In the news
Lynn Hightower, executive director of the downtown business association in Boise, Idaho, said a star taken on New Year’s Day from the top of the city’s 30-foot Christmas tree was found next to a building wrapped in a garbage bag that had a $100 bill taped to it.
Adrian Singleton, 28, and two other men went to City Hall in Mandeville, La., to pay a utility bill but were arrested on drug and weapons charges after a police officer who walked past their pickup smelled marijuana and reportedly found the contraband when he searched the vehicle.
Graig Burrier, 29, of Stow, Ohio, who pleaded guilty to sexual battery in 2012, avoided prison but will remain on probation and go to an in-patient treatment program after prosecutors said he has continued to ask women if he could touch their belly buttons.
Muhammad Rafi, an Indonesian police chief, said a rare Sumatran tiger mauled and killed a 33-year-old woman who was working at a palm oil plantation in an area hit by widespread deforestation of the tiger’s habitat.
Mark Borckardt, a numismatist with Heritage Auctions in Dallas, said an 1880 $4 U.S. gold piece called a “flowing hair stella” that sold for $750,000 at a Tampa, Fla., coin auction was a failed government experiment aimed at creating a currency for international trade.
Deon “Strawberry” Hampton, a 26-year-old transgender Chicago woman serving a sentence for burglary, has asked a federal judge for a transfer from a male prison to a female prison where she says she’ll be less vulnerable to abuse.
David Snow, 37, of Provo, Utah, bragged that he had “pulled off the crime of the century” before being arrested for breaking into the Police Department’s evidence room undetected to take back his bike, which was being held until Snow could prove it was his.
Gregory Ulrich, 28, of Milford, Conn., faces animal cruelty and other counts after police said he killed 20 chickens by ripping their heads off in a drunken, jealous rage on Christmas Day after seeing pictures of his wife on social media with other people, police said.
Bertha Vickers, 99, of Morgantown, Miss., said she wants to know why people are making a big fuss about her killing a deer with a .243-caliber Winchester rifle, after relatives posted pictures on social media, noting it was “just a doe” and not a trophy buck.