In the news
Mark Roberts, aviculture manager at the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust reserve in England, said that after high temperatures encouraged a rare flock of Andean flamingos to lay eggs there for the first time since 2003, workers gave the birds fertilized eggs from Chilean flamingos to hatch because the Andean birds’ eggs were not viable.
Edward Moore, 62, was sentenced to 120 years in prison for beating two men and two women with a hammer and a wooden handrail in a vacant St. Louis school where homeless people slept, saying he believed the victims had ransacked his belongings and stolen food.
Joshua Finley, 32, of Maryville, Ill., has been charged with reckless conduct after the “nap time bag” that he packed and took to his 4-year-old son’s day care contained sheets, blankets and a gun, which the boy immediately took to a teacher, police said.
Simon Morris, 31, is facing a manslaughter charge after police said he fatally beat and kicked a man for at least five minutes, despite efforts by others to intervene, when the man stole Morris’ wallet outside a New Orleans gas station.
James Drinkard, assistant city manger in Alpharetta, Ga., said that because of the Confederate battle flag’s “divisive nature,” the city has decided to ban the flag from its annual Old Soldiers Day Parade, which began decades ago as a tribute to Civil War veterans.
Michael Coppola, 43, a suspended police chief in New Jersey, is accused of buying cocaine online after he went to a post office box to collect an order but instead picked up a package placed by detectives that contained imitation cocaine, according to authorities.
Damone Ussin, 41, faces a second-degree murder charge after police in Louisiana said he stabbed his 34-year-old girlfriend, Traniel Gray, 29 times while they were out walking with her 1-year-old son in a stroller, leaving her to die beside the crying child.
Octaveon Woods, an Illinois man who falsely claimed to represent bigname entertainers and duped clients out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, was sentenced in Atlanta to nearly four years in federal prison.
Reynaldo Almonte, a reporter for Latino Public Radio, was charged with simple assault after being accused of putting his hands around another man’s neck during an altercation at a Providence, R.I., mayoral debate.