In the news
■ Nikki Haynes and Britney Sims first planned to give all 480 elementary school students in Lone Oak, Texas, Valentine’s Day goody bags, but as word spread, enough sweets and treats were donated to fill 1,100 bags, enough for every student in the district.
■ John Holley, sheriff of Bertie County, N.C., said a deputy, who was alerted by a motorist, stopped a garbage truck so that the truck driver could free a snack-seeking bear that had climbed into the vehicle during a stop and became trapped by netting used to keep trash from blowing out.
■ Rex Sakamoto of New York City said there was a smell “like a campfire” after a vape pen battery overheated in a bag stowed in a plane’s overhead bin and started a fire that was quickly extinguished by a flight attendant at LaGuardia airport.
■ Dennis Corcoran, police superintendent in Papua, New Guinea, is trying to track down about 275 stateowned, high-end cars that are missing in the impoverished Pacific nation since it hosted the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in November.
■ Jake Burdett, 20, a student at Salisbury University in Maryland, was charged with illegal wiretapping after being accused of streaming on Facebook a conversation he had with a staff member of U.S. Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., without first getting the person’s permission.
■ Sean Dey, 40, of Torrington, Conn., who pleaded guilty to making machine guns, including AK-47- and AR-style guns, suppressors and other firearms, and selling them to felons, was sentenced to two years in federal prison.
■ Alexander Parker, a Guatemala native and a legal permanent U.S. resident, filed a lawsuit against a Pennsylvania judge, saying she wrongly assumed that he was in the U.S. illegally and had him detained on his wedding day, when Parker and his fiancee arrived at the courthouse for the nuptials.
■ Grant Bissell, spokesman for the Jefferson County, Mo., sheriff’s office, said the department has apologized and is still investigating why a deputy used mud to cover a private home’s outdoor surveillance camera as he looked for a registered sex offender.
■ Shakira Graham, 24, was arrested in Shaker Heights, Ohio, on an aggravated-murder charge after police said she went out with a man she met on a dating website, then returned to his house two days later where she robbed and fatally shot him.