In the news

Douglas Shulman, the Internal Revenue Service chief, told a House subcommittee that the agency issued 59.2 million refund checks totaling $174.4 billion through March 10, with the average refund check worth about $2,946, down marginally from last year’s $3,022.

Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, said as he visited Malaysia that North Korea’s plan to launch a long-range rocket into space threatens regional peace and undermines a “positive atmosphere” established recently by the United States and North Korea.

Dan O’Leary, the administrator of Keller, Texas, has laid himself off, saying the Fort Worth-area city of nearly 40,000 has two assistant managers and does not need a third administrator.

Victoria Nuland, spokesman for the State Department, said the Obama administration has decided to waive congressional conditions to allow the release of $1.3 billion in military aid to Egypt and that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will certify that Egypt is meeting its obligations under its peace treaty with Israel, which will allow about $200 million in economic aid to continue.

Edward Avery, 69, a defrocked Philadelphia priest, was sentenced to 2 1/2 to five years in prison after pleading guilty to sexually abusing an altar boy in a church sacristy, his plea coming days before he was to go on trial with two other priests in a child sex-abuse case.

Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire New York mayor, is committing $220 million to his charity to go toward reducing tobacco use in countries where millions of people smoke.

John Robert Hart, 41, and Dennis Jay Mayer, 43, of Palm Springs, Calif., were ordered to pay a nearly $900 fine after they pleaded guilty to indecent exposure in Dominica after they were arrested during a stop on a gay cruise of the Caribbean on police accusations that they were seen having sex in plain sight of people on land.

Charles, Prince of Wales, was joined by his wife, Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, as he made his first official visit to Sweden, nearly 40 years after Carl XVI Gustaf became the country’s king.

Brittany Kirk

of Boston said she thinks her cat Sugar used up “one or two or maybe eight” of her nine lives after surviving a 19-story plunge from Kirk’s open window with no broken bones or cuts, just some bruising on her lungs.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 03/23/2012

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