In the news
■ David Ralston, the speaker of Georgia’s House of Representatives, said state Rep. Matt Barton’s condition is improving, and doctors are trying to determine why the first-term House member had a seizure and fell ill while at a medical center in Rome, Ga.
■ Wade Walters, 53, of Hattiesburg, Miss., faces up to 20 years in prison and $500,000 in fines after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering in a $510 million scheme involving high-priced prescription pain cream.
■ Angelo Walker, 20, of Dallas was arrested and charged in the death of 22-year-old Merci Richey, a Black transgender woman, after a witness told police that he watched from an apartment window as Walker chased down and repeatedly shot Richey, according to an affidavit.
■ Luis Silberberg, a detective with the Broward County, Fla., sheriff’s office, was arrested and charged with grand larceny after the agency said he falsified overtime forms and lied about working full shifts, claiming more than $15,000 in pay for time he didn’t work.
■ Bernard Young, the mayor of Baltimore, said the people responsible for toppling a statue of Christopher Columbus and rolling it into the city’s Inner Harbor will face justice, adding that while the city supports peaceful protest, the incident was not such a demonstration.
■ Allison Medlin , a Missouri doctor, said she learned that someone had been forging her signature on medical marijuana certifications when she received a call for medical records from a patient for the St. Louis company WeedCerts, which is now being investigated after Medlin contacted state authorities.
■ Jason Ard, the sheriff of Livingston Parish, La., thanked the men and women who worked tirelessly alongside his office “to provide closure for this family,” after the body of a missing teen was recovered from the Amite River after a two-day search.
■ Del Marsh, the leader of the Alabama Senate, said he used a poor choice of words when he suggested he wanted more people to get infected with the coronavirus, explaining he meant that more infections would bring the state closer to herd immunity.
■ Kevin Krull, a judge in Sturgis, S.D., sentenced a 17-year-old boy to 55 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to the murder of a 16-year-old Wyoming girl he met online, whose body was found in the basement of the boy’s mother’s house.