In the news

■ George Merkel, 52, a police officer in Prince George’s County, Md., faces prison time after being convicted of assaulting a sleeping homeless woman by shouting obscenities to wake her up, pulling her to her feet by the ears and hitting her in the head, prosecutors said.

■ William Young called tails to win a coin flip to take an at-large position on the five-seat City Council in Mission Woods, Kan., after he and Michael Knierim each got 35 votes in a community with fewer than 200 residents.

■ Joan Lenard, a federal judge in Miami, granted a request from Jimmy Sabatino, 41, to let him serve a 20year sentence in solitary at a federal Supermax prison in Colorado so he can stop committing cons, after he pleaded guilty to running a $10 million fraud scheme from his cell at Miami’s federal lockup.

■ Abbie Crawford of Council Bluffs, Iowa, who created the Iowa Cookie Crumps, a volunteer group now rushing to box and send 30,000 cookies overseas for the holidays, said the group’s one purpose is to improve the morale of deployed U.S. service men and women.

■ Jesper Cederholm, a police investigator in Copenhagen, Denmark, said a man has confessed to stealing and selling online 12 of the 3,000 familiar green public benches that are scattered around the capital city and first introduced there in the 1880s.

■ Jacoby Randall, 28, a prison guard from Houston, Texas, pleaded guilty to accepting bribes to smuggle banned items including food, marijuana and electronics in to inmates being held at a federal lockup in Conroe and now faces up to 15 years behind bars, prosecutors said.

■ Louis Varvella, 49, told police in Bridgeport, Conn., that he found an AR-15 assault-style rifle on the street and was bicycling to the police station to turn it in when he was arrested on multiple counts, including breaching the peace and possessing a weapon.

■ John Wade, who witnessed a high-speed interstate highway crash in Harper Woods, Mich., that killed four people, said the crash’s only survivor, a 1-year-old child, likely lived because the baby was buckled into a car safety seat.

■ Erica Sanders of Florrisant, Mo., met with the principal and a police officer after her 11-year-old daughter told her that an elementary school teacher, now on leave after apologizing for “poor judgment,” spit a mouthful of sunflower seeds in her face.