In the news
Queen Elizabeth II sent her congratulations to Britain’s Royal Air Force on the 100th anniversary of its founding in 1918, saying in a message to officers that it had “defended our freedom gallantly.”
Damonte Steele, a high school sophomore, is one of six students from Mississippi walking 50 miles from Dundee to Memphis in observance of the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., aiming to travel 10-15 miles a day and hold community meetings after they stop each day.
Michelle Robertson, a Missouri animal rescue manager, told visitors at a party celebrating the anniversary of five steers’ breakout from a St. Louis slaughterhouse that the animals “ran for their lives and they won.”
Harold Holland, 83, and his first wife, 78-yearold Lillian Barnes, decided they “want to walk the last mile together,” regardless of their 1967 divorce, after their other spouses died and they reconnected at a family reunion, so they’re getting remarried later this month in Lexington, Ky.
Jahantap Ahmadi, 25, whose photo went viral in Afghanistan when she took a college entrance exam sitting on the floor with her infant daughter asleep on her lap, is now enrolled in a private university in Kabul after two government officials sponsored her tuition and rent in the city for her family.
Al Hassan Ag Abdoul Aziz Ag Mohamed Ag Mahmoud, who was leader of a jihadi group that controlled Timbuktu for most of a year beginning in 2012, was handed over by Malian authorities to the International Criminal Court for trial on war crimes charges, according to a prosecutor.
Jessica Kensky and Patrick Downes, who were newlyweds when they both lost legs in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, are releasing a picture book, Rescue & Jessica: A Life-Changing Friendship, loosely based on Kensky’s own service dog, a black Lab named Rescue.
Timothy Hunley of Wilmington, N.C., saved a woman’s life when, while driving home from work in Georgia, he disregarded his own safety and pulled her from a burning motor home wreck, South Carolina authorities said.
Micheal Brown, a high school senior in Houston, got in to all 20 of the selective colleges he applied to — including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and Georgetown — and will have a full ride at whichever one he decides to attend.