In the news
■ Nick Street, a Utah Highway Patrol lieutenant, said a 10- to 12-foot-tall stainless steel monument found in a remote slot canyon that’s reminiscent of the monolith in the Stanley Kubrick movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” is likely an illegal art installation and “not from another world.”
■ Vladimir Putin, 68, the president of Russia who has bragged to other world leaders that Russia’s covid-19 vaccines are safe and effective, has been barred from taking the vaccine as testing trials continue because “the president can’t use an uncertified vaccine,” a Kremlin spokesman said.
■ Noah Harris, 20, of Hattiesburg, Miss., a junior government major at Harvard University who is also co-chairman of the Undergraduate Council’s Black caucus, has become the first Black person elected president of the university’s student body.
■ Jessica Gardner, the librarian for Cambridge University in London, said officials have concluded that a thief made off with two notebooks written by 19th-century scientist Charles Darwin thought to have been misplaced among the library’s 10 million-item collection.
■ Jajuan Foster, 21, of St. Louis, accused in a shooting at a Ferguson, Mo., apartment complex that left two people dead, was charged with two counts each of first-degree murder, armed criminal action and evidence tampering, police said.
■ Amanda Robinson, 33, of Henrico, Va., pleaded guilty to aiming a laser pointer at a police aircraft conducting surveillance over a Confederate memorial protest in Richmond, striking the aircraft at least twice and disrupting the pilot’s vision, authorities said.
■ Gary Knight, an Oklahoma City police sergeant, said five officers fatally shot a 15-year-old boy who had tried to rob a convenience store at gunpoint, opening fire when the youth, who had dropped his weapon, appeared to reach for another weapon.
■ Thomas Brennan, a science professor at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Mich., has been placed on leave after he was accused of denying the severity of the coronavirus and using racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic slurs on Twitter.
■ Paschal Eleanya, 46, and Arael Doolittle, 55, both of Houston, Texas, accused of trying to sell 50 million nonexistent N95 masks to an unnamed foreign government for more than $317 million, were indicted on wire fraud and conspiracy counts, prosecutors said.