In the news
■ Cyianna Ashley Woods, 38, was sentenced to five years in prison and ordered to pay $923,915 in restitution after she and a co-conspirator cashed nearly $1 million in counterfeit checks at more than 300 Walmart stores in 24 states over seven years.
■ Elijah Murrah was charged with grand larceny, which carries a penalty of up to five years in prison and $10,000 in fines, after being accused of sawing catalytic converters off a number of school buses in George County, Miss., for their resale value.
■ Ernestine Anderson-Trahan, a city court judge in New Orleans, was indicted on four federal tax fraud charges, accused of failing to report income for doing legal work and officiating at weddings.
■ Nic Hunter, the mayor of Lake Charles, La., said that “we need to bring this city up to modern times,” calling it “a game-changer” as the City Council approved plans to provide 35,000 utility customers with automated water meters within 18 months.
■ Rae Ann Meyer, who began as an engineer in 1989, was named associate director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., the government’s premier civilian rocketry and spacecraft propulsion research center.
■ Cecelia Parks of the University of Mississippi noted the significance of “Americans and the Holocaust,” a traveling exhibition from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which the school says “challenges visitors to consider the responsibilities and obstacles faced by individuals — from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to ordinary Americans.”
■ Spyros Bibilas, president of the Greek Actors’ Association, said that “as a Greek, I feel ashamed,” and the country’s Culture Ministry launched an investigation after the online release of a short film, titled “Departhenon” and billed as “an artwork that is also a political action,” which shows people having sex at the Acropolis in Athens.
■ Andrzej Duda, 49, the president of Poland, tested positive for covid-19 despite getting a booster shot but has no serious symptoms, an aide said, which was also the case in his first bout with the virus in 2020.
■ Malcolm Turnbull, 67, former prime minister of Australia, tested positive for covid-19 and implored the country’s citizens: “Please be polite and considerate when dealing with the front-line health workers. … They have had two years of relentless pressure and it’s now at its most intense.”