In the news
■ Mark Vande Hei, 54, a NASA astronaut aboard the International Space Station, tweeted “Today just wasn’t the right day” for a spacewalk after he pulled out of a planned excursion to install a bracket for new solar panels because he had a pinched nerve in his neck.
■ Katherine Given, harbormaster in Belfast, Maine, said a 25-foot inflatable duck named Joy, which disappeared as mysteriously as it arrived, likely was removed from the harbor because of the arrival of Tropical Storm Henri, adding that an anonymous letter alluded to it reappearing in a new spot.
■ Ray Lane, a spokesman for Alaska Airlines, said a flight crew deployed evacuation slides at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport when a passenger’s cellphone “overheated and began sparking” after the plane landed, and more than 120 passengers used the slides to escape the smokefilled cabin.
■ Kristin Levine of Bristol, Conn., called it a “fun afternoon” when her home security camera recorded a bear snatching a package containing rolls of toilet paper off her front porch, lugging it down her driveway and then dropping the parcel in a neighbor’s yard.
■ Emily Claire Hari, 50, a former militia leader once known as Michael Hari, who is awaiting sentencing on civil-rights and hate-crime counts in the bombing of a Minnesota mosque, wants a federal judge to base her prison assignment on her new transgender identity.
■ Lorraine Buchbinder and Corneal Lamber, history lecturers at the University of North Georgia in Gainesville where masks and vaccinations are encouraged but not required, have resigned over concerns about teaching in a classroom during the state’s latest coronavirus surge.
■ Elizabeth O’Neil, 37, convicted of embezzling $303,000 from a Biloxi, Miss., construction company to fund her shopping habit, was given a 20-year, suspended prison sentence, was placed on five years of probation and must make full restitution.
■ Timothy Meyer, 46, the leader of a ministry in Chattanooga, Tenn., faces charges of stalking and resisting arrest after being accused of harassing a female Walmart employee and then trying to bite officers as they handcuffed him at the store.
■ Margaret Ann Cirko, 37, of Hanover Township, Pa., who pleaded guilty to coughing and spitting on food at a supermarket in the early days of the pandemic, was sentenced to at least a year in jail.