In the news
D. Michael Collins, 70, the mayor of Toledo, Ohio, lay heavily sedated and in critical condition at a hospital a day after suffering cardiac arrest while driving during a snowstorm.
Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, signed a proclamation declaring Feb. 2 to be Chris Kyle Day in Texas, where the late Navy SEAL depicted in the movie American Sniper was raised and lived after serving in Iraq.
Jeffrey Callison, a California prisons spokesman, said weekend visiting for inmates passed without 80-year-old mass murderer Charles Manson getting married to a 26-year-old devotee, meaning the couple’s license is set to expire Thursday.
President Barack Obama pushed back against criticism of his foreign policy, arguing in an interview on NBC’s Today show that Americans are safer on his watch and that the U.S. has been “pretty successful” preventing major attacks since Sept. 11, 2001.
James Robertson, 56, a Detroit man who typically walks 21 miles to get to and from his factory job, has benefited from other people’s crowdfunding efforts to help him buy a car, with thousands of people contributing more than $87,000 in a single day after the Detroit Free Press profiled Robertson.
Leroy Hopke, 32, of Butte, Mont., who authorities say offered to sell marijuana to an off-duty police officer leaving a store with his wife, was arrested on suspicion of possession of dangerous drugs.
Shawn Michael Robinson, 27, of Alexandria, Va., who police say was impersonating an officer when he pulled over a car being driven by a real off-duty officer, turned himself in and was being held without bond.
Oskar Groening, 93, a man dubbed the “accountant of Auschwitz” who is accused of helping the Nazis economically and supporting mass killings by processing the belongings stolen from death camp victims, will go on trial in Germany in April on allegations he was an accessory to 300,000 murders.
Mohammad al-Momani, a spokesman for Jordan’s government, said the kingdom’s ambassador will return to Israel after he was removed over growing confrontations at a hilltop site in Jerusalem holy to both Jews and Muslims.