The world

THURSDAY

QVC guest host Cassie Slane grabbed her chest and fainted while plugging an Android tablet for kids. The camera cut away after she fell into co-host Dan Wheeler’s arms. Wheeler, like a pro, kept listing the benefits of the Android tablet while the camera cut to a close-up of the device.

A new dinosaur named Pegomastax africanus, which is the size of a house cat and described as a cross between “a bird, a vampire and a porcupine,” was identified in a piece of rock from South Africa by University of Chicago paleontologist Paul Sereno.

Bruce Davis, 69, a former member of the notorious Manson Family and a two-time convicted killer was granted a parole that would end a life sentence for the 1972 murders of music teacher Gary Hinman and stuntman Donald “Shorty” Shea. His parole could be reversed on review.

FRIDAY

John Herbert Friedlund, 79, of Kettle Falls, received a 10-year prison sentence for stealing $1 million from an 107-year-old woman who was left living in feces-strewn squalor while he spent her money on guns and tractors.

A Ukrainian court has handed down a suspended three-year prison sentence to Hanna Sinkova, a 21-year-old student activist who fried eggs over the eternal flame at a World War II memorial to protest against the government’s unpayment of war pensions to veterans.

A critically endangered mangrove terrapin turtle that made it to Vietnam decades ago has been returned to its original home in Cambodia.

Jeffrey McMullen tried to rob a Pennsylvania bank of $1 because he hoped to be sent to a federal prison nearby.

WEEKEND

A prototype communications satellite flying as a secondary payload aboard a Space Exploration Technologies Falcon 9 rocket was sent into the wrong orbit because of a problem during launch Sunday evening.

Edward Archbold, 32, collapsed and died after consuming dozens of roaches and worms to win a roach-eating contest that featured a python as the grand prize. Because, you know, everybody needs to win a python.

Finns Taisto Miettinen and Kristina Haapanen added to their victories by taking first place in the North American Wife Carrying Championship at Maine’s Sunday River ski resort. The couple finished with a time of 52.58 seconds on a course that includes hurdles, sand traps and a water hole. They received the woman’s weight in beer and five times her weight in cash ($530).

A campus police officer at the University of South Alabama on Saturday shot and killed an unarmed naked freshman who repeatedly chased, threatened and rushed him.

MONDAY

An outage that cut phone and data service to Sprint customers in parts of California, Oregon and Washington grounded Alaska Airlines flights as it knocked the air carrier’s reservations system off line.

Israel struck targets in the Gaza Strip after Palestinian militants fired rockets at southern Israel, in what they said was a response to an Israeli air strike that killed one militant and wounded a second a day earlier.

Coca-Cola Co, PepsiCo Inc, Dr. Pepper, Snapple Group, Inc., and other beverage makers will begin displaying the calorie count of drinks sold in vending machines next year.

Gjergj Ndreca, 51, a former political prisoner of Albania, set himself on fire after the government ruled out talks on his demands for compensation for his suffering under communism.

TUESDAY

Former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky was sentenced to 30 to 60 years behind bars for sexually abusing 10 boys over 15 years. Sandusky maintained his innocence at the sentencing hearing, saying he had only had sex with his wife.

Mexico said it has killed Heriberto Lazcano, the leader of the brutal Zetas drug gang and the most powerful kingpin to fall in a six-year battle against cartels, but in a surreal twist his body was snatched from a funeral home by armed men.

U.S. physicist David Wineland and France’s Serge Haroche share the 2012 Nobel Prize in physics for trapping electrically-charged atoms, or ions, and changing them from particles to waves with photons.

Joseph Romano, 49, recently convicted of fraud has been charged with seeking to hire a hit man to murder a New York federal judge and prosecutor, then save their heads in formaldehyde as “souvenirs.”

WEDNESDAY

A popular Tunisian children’s magazine is being prosecuted for telling its young readers how to make a petrol bomb.

An appellate court in Moscow, Russia, set free Yekaterina Samutsevich - a member of the imprisoned punk trio Pussy Riot - after her lawyer argued she had less of a role in the February “punk prayer” performance in the city’s main cathedral than her band mates.

Compiled by Gazette staff from a variety

of sources.