In the news
Shaun Meadows, an Air Force veteran who lost his legs in a 2008 explosion in Afghanistan, parachuted with a sky-diving team onto the front lawn of the 3,500square-foot home provided to Meadows and his family by Operation Finally Home, a nonprofit organization that donates new, mortgage-free homes to wounded and disabled veterans.
Javier Ortiz, a spokesman for the Fraternal Order of Police in Miami, said on the basis of information he has received, the officer who fatally shot a naked man who was mauling and chewing on the face of another man on a downtown Miami causeway off-ramp “is a hero and saved a life.”
Vivian Salameh, 45, a Christian Jordanian woman and former employee of the Jordan Dubai Islamic Bank, said she is suing the bank for arbitrary dismissal after she refused a new dress code forcing her to wear a head cover, adding, “I’m Christian. Why should I wear something not dictated by my religion?”
William Sackman, 53, of St. Louis has been charged with felony retail theft after police say he tried to leave a Shiloh, Ill., supermarket without paying for 10 containers of infant formula, 18 bottles of liquor, ribs and other merchandise.
Yukio Edano, Japan’s trade and industry minister, told a parliamentary investigative panel that he did not deliberately mislead the public about last year’s nuclear crisis, saying he did not fully understand the damage at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant after the earthquake and tsunami.
Maureen Lichtveld, a professor at Tulane University, has been awarded $3.7 million by the Baton Rouge Area Foundation for a three-year project to learn how much seafood Louisiana residents eat and to examine typical environmental hazards that can affect seafood so additional risks for consumers can be accurately assessed if there’s another disaster like the 2010 oil spill.
Zhang Yongming, 56, was arrested in southwestern China and accused of killing 11 people and dismembering, burning and burying their bodies to destroy the evidence.
Enda Kenny, Ireland’s prime minister, made a televised appeal to voters to support the European Union’s fiscal treaty in a referendum this week, saying, “This treaty will not solve all of our problems, but it is one part of the solution.”
Stanley Shew-a-tjon, 62, of Davie, Fla., was sentenced to eight years in prison for running a Ponzi scheme that swindled between 600 and 800 investors out of $8 million.