In the news
Yiwei Zheng, 43, a university philosophy professor in St. Cloud, Minn., will pay a $500,000 fine and faces up to three years in prison after pleading guilty to smuggling items made of elephant ivory from the United States to China.
Juan Coronado, supervisor of a plumbing crew in Oakland, Calif., said firefighters helped dig out a plumber who fell about 15 feet below street level when the ground beneath him gave way, trapping him for 12 hours in a 10-foot sewer line.
Jacob McGuckin, 31, was charged for the fourth time with driving under the influence when police in Dover, Del., got a complaint that a man and a woman had been sleeping for several hours in their car while it was parked beside a convenience store’s gas pump.
Ervin Brinker, the former CEO of a mental-health agency in Battle Creek, Mich., who previously pleaded guilty to embezzlement and Medicaid-fraud conspiracy, will spend at least 32 months in prison for using $510,000 in public funds to hire a fortuneteller.
Ray Grimes, a judge in Montgomery County, Tenn., has been reprimanded and ordered by the state Board of Judicial Conduct to stop hearing cases in which his wife, Clarksville attorney Sharon Massey, represents defendants.
Donald Pugh, wanted on a warrant in Lima, Ohio, was arrested in Florida after he sent the Lima Police Department a selfie of himself in a sport coat and sunglasses, with the message “Here is a better photo that one is terrible,” referring to his mug shot on the department’s Facebook page.
Bill Watson, the sheriff of Portsmouth, Va., said Mayor Kenny Wright sped off when Watson ordered him to stop because Wright’s car had an expired inspection sticker, resulting in a chase that involved several police vehicles and Wright being charged with felony eluding.
Dave McGarvey, a Pennsylvania state trooper, said two 13-year-old boys from Frankstown Township escaped injury but are facing charges of disorderly conduct after one doused the other’s jeans with lighter fluid and set it ablaze so they could make a video and show it online.
Alexander Protopopov, chief of the penitentiary in Russia’s northern Komi region, has been detained on allegations that he allowed workers to dismantle a 30-mile stretch of road so he could sell 7,000 reinforced-concrete paving slabs for about $79,000.