In the news
Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, took an inaugural ride on New Delhi’s new Magenta Line train, which features driverless technology but will operate with a driver for at least a year or two, according to officials.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson — who said he relies on daily physical therapy, medication and prayer to manage the Parkinson’s disease he was diagnosed with in 2015 — kept up his decades-old Christmas tradition of giving a sermon to inmates at a Chicago-area jail.
Noah Ames gave away 400 pounds of lobster from his pickup in a parking lot in Thomaston, Maine, a quarter of which the lobsterman hauled in and the rest donated by other companies, the fourth year he’s carried out what has become a tradition to help those in need.
Ashley Rodgers, whose 4-month-old daughter Journi was attacked by a raccoon in the family’s Philadelphia home and had to get 65 stitches on her face and head, posted a thank-you on an online fundraising page that raised more than $18,000 to help the family find a different home to rent.
Ahmad Reza Jalali, an Iranian researcher, was sentenced to death by Iran’s Supreme Court for spying for Israel’s Mossad spy agency, according to the semiofficial ISNA news agency.
Jean-Marie Simon received a $500 travel voucher and an apology from United Airlines after she accused the airline of seating her elsewhere to give her first-class seat on a Houston-to-Washington flight to U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, though an airline spokesman said its records show Simon canceled her ticket after a weather delay.
Alex Cui, a California Institute of Technology student and one of four students on a team that developed a browser extension that alerts users to fake and biased news stories, said the program’s aim is to help users “develop a kind of a news autoimmune system.”
Alfredo de Jesus-Ascencio, a Mexican man charged with negligent homicide in a 2007 crash that killed a sheriff’s deputy in Oregon, was arrested in Mexico’s Michoacan state 10 years after he fled Oregon and 10 months after he was mistakenly freed from a Baja California prison, authorities said.