■UNITED STATES
Nude model released
A New York judge dismissed public lewdness and other charges on Monday against a model who posed for a nude photo shoot at a museum while visitors looked on. Kathleen “K.C.” Neill was arrested in August during photographer Zach Hyman’s shoot in the arms and armor department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Defense lawyer Thomas Hillgardner said Neill did nothing indecent while posing in an institution full of depictions of nudes. He said she was making art and he noted court rulings saying public nakedness isn’t necessarily lewd. Prosecutors said they weren’t sure they could prove the charges beyond reasonable doubt.
■UNITED STATES
Mosque arsonist sentenced
A court in Tennessee sentenced a man to more than 14 years in prison for burning down a local mosque, the Justice Department said on Monday. Michael Corey Golden, 24, was sentenced to 14 years and three months in prison after pleading guilty to having vandalized and burned down the mosque in February 2008. Golden admitted to using Molotov cocktail explosives to destroy the mosque, which he ignited while a co-defendant painted swastikas and the phrase “White Power” on the walls of the building in the town of Columbia. “The right to worship without fear of this kind of violent interference is among our most fundamental civil rights,” said Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for civil rights. “We will aggressively prosecute anyone who seeks to intimidate or injure any congregation because of what they believe, how they worship or who they are.”
■NORWAY
Gingerbread town destroyed
The people of Bergen rolled out the cookie dough on Monday as local police tried to sniff out vandals who destroyed the city’s traditional Christmas decoration — a town of gingerbread houses. On Saturday vandals entered a massive tent in central Bergen and crushed most of the 650-cookie-house town, topping off the ruins with paint and fire extinguisher foam. Police in the country’s second-biggest city asked the public to offer information that could lead to the perpetrators. Local media reported that the destruction had shocked the residents of Bergen, a picturesque city on the North Sea coast where children decorate hundreds of gingerbread houses every year before Christmas.
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