In the news
Larry Jefferson, a retired Army veteran from Irving, Texas, has been hired as the first-ever black Santa Claus at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., telling reporters that playing the jolly old elf is “no big deal” to him, adding, “I’m still Santa, I just happen to be a Santa of color.”
Pope Francis has put the Rev. Stanley Rother of Oklahoma, who was killed in 1981 during Guatemala’s civil war, on the path to sainthood by declaring him a martyr.
Carolyn White, who called Fort Lauderdale, Fla., police after peeking inside an SUV that had five parking tickets on the windshield issued over four days, wants to know why parking officers never saw the body, slumped over the center console, of a man who had died from natural causes.
Richard Reid, the British man sentenced to life in prison for trying to detonate explosives in his shoe on a trans-Atlantic flight in 2001, asked a federal judge to declare him bankrupt, saying he can’t afford the $250,000 fine that was part of his sentence.
Craig Buckner, 38, was arrested after failing a drug test during a court appearance in Hillsboro, Ore., but was allowed to retrieve his 4-year-old macaw named “Bird” from a tree where he had left it just before court, with the two later posing together for Buckner’s mug shot.
Valarie Turner, a Chicago-area judge who allowed a law clerk to wear robes and preside over several traffic cases, has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, according to the Illinois Judicial Inquiry Board, which has filed a complaint that Turner is “mentally unable” to do her job.
Aaron Ernsberger, a fire captain in Phoenix, said a 14-year-old boy bolted off his school bus right after getting on when he saw smoke billowing from his house and ran to open a back door so the family’s 9-year-old pit bull could escape.
Richard Graham, 53, of Rochester, N.Y., started yelling for help when he got stuck shortly after 3 a.m. in the ductwork that led from a pizzeria’s oven to a roof vent, resulting in his arrest on charges of burglary and criminal mischief, sheriff’s deputies said.
Amber Newman of Athens, Tenn., delivered a healthy girl by emergency cesarean section shortly after she and six others took shelter in a bathroom and then were rescued when their home was destroyed by an EF2 tornado this week.