In the news
Sepp Blatter, 79, president of world soccer’s governing body, FIFA, who was placed under a criminal investigation by Swiss authorities, reaffirmed that he will not resign, despite calls to do so from World Cup sponsors Coca-Cola and McDonald’s, according to his lawyer.
Ben Carson, a candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, said at a campaign stop in Des Moines, Iowa, that the U.S. should not take in Syrian refugees because they are “infiltrated with jihadists” and should instead help them settle in Turkey and elsewhere in the Middle East.
Anthony Cappola, a Republican candidate for the New Jersey Assembly, has ended his campaign after online news site Politico New Jersey reported on a book he wrote and self-published 12 years ago, called Outrageous, which features rants against Asians, gays and breast-feeding mothers, among others.
Lutz Bachmann, who co-founded the group Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West, was charged with incitement over his Facebook posts that call refugees and other asylum seekers “cattle” and “trash,” German prosecutors said.
Alan Knight of Swansea, Wales, who is serving a fouryear prison sentence after faking a coma to avoid court appearances on charges in the theft of about $64,000 from a neighbor’s bank account, received an additional 14 months for obstructing justice.
Zac Goldsmith, a lawmaker and the former editor of The Ecologist magazine, was chosen in an online primary as the Conservative candidate for mayor of London and will face the Labor Party’s Sadiq Khan in May.
Richard Keiper, 68, of Boyd, Texas, who in 2013 confessed to his involvement in the 1968 shooting death of a 40-year-old Pennsylvania man, was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Troy Newman, the president of the Kansas-based anti-abortion group Operation Rescue who was detained at the Melbourne airport trying to enter Australia even though his visa had been canceled, is awaiting deportation after the country’s highest court ruled he willfully disobeyed Australian law and poses a threat to the “good order.”
Santa Claus, a man from North Pole, Alaska, has begun a write-in campaign for City Council after the town’s regular filing period drew no candidates for the two open seats.