In the news
Mary Horomanski, 58, of Erie, Pa., said her eyes “just about popped out” of her head when she went online to check her electric bill and was stunned at the amount — more than $284 billion — which prompted her son to call the electric company, which blamed the error on a misplaced decimal point.
Hannah Lindeman and her husband, Taylor, rushed to the hospital on Christmas Day but had to pull over on a highway outside Chisago City, Minn., so she could give birth to their daughter, Poppy, in the car’s front passenger seat.
Barb Voorhees, a member of a Methodist church in Celina, Ohio, whose pastor preached about generosity, said she and several dozen church members drove to a Waffle House restaurant on Christmas Eve where they tipped its five employees more than $3,500.
John Cromer, organizer of a Christmas toy giveaway in Detroit, commenting after a 39-year-old woman was arrested for pulling a knife on another woman during a brawl that broke out as they waited in line, said people are “under a lot of stress and tension” during the holidays.
Julie Reeds, 33, of Springfield, Mo., pleaded innocent to five felonies and a misdemeanor after police said she stole a car with a 5-week-old baby inside that was parked outside a day care, quickly abandoned the vehicle and then used a debit card taken from it to buy cigarettes.
Aaron Thompson, a sheriff’s sergeant in Washington County, Utah, broke a path through an ice-covered pond on Christmas Day so he could dive in to save a drowning 8-year-old boy who had fallen through while chasing his dog.
Laura Plummer, 33, of Hull, England, who said she took a medicine legal in Britain to Egypt to help a partner who suffers chronic back pain, was convicted in an Egyptian court of smuggling a banned painkiller into the country and sentenced to three years in prison.
Tori Fugate said workers at an animal shelter in Kansas City, Mo., “were crying big, ugly ol’ tears” when Polina, a big mastiff mix that lived at the shelter for 445 days because it is afraid of children and other dogs, finally was adopted just before Christmas.
Alan Robinson and Walter Macfarlane, two Hawaii men who have been friends for 60 years, turned to family history and DNA-matching websites to determine that they’re actually brothers and revealed the surprise to family and friends over the holidays.