In the news
Robert Dye, the mayor of Farmers Branch, Texas, said his town’s repeal of a decade-old ordinance that made English the city’s official language will help the city move beyond its contentious past.
Angela Goebel-Bain of the Maine State Museum explained that earmuffs are “something Mainers can be proud of” in describing the town of Farmington’s celebration of Chester Greenwood Day, honoring the man who invented them.
Elisha Mahar, a 20-yearold former substitute teacher of Rochester, N.H., was arrested after, police said, she encouraged students at Somersworth Middle School to smoke pot and gave one student a vaping device.
Stephanie LaRocque, a special-education teacher’s assistant at Middletown High School in Rhode Island, was arrested over accusations that she kicked a 16-year-old nonverbal, wheelchair-using student because he was moving too slowly.
Michele Walker, a deputy clerk whose Christian County Circuit Court in Missouri received a chewedup jury questionnaire with a note apologizing and saying “the dog thought it was his,” responded in a letter addressed to the dog asking the dog to thank his owners for taping the survey back together.
Sergio Jose Martinez, a 31-year-old Mexican who has been deported from the United States more than a dozen times, was sentenced in Oregon to 35 years in prison after pleading guilty to sodomy, kidnapping, sex abuse and other charges in attacks on two women.
Alex Bowen said that when he found the only worker at an empty South Carolina Waffle House asleep, he took his meal into his own hands, chronicling with selfies posted on Facebook how he made his own double Texas bacon cheese steak melt about 2 a.m. at the 24-7 diner.
Ed Graybeal, the Washington County, Tenn., sheriff, fired timekeeper Shelly Graybeal and jailer Scott Johnson after communications between the couple — his daughter and son-in-law — revealed that they had been using meth and other narcotics, the sheriff’s office said.
Michelle Pettis, a technician at the Emerald Coast Wildlife Refuge in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., said an opossum drank bourbon after breaking into a Florida liquor store, but after a couple of days of sobering up at the refuge, it was released unharmed.