In the news
■ Jessica Watkins, a NASA astronaut and geologist who was raised in Lafayette, Colo., is poised to become the first Black woman to join a long-term mission on the International Space Station when she blasts off in April with three other astronauts for a six-month stay aboard the orbital lab.
■ Queen Elizabeth II, the 95-year-old monarch, had her first face-to-face engagement since a sprained back kept her from attending the national Remembrance Sunday, meeting with Gen. Nick Carter, the British military’s chief of staff, at Windsor Castle.
■ Moshe Cohen, an Alabama rabbi who leads the Chabad of Huntsville synagogue, called it a “hateful act” after a 9-foot-tall menorah vanished from outside the building, but said his congregation plans to “double-down” by putting up menorahs throughout north Alabama “to spread goodness, kindness and joy.”
■ John “Jock” Sturges, 74, a photographer known for his images of nude adolescents, pleaded guilty to engaging in sexual misconduct with a 14-year-old student in the mid-1970s while he was a teacher and dorm parent at a private boarding school in Massachusetts.
■ Louis Presta, 71, the mayor of Crestwood, Ill., resigned from office and pleaded guilty to accepting a $5,000 bribe from a representative of a red-light camera company in return for helping the firm get approval to install more of the traffic-control cameras in town.
■ Daniel McGee, accused of using a club to beat a gay man in Eugene, Ore., whom he described as a “demon” and had met using an online dating app, was charged with a federal hate crime, prosecutors said.
■ Dexter Walker, 34, surrendered at the scene and faces a murder charge after being accused of shooting a fellow employee who was his son’s stepfather and was working his first shift at a metal pipe manufacturing plant near Birmingham, Ala.
■ Jeanetta Williams, 38, a mail carrier from Byram, Miss., accused of not delivering mail in rural Hinds County, pleaded guilty to an embezzling mail charge after U.S. Postal Service agents investigated complaints about mail disappearing on her route.
■ Priscilla Giddings, a Republican state legislator from White Bird, Idaho, was stripped of a committee assignment and formally censured by the Idaho House for sharing a 19-year-old student intern’s personal information online after the teenager accused another lawmaker of rape.