Aron Ralston, 38, a Colorado adventurer whose forearm-amputation ordeal was made into the movie 127 Hours, and his girlfriend, Vita Shannon, were arrested in connection with a weekend altercation at her home, though Ralston’s case was dismissed later at the request of the Denver city attorney.
Dwayne Bohac, a Republican state lawmaker in Texas, held a news conference with his 8-year-old son Reagan and a Houston man dressed as Santa Claus to “stand in defense of Christmas” and promote the law Bohac sponsored that removes legal risks from exchanging holiday greetings in classrooms.
Sen. Mark Kirk, 54, the Illinois Republican who returned to Congress last year after suffering a stroke in January 2012 that left him partially paralyzed on his left side and blind in one quadrant of his left eye, had his gallbladder removed because of an unrelated medical issue.
Matthew Hurtado, owner of the Snuggle House in Madison, Wis., where customers could enjoy an hour of cuddling in a bed with a professional snuggler for $60, has decided to shut it down just three weeks after it opened, choosing to pack up under intense scrutiny from city officials who questioned whether the place was a front for a brothel.
Merrill Newman, of Palo Alto, Calif., the 85-year old U.S. veteran who was detained for weeks by North Korea, said that the videotaped confession in which he apologized for killing North Koreans during the war was given involuntarily and under duress.
John Baird, Canada’s foreign minister, said his country intends to extend its seabed claims in the Arctic to include the North Pole.
Elian Gonzalez, 20, who as a young Cuban came to the U.S. on a raft and was the subject of an international custody dispute more than a decade ago, arrived in Ecuador as part of a delegation to this week’s 23rd World Festival of Youth and Students in his first trip overseas since he was reunited with his father in 2000.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/10/2013