In the news
Kandice Mason, a middle-school teacher in Raeford, N.C., who calls pole dancing an art form and a good way to stay in shape, was suspended from her job while district officials investigate whether she violated a school role-models policy after she posted a video of her dancing on her Facebook account.
Taequan Mitchell, 17, of Savannah, Ga., is being called a hero for waking an 85-year-old neighbor whose house had caught fire from a faulty air conditioner and pulling the elderly man to safety before firefighters arrived to extinguish the blaze.
Matteo Salvini, Italy’s deputy prime minister, warned that he knows “now how to educate these idiots if they are caught” after two English-speaking tourists stripped down to bathe in a fountain in front of the country’s “tomb of the unknown soldier” monument in Rome.
Bob Newcomb, 75, of Harviell, Mo., is still hospitalized two weeks after suffering 16 rib fractures, two broken vertebrae and a collapsed lung when he was trampled by two rodeo bulls that began to fight as he was loading them into a trailer.
Mark Opgrande, the county jail spokesman in Oklahoma City, said several inmates on the 12th floor who had knocked a hole in the wall were caught lowering strips of bedsheets to the ground to smuggle marijuana, Ecstasy pills, tobacco and cellphones into the lockup.
Dakota Walker, 21, of Topeka, Kan., was sentenced to 6½ years in federal prison after pleading guilty to robbing five banks in four states between November 2016 and January 2017.
Charlette Solis, a police spokesman in Mobile, Ala., said investigators are trying to find the owner of an old, brown briefcase that a resident turned in and that contained 17 individually wrapped items, including what appear to be fossilized fish, animal teeth and a small human mask.
Jeffrey Tomerlin, 45, was arrested on assault and public-intoxication charges in Nashville, Tenn., after police say he threw a biscuit at his ex-girlfriend’s face, and threatened to kill her and her new boyfriend.
Jordan Taylor, 20, a grocery stock clerk in Baton Rouge, is being recognized for his act of kindness toward an autistic 17-year-old that was filmed and posted online, receiving a new car and more than $100,000 raised through crowdfunding to attend Grambling State University so he can study to become a math teacher.