In the news
C.W. Whitson of Spring Hill, Tenn., who won $1 million in the Tennessee Lottery in March 2010, said, “I guess I’m just lucky” after his latest win of $2 million in the state’s Play It Again drawing.
Lucien Greaves, the co-founder of The Satanic Temple, was refused in his request to erect a display featuring an angel falling from heaven into an open fire at the Florida Capitol, which has allowed a Nativity scene, a pole celebrating the fictional holiday “Festivus,” and a chair holding fake pasta with eyeballs and an accompanying “provHerb” from the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Pope Francis made an amateur video praising the world’s “cartoneros,” the poor people who pick through garbage to find recyclable and reusable goods, saying their work is dignified and good for the environment.
Ricardo Martinez, 39, was charged with assaulting a federal officer after he was accused of throwing a lit Molotov cocktail at inspectors at the U.S.-Mexico border crossing in San Diego in an attack that caused a large fireball but no injuries or property damage.
John Podesta, who has taken a one-year assignment as a counselor to President Barack Obama, apologized after comparing the House Republican leadership with the Jonestown cult, which was responsible for the deaths of more than 900 people, saying “my snark got in front of my judgment.”
Robert Hutton, presumed dead for decades and thought to be a victim of serial killer John Wayne Gacy, was reunited with his family after investigators found him alive in Montana.
Jonique Ramon Webster, who was released after 10 years of incarceration for home burglary, had about nine hours of freedom before burglarizing the home of a central Texas prosecutor, a crime that earned him 40 more years in prison.
Thomas Gerg, the town administrator in Dietramszell, Germany, said the town council voted unanimously to strip Adolf Hitler of honorary citizenship, bestowed 80 years ago, after hearing testimony from a woman who lost relatives in the Holocaust.
Linda Payton, captain of The Salvation Army’s Sunset Corps, said someone dropped a diamond ring into a kettle outside a south Florida grocery store, making this the fourth year the group has received a similar donation from what appears to be the same person.