In the news
■ Kimberly Medina of suburban Denver says Panther has always been allowed outside, but “never” again after the black cat got itself perched atop a 36-foot utility pole, where it remained for at least two days and eventually was rescued by firefighters using a ladder-truck.
■ Brad Flynn, police chief in Helena, Ala., helped a woman reunite with her service dog after a FedEx driver drove away with it, apparently believing he was rescuing the animal to keep it from getting hit in the street.
■ Deandre Rayshaun Charleston, 22, a FedEx contractor from Adamsville, Ala., faces five cargo-theft warrants in the dumping of hundreds of packages in a roadside ditch near Birmingham, with the county sheriff saying Charleston said he was dealing with a death in his family and didn’t want to deliver the stuff.
■ Todd Graves of the University of Missouri System in Columbia said “we, as a board, need to get out of the politics of firearms,” after the system’s board of curators voted to allow guns in parked vehicles on its campuses.
■ Darrel Fitzpatrick, a Georgia businessman, was sentenced to five years in prison and ordered to pay $2.3 million in restitution after admitting that he agreed to pay kickbacks for military transport contracts.
■ John Quaka, a longtime FBI agent, said he’s “all about diversity and treating everyone fairly” as he becomes police chief of Tupelo, Miss., with the city’s Mayor Todd Jordan attesting that he had checked into Quaka’s record of 26 years in law enforcement and didn’t hear a single negative comment about him.
■ John McInnis’ auction house is selling items — including wrought iron calipers, letters, an account book and a sign bearing the name of Paul Revere’s son, Joseph W. Revere — that were found in an attic of the Canton, Mass., home once owned by the family of the Revolutionary War figure.
■ Lewis Wheaton, a councilman in Smyrna, Ga., asked “exactly what are we preserving?” as the city debates what to do with Aunt Fanny’s Cabin, an empty 1940s restaurant built in a now-rare “saddlebag” architecture style and that for decades used racist imagery and pre-Civil War South tropes as it served up Southern staples.
■ Jill Biden, the first lady, read excerpts from “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” for military members’ children in Arlington, Va., as part of the Marine Toys for Tots program, and then thanked the kids for their service.