In the news
■ Gerson Lopes praised members of a cleanup crew at Los Cerritos Wetlands in Southern California who found a box containing the ashes of his sister, Damadis Sanchez, and her son, Anthony, whose urns were in a van that was stolen last year just before their funeral.
■ Dan Hazard, a judge in Maumee, Ohio, apologized for letters he wrote in the 1990s to his college newspaper at Ohio State University in which he suggested that gay people with AIDS deserved the illness and told them “please keep your AIDS to yourselves.”
■ Candace Talley, 27, of Winslow, N.J., a former child services caseworker in Pennsylvania, has been charged with human trafficking after, authorities say, she coerced a client into prostitution in exchange for a favorable child-custody recommendation.
■ Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan’s governor, has been selected to give the Democrats’ response to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, and Texas Rep. Veronica Escobar will deliver the response in Spanish.
■ Amber Lowery, director of Mitchell County Animal Rescue in North Carolina, said the shelter has waived the adoption fee in hopes that someone will take Perdita, a 4-yearold cat that staffers thought was in pain because it kept slapping people, but that a vet examined and said, “no, this cat is just a jerk.”
■ Michael Davenport, 53, of Athens, Ga., who lost both arms as a child and is known in the town for his sketches of the University of Georgia’s bulldog mascot, had all of his art supplies and a donation box stolen recently, but a businessman started an online fundraiser that has amassed nearly $34,000 to help him.
■ Deandre Arnold, a senior at Barbers Hill High School in Mont Belvieu, Texas, won’t be allowed to return to school or attend his graduation ceremony unless he cuts his dreadlocks, his family says, and school officials say dreadlocks are allowed but they must be short.
■ Chuck Hoskin Jr., principal chief of the Tahlequah, Okla.-based Cherokee Nation, has appointed a seven-member committee to study how the tribe might get involved in the hemp and cannabis industries.
■ W. Scott Kimberly, an attorney in Murfreesboro, Tenn., announced that he will for the third year provide free divorce representation for one client for Valentine’s Day, adding that applications are being accepted and the winner will be chosen Feb. 17.