In the news
Ryan Zinke, the new secretary of the interior, who rode a horse to work on his first day on the job, announced the start of “Doggy Days at Interior,” where employees will be allowed to occasionally take their dogs to the office — a policy first for a federal agency.
Melissa Holden, 40, pleaded innocent to an armed- robbery charge after police in Pittsfield, Mass., said they found her asleep in a building hallway with bottles of vodka and Gatorade — items taken at knife- point during a robbery of a nearby liquor store.
Adalie Rivera, 13, of Lubbock, Texas, who disappeared while on vacation with her family in Colorado Springs, Colo., was discovered by a farmer when she hopped off a coal train in search of food after traveling about 300 miles to Dumas in the Texas panhandle, police said.
Ron Ogletree, a police officer in Valley Head, Ala., said a 5- year- old girl was struck by a car and killed near her home after school without knowing that her 39- year- old mother had died about 30 minutes earlier in a head- on crash on the same highway about 7 miles away.
Paul Conger Jr., 74, a former Alabama judge who was working as a Social Security adjudicator, was sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison for accepting a gratuity for an official act and other counts after pleading guilty to having sex at the Tuscaloosa courthouse with a woman seeking benefits.
David Young, spokesman for Fort Collins, Colo., said the city will appeal a federal judge’s ruling blocking the city from enforcing a 2015 ordinance barring women from going topless after two women filed a lawsuit because the public- nudity law didn’t apply to men.
Rhonda Shoffner, 41, of Middletown, Pa., faces aggravatedassault and other charges after, police said, she severely beat her daughter, described as under the age of 13, as well as choked her and then kicked her out of their house when she incorrectly recited Bible verses.
Prayuth Chan- ocha, prime minister of Thailand, invoked special powers granted by the country’s interim constitution to force automobile drivers and their passengers to wear seat belts in a bid to cut down on highway deaths.
Andrew Klein, a Santa Monica, Calif., firefighter, spent 20 minutes performing mouth- to- snout resuscitation to revive a lifeless, 10- year- old bichon frise/ Shih Tzu mix named Nalu that he and other firefighters rescued from inside a burning apartment.