• Darcy Lambert, spokesman for a ski resort in Newry, Maine, said that at the annual Santa Sunday event, in which about 180 jolly, red-suited look-alikes hit the slopes to raise money for charity, there were a few tumbles -- "but that's to be expected."
A Section on 12/05/2016