In the news
Jim Kenney, mayor of Philadelphia, said the city should discuss the fate of a statue of former Mayor Frank Rizzo, who critics say led the city at a time when police brutality was common, prompting Rizzo’s son to defend his father as a fair person who treated people equally regardless of race.
Jim Hinkle, a magistrate judge in Gwinnett County, Ga., suspended for online comments that called critics of Confederate monuments in the South “snowflakes” and “nut cases,” said he didn’t “see anything controversial” about his posts.
Michael Lefancheck, police chief in Baldwinsville, N.Y., said a 62-year-old paralyzed woman who fell asleep while fishing in her motorized wheelchair and accidentally drove it into the Seneca River was rescued when people nearby heard her screams for help.
Lisa Theris, 25, of Louisville, Ala., was covered in scrapes and bug bites and dropped nearly 50 pounds but survived 28 days lost alone in some woods before a passing driver spotted her walking naked along a highway, Bullock County sheriff’s deputies said.
Amy Panzeca, 40, an elementary school teacher in Springboro, Ohio, pleaded innocent to charges that included child endangerment and permitting drug use after police said she allowed her 15-year-old son to sell the psychedelic drug LSD and then let teenagers use it in her home.
Wuilly Arteaga, 23, a violinist who played somber renditions of Venezuela’s national anthem while standing in clouds of tear gas as he participated in anti-government protests, has been freed after spending more than two weeks in prison.
Edward Carter, wrongly convicted of a 1974 rape but freed after spending 35 years in prison when old fingerprints implicated another suspect, was awarded $1.7 million under a new Michigan law allowing him to seek compensation for his time behind bars.
Marie Mueller, a customs office spokesman in Munich, said the stench was “unbearable” as agents X-rayed a package from Nigeria and found 20 rotten snake heads being sent to Germany as a delicacy.
David Weinlick and Elizabeth Runze, strangers when they said “I do” in an arranged marriage in front of thousands of shoppers at Minnesota’s Mall of America in June 1998, will renew their vows at the mall Friday, 19 years and four children later, as Weinlick faces terminal colon cancer.