In the news
■ Peter Sokolowski, editor-at-large of Merriam-Webster, said that in choosing “vaccine” as its 2021 word of the year, the dictionary publisher chose a word at the center of pandemic science and online searches as well as ongoing “debates regarding policy, politics and political affiliation.”
■ Arnez Merriweather, 30, is being hailed as a hero after he caught a 3-year-old girl tossed by her mother from the second floor of a burning apartment building in St. Louis and then helped the mother and four others escape the blaze, authorities said.
■ Julie Anne Genter,a member of New Zealand’s Parliament, said she’s “so glad we didn’t walk” in opting for a 10-minute bicycle ride to a hospital after going into labor giving birth to a baby girl about an hour after she got there.
■ Nicola Townsend, manager of the Tan Hill Inn in Yorkshire Dales, England, said staff members organized movies, a quiz night and karaoke for more than 60 people who were stranded for three days at the pub by a blizzard that downed power lines and blocked roads.
■ Aaron Coleman, 21, a Democratic Kansas state legislator out on bail after an Oct. 30 domestic battery arrest, is facing fresh calls for his resignation after being charged by Kansas State Police with suspicion of drunken driving — his second arrest in less than a month.
■ Keith Meadows, police chief of South Fulton, Ga., said a 5-year-old girl was fatally shot by her 3-year-old cousin who found his father’s handgun, left loaded and unsecured, as the family gathered for Thanksgiving.
■ Nicole Aguiar, a Spirit Airlines spokeswoman, said a 42-year-old woman accused of punching a flight attendant and pulling another attendant’s hair before being subdued was charged with public intoxication and removed from a plane in Nashville, Tenn.
■ Aceon Ja’shun Hopkins, 20, under guard at a Pascagoula, Miss., hospital where he was being treated for gunshot wounds, escaped while still wearing shackles after sneaking out of a bathroom and changing into clothes he stole from a parked car, police said.
■ Mike Parson, Missouri’s Republican governor who had to cancel an international trade trip in March 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic, postponed a trade trip to Israel and Greece set to begin Thursday over travel restrictions resulting from the virus’ new omicron variant.