In the news
Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey said in a radio interview that he turned down several posts in Donald Trump’s administration because they weren’t “exciting enough” for him to resign as governor, and also because his wife, Mary Pat, refused to move to Washington, D.C.
Robert Thurman of Cherokee County, Okla., who told 911 dispatchers that he’d been shot by his sister, survived because the bullet hit a metal plate in his neck and ricocheted out, investigators said.
Alexis Manigo of Walterboro, S.C., who was abducted as a newborn from a Florida hospital 18 years ago, spoke the day after Gloria Williams appeared in court to face a kidnapping charge stemming from the abduction, with Manigo saying she will always love Williams as the only mother she has ever known.
Donald Bates, a police sergeant in Whately, Mass., rescued his second injured owl in three months, after getting a call about a bird that had been struck by a car, wrapping the owl in a blanket and taking it to a rehabilitation center.
Emmett Robson said his sister, Dorothy Echols, was raking leaves outside her Natchez, Miss., home when a rogue cow “ran her over,” adding she likely will need a hip replacement because of the animal, which was caught after spending about three months on the loose.
Zachary Brackett, a fire services captain in Hall County, Ga., said a 55,000-pound excavation truck was carrying 1,600 gallons of water when its back end fell into a 10-foot-deep sinkhole, forcing crews to spend all day Tuesday trying to free the vehicle, which refused to budge.
Brian Carroll, the president of the Vatterott College campus in Kansas City, Mo., said he was fired for allowing a homeless student to sleep overnight in the college library on Jan. 6 when temperatures dipped below zero.
Bo Williams, the newly sworn-in sheriff of Roane County, W.Va., resigned from office and pleaded guilty to a felony charge for taking meth from an evidence storage room at the Spencer Police Department, where he formerly worked, prosecutors said.
Anastacia Hocking, 21, of Laconia, N.H., told state police she was running late for an appointment to have a car stereo installed when she was stopped for driving 91 mph on a snow- and slush-covered interstate where the speed limit had been reduced to 45 mph.