LITTLE ROCK — Genarlow Wilson, 21, released from a Georgia prison after being sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment for having consensual oral sex with another teenager when he was 17, told NBC's Today show that he now wants to pursue a college degree in either sociology or business, adding: "I definitely got into this situation a boy and I'm coming out a man. It's definitely taught me valuable life lessons."
President Bush
will present next week the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, to eight recipients, including To Kill a Mockingbird author Harper Lee and Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
Pope Benedict XVI
called conscientious objection a right that must be recognized by the pharmaceutical profession and urged participants at the 25th International Congress of Catholic Pharmacists at the Vatican to use conscientious objection to avoid dispensing drugs with "clearly immoral purposes such as abortion or euthanasia."
Rep. Michael McNulty, a 60-year-old Democrat, confirmed that he will retire from Congress after 20 years of representing seven eastern New York counties and said his health is fine, but acknowledged that the effects of the polio he suffered as a child have reduced his stamina and mobility in recent years.
Alexander Pichushkin, who was convicted in a Moscow court of killing 48 people in an effort to fill each of a chessboard's 64 squares with a death, has been sentenced to life in a hard labor colony, the harshest possible punishment under Russian law.
Rep. Tom Tancredo, a Colorado Republican and presidential candidate, said he will not seek re-election in 2008 to his congressional seat, adding, "I feel my job, my task, has been completed."
Elizabeth Taylor, 75, can keep a Vincent van Gogh painting, View of the Asylum, worth an estimated $20 million, after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider an ownership claim by three people who said their great-grandmother was forced to sell the work before fleeing Nazi Germany in 1939.
Dan Bartlett, 36, a former counselor to President Bush who left the White House in June, is moving to Austin, Texas, to join Public Strategies Inc., a public affairs consulting firm, as a senior strategist.
Joey Chestnut, 23, a competitive eater from San Jose, Calif., who has already triumphed at a famous New York hot dog eating contest, swallowed 103 small hamburgers in eight minutes to take home $10,000 at the Krystal Square Off in Chattanooga, Tenn., surpassing the previous record of 97 Krystal burgers, held by Japan's Takeru Kobayashi, who did not compete this year.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 10/30/2007