Eric Holder, the U.S. attorney general, personally thanked Drug Enforcement Administration agents in an email for their role in the Mazatlan, Mexico, arrest of that country’s most-wanted drug trafficker, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, saying that the arrest would not have happened “without the courage and commitment of all of you.”
Denise BonGiovanni, a San Francisco animal control officer, said police found 34 meatballs suspected to be poisonous hidden in a neighborhood where a 7-year-old dachshund named Oskar died after eating a meatball laced with strychnine last year.
George W. Bush, the former president, said on ABC’s This Week that his focus on a new initiative to help returning veterans also aids him emotionally, lifting his spirits.
Alex Davis, petty officer third class with the U.S. Coast Guard, told the Key West Citizen that a third rescued Cuban lost at sea for days trying to reach the U.S. by windsurfing across the Florida Straits, and who was subsequently rescued by the military agency, would likely not have survived another day.
Billy Ogletree, an Alabama circuit judge, refused to dismiss a capital-murder charge against Joyce Garrard, who prosecutors say ran her 9-year-old granddaughter, Savannah Hardin, to death as punishment for a lie about eating candy.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany’s foreign minister, said he hopes Washington has understood that surveillance of political partners “can have a political price” and is confident the U.S. will end monitoring of allied countries’ leaderships.
Tamer el-Firgani, an Egyptian prosecutor, accused ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi of passing state secrets to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, the first such explicit detail in an ongoing espionage trial in which the deposed leader could face the death penalty.
Mary Olive Thompson, co-coordinator of a Missouri county spelling bee, called the competition “legendary” after 11-year-old Sophia Hoffman and 13-yearold Kush Sharma went 47 rounds head-to-head without a winner, forcing a postponed finish of the Jackson County, Mo., Spelling Bee after organizers ran out of words to challenge the pair.
Brice Johnson, 19, of north Texas is accused of a hate crime after prosecutors say he contacted a man using the MeetMe phone app, engaged him in a sexual conversation, invited the man to his home and then beat him.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/24/2014