In the news
Antonin Scalia, the U.S. Supreme Court justice, told Archbishop Rummel High School in Metairie, La., that there is “nothing wrong” with presidents invoking God in speeches and that God has been good to the U.S. exactly because Americans honor him.
Jaelyn Valencia and her twin brother, Luis Valencia Jr., were born just two minutes apart but won’t share a birthday, or even a birth year, after doctors at a San Diego hospital recorded delivering Jaelyn at 11:59 p.m. on New Year’s Eve 2015 and Luis at 12:01 a.m. on New Year’s Day 2016.
Akihito, Japan’s 82-yearold emperor, expressed his hopes for global harmony during a public appearance with his family to celebrate the new year with a crowd of more than 44,000 outside Tokyo’s Imperial Palace, saying that in 2016 he would “pray for peace for our nation and for the world.”
Ronald Bauman and Dumitru Alexeev of Phoenix went to Las Vegas to tie the knot and were told they had snagged the 5,000th marriage license issued to a same-sex couple by Clark County since 2014, when the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the constitutionality of gay marriage in Nevada.
Whitni Graves and her toddler are playing host to an 8-month-old zebra named Zulu that Graves found grazing on her north Texas property, until its owners can arrange to get it back home after it fled through an open gate less than a mile away.
Gille Levin Brickhouse, 32, faces charges of larceny and cruelty to animals, accused of stealing a dog from a North Carolina animal shelter and using hair dye to turn the dog’s white coat purple.
Charles Branch has been charged after police say he used a sledgehammer to vandalize a marble fountain at a shopping mall in Ridgeland, Miss., whacking the front legs off four statue horses, in his second attack on statuary at that mall since September.
Kenneth Stokes, a councilman for Jackson, Miss., who recently expressed anger at police officers from outside jurisdictions chasing suspects into the city and suggested that people “throw rocks and bricks and bottles at them,” was admonished by Gov. Phil Bryant, who called the remarks “nothing short of an outright assault.”
Jack Simard, 49, is set for a second kidney transplant around Valentine’s Day after doctors tested his girlfriend, Michelle LaBranche, and found that she’s a perfect match.