In the news
Christian Basi, a University of Missouri System spokesman, said voluntary buyouts for some tenured faculty are an effort to provide more financial flexibility as departments plan budgets for next year.
Leo Dorsey, 27, of New Orleans faces a life sentence after he was convicted of killing a woman and shooting another during an argument over a bet about a movie’s ending, the Orleans Parish district attorney’s office said.
G.T. Bynum, mayor of Tulsa, has promoted a plan to help immigrants feel welcome in Tulsa, one of more than a dozen U.S. cities receiving grants to help immigrants become citizens, which will help with exam classes, English lessons and reliable information about the naturalization process.
Ricky Hunter , a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, said the driver and five girls returning to Bridgeport from a basketball tournament suffered minor injuries when their bus was hit head-on by a car, and a man and woman in the car were also injured.
Deb Yandala, CEO of the not-for-profit Conservancy for Cuyahoga Valley National Park, said the level of support that achieved the funding goal for the Ohio park’s new visitor center is a “testimony to the quality of our community,” after more than 550 people, foundations and corporations and her agency raised $7 million for the project.
Robert Cassel, a central Ohio auctioneer, said thousands of items including jewelry, passengers’ tickets, cigars and the submersible that helped retrieve gold and other items from an 1857 shipwreck will be sold under court supervision because it is tied to legal proceedings against former fugitive treasure hunter Tommy Thompson.
Justin Fuston, spokesman for the Lebanon, Ind., Police Department, said a 2-year-old boy accidentally shot his sister in the head, leaving the 4-year-old girl in critical condition at an Indianapolis hospital, adding that the gun was not in a secure location at the home of the siblings’ grandparents.
The Rev. John Klawiter of Faith Lutheran Church in Forest Lake, Minn., wrote an obituary for a community newspaper announcing the end of the church’s annual Scandinavian dinner featuring lutefisk, a pungent, jellylike fish, which has been held the first Tuesday in December for more than 70 years.