In the news
■ Brandon Pettis, 18, a political science major at Northwest Mississippi Community College, is set to run for mayor of his hometown of Oxford, Miss., focusing on the economy and the “business aspect of life” after monitoring the city’s budget for the past several years.
■ Mike Blakely, longtime sheriff of Limestone County, Ala., has seen his trial on felony theft and ethics charges delayed a second time by the coronavirus pandemic and can continue working, with no new trial date set.
■ Alina Heart, a volunteer with Free Hot Soup Kansas City in Missouri, said she was asked to check on a homeless man in a vacant building only to find him dead, apparently because of freezing temperatures.
■ Mario Kellogg, a shooting suspect accused of escaping from Decatur, Ala., police while en route to a hospital for treatment of a health problem, was arrested by U.S. marshals and returned to jail, along with an alleged female accomplice.
■ Vaddrick Hatchett and Marreco Robinson were arrested by U.S. marshals in Memphis on capital murder charges in a November shooting in Byhalia, Miss., with one suspect found at the factory where he worked and the other hiding in a storage space in his home, authorities said.
■ John Thompson, 33, of St. Louis County was charged with first-degree murder and armed criminal action in the New Year’s Day shooting of a man in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson after being given away by the GPS monitoring bracelet he was wearing in connection with another federal criminal case, police said.
■ Ronald Fisher, 41, and Vada Cunningham, 58, both of St. Louis, were arrested in a Christmas Eve double shooting at an apartment complex that left one man dead and another injured in an alleged argument over a drug transaction.
■ Colleen McCain Nelson, vice president and editorial page editor for the Kansas City Star in Missouri, says the newspaper is reckoning with its past and removing references to founder and first publisher William Rockhill Nelson on its pages and website because of his role in supporting segregationist policies in the city.
■ Nancy Bristow will receive the Mississippi Historical Society’s annual award for the best state history book for “Steeped in the Blood of Racism: Black Power, Law and Order, and the 1970 Shootings at Jackson State College,” the scene of civil-rights and Vietnam War protests.