In the news
Carla Mitchell, 49, of Kansas City, Kan., a former IRS worker convicted of filing false tax returns for her family, friends and herself, was sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison and ordered to pay $137,483 in restitution.
Shawki Allam, a grand mufti in Egypt, issued a fatwa, or a religious decree, dictating that buying Facebook “likes” is immoral and prohibited under Islam, calling the act a form of fraud as he quoted the Prophet Muhammad’s saying, “He who deceives is not of us.”
Marcia Courson, 75, no longer writes a weekly column for The River Valley Times of Rancho Murieta, Calif., after she came under fire for suggesting in a column that black men stay inside at night to avoid altercations with the police, Publisher Dave Herburger said.
Jason Dalley, 55, wept as a judge in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., sentenced him to more than a year in prison and ordered him to pay $1.8 million in restitution for his role in a $23 million insurance scheme involving attorneys, chiropractors and clinics.
Raja Khurramm, a former Pakistani judge, and his wife, Maheen, convicted of torturing a 10-year-old girl who worked as a servant at their home in Islamabad, were each sentenced to a year in prison and fined about $900.
John Bernal of the Southwest National Primate Research Center in San Antonio, called it “typical monkey see, monkey do” when four baboons followed one another and leapt over a wall around an open-air corral, but they were quickly recaptured.
Ron Davis, the city attorney for Northport, Ala., said City Council members are considering an ordinance that would limit residential homes to no more than three dogs and give homeowners with more than three dogs a grace period to help them comply with the new restriction.
John Kane of St. Petersburg, Fla., who told investigators that he was injured when the letter “o” from a Hooters sign blew off a wall and landed on his foot, was arrested in an insurance-fraud case after security video reportedly showed that the sign crashed down without hitting anyone.
Judy Tucker, a 71-yearold white woman, faces a battery charge after sheriff’s deputies said she slapped a pregnant woman as Tucker and her son, who used racial epithets, argued with two uniformed black female service members over a parking spot in Macon, Ga.