In the news
Pope Francis recommended jettisoning life’s “useless baggage” in 2018 as he celebrated New Year’s Day Mass, encouraging people to “keep our freedom from being corroded by the banality of consumerism, the blare of commercials, the stream of empty words.”
Jennifer Petruska, who has made it her quest to find cats that disappeared during Sonoma County, Calif., wildfires in the fall, has caught more than 70 felines using night-vision cameras, traps baited with tuna and mackerel, and even socks soaked in liquid from the fish cans.
Martha Kegel, the executive director of a New Orleans group that coordinates agencies that help the homeless, said her group exceeded its target of finding people 200 new homes for the holidays, arranging 238 apartments and rental houses for 56 families and 182 individuals.
Lt. John Somerindyke of the Fayetteville, N.C., Police Department helped contact and apologize to victims whose rape kits were among the 333 that Fayetteville police threw away, after he discovered that the kits were missing while he was reviewing unsolved rape cases.
Marian Brown was sworn in as the first black sheriff of Dallas County, Texas, after her predecessor resigned to run for governor, and said she plans to focus on learning about jail issues and rebuilding community trust.
Heather Coggins, whose uncle Timothy Wayne Coggins was killed outside Griffin, Ga., in 1983, said his family didn’t originally mark his grave out of fear the killer would vandalize it but, after two men were charged in the cold case, the family chipped in to finally get him a headstone.
Marc Calcia was charged with eight counts of cruelty to animals, with officials seizing dozens of animals including an alpaca, calves, piglets, and goats from his Sorrento, Maine, farm after they were found living in mud and their own waste.
Jerry Myrick, 41, was arrested after refusing to leave a business, New Orleans police said, and then made comments that led them to search his hotel room, where they reported finding opioids, psychedelic mushrooms, marijuana, heroin, amphetamines and cash.