In the news
Mohammad Farhadi, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s nominee to lead the ministry of science, was approved by the parliament, ending a long standoff between the moderate president and the conservative-dominated assembly.
Prince Feisal al-Hussein, a brother of Jordan’s king, said moderate Muslims must take a stand against extremists who violate the core values of Islam.
David Petraeus, the retired four-star Army general who resigned as head of the CIA in 2012 amid a scandal over an extramarital affair, will be the keynote speaker Dec. 8 at the annual UJA-Federation of New York Wall Street Dinner.
Donte Frye, 39, a Baltimore man with past convictions for stabbing two roommates in separate attacks, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for assault after throwing boiling water on his latest roommate after a dispute over sausages.
Gary McGrath of Hampton, N.H., was working in his garage when a groundhog from his backyard charged at him multiple times, forcing his wife to call an officer to kill the animal, which McGrath said “was not nice.”
Cameo Adawn Crispi, 32, pleaded guilty to charges of reckless burning, attempted assault by a prisoner and intoxication after the Utah woman used burning bacon to start a fire in her ex-boyfriend’s house while drunk and then struggled with officers.
J.R. Nicholson, an 85-year-old Texas rancher who went to a hospital because of a dizzy spell, was unexpectedly accompanied by his dog, Buddy, who was put in the ambulance with Nicholson after a driver flagged the vehicle down to report that Buddy had hitched a ride on a side step.
Lloyd Irving Taylor, 71, a former San Diego tax attorney and accountant, was sentenced to 57 months in prison for 19 felonies after he “tried in every conceivable way to avoid paying his taxes, from using the identities of dead children and fake churches to converting income to gold coins,” IRS agent Erick Martinez said.
Angus Sinclair, 69, a convicted serial rapist, was found guilty in the October 1977 rape and murder of two teenage girls in Edinburgh, becoming the first person convicted under changes to Scotland’s double-jeopardy law, which allowed him to be retried for the crimes after a case against him collapsed in 2007.