American Scene

Police say they were called to the home Thursday afternoon after a woman reported seeing a man try to pry open the front door.

They say that they ordered the man to identify himself and that Mr. Gates refused. According to a police report, Mr. Gates then called the officer a racist and said, “This is what happens to black men in America.”

Officers said they tried to calm down the 58-year-old director of Harvard’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, who responded, “You don’t know who you’re messing with,” according to the police report.

Mr, Gates was arrested on a disorderly conduct charge after police said he “exhibited loud and tumultuous behavior.” He was released later that day on his own recognizance and arraignment was scheduled for Aug. 26.

Police and prosecutors declined to comment Monday. Mr. Gates’s lawyer, fellow Harvard scholar Charles Ogletree, was not available for comment.

MONTANA

112-year-old man now world’s oldest

GREAT FALLS | Walter Breuning learned to read by kerosene lantern, remembers his grandfather telling him about fighting in the Civil War, and cast his first presidential ballot for Woodrow Wilson.

The 112-year-old resident of Great Falls, Mont., apparently became the world’s oldest man when 113-year-old Henry Allingham of England died Saturday. Mr. Breuning was born Sept. 21, 1896.

Now living at the Rainbow Retirement Home, Mr. Breuning takes one aspirin and eats two meals a day, strolling the halls wearing a suit and tie and still walks the ramps to his second-floor apartment. His advice for living to a ripe old age? Stay active in body and mind, don’t eat too much and be good to people.

“If you’re in good health, you’ve got everything there is,” he told the Great Falls Tribune.

Longevity doesn’t run in Mr. Breuning’s family. He said his father, a civil engineer, died at 50, and his mother, a housewife, at 46. Two brothers and two sisters died in their 70s, he said.

The Guinness world records Web site said Mr. Breuning now appears to be the world’s oldest man and that it would make a formal announcement as soon as the record has been verified.

NEW MEXICO

Indian tribes take aim at diabetes

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