In the news
■ David Barrett, who has Twitter accounts on birding, said New York zoo escapee Flaco “has been doing well in Central Park, and that’s amazing,” making “a remarkable move from being a captive owl to being in the wild much faster than anyone would have expected,” finding plenty of rats to eat and reassuring worried zoo officials.
■ Aaron McCreight, exchief of GO Cedar Rapids, the Iowa city’s tourism board, was sentenced to 18 months in prison and his financial officer got 15 months for defrauding a bank by misrepresenting revenue projections to get loans for a music festival.
■ Anne Davison, Seattle city attorney, is pleased to “turn a page from a difficult period in the city’s history” as it agreed to pay $3.65 million to settle a lawsuit filed by businesses disrupted by an eight-block shutdown to deal with protesters.
■ Berdetta Hodge, the first Black woman to sit on the City Council in Tempe, Ariz., said “this is really touching to me” as a vote was scheduled on replacing park and road names with ties to the Ku Klux Klan.
■ Marquis Devon McCray of Sheffield, Ala., was sentenced to 17 years in prison and ordered to pay $58,000 for burglarizing two gun stores, possessing dozens of stolen firearms and selling them on the streets in other states.
■ Jeffrey Downey, an FBI special agent, assured that “an assessment is always conducted,” but this time “there is no known credible threat” after a bomb alert delayed an American Airlines flight from El Paso, Texas, to Chicago.
■ Yasmin Esquivel, a Mexico Supreme Court justice, was accused of plagiarism, with the thesis she presented years ago called a near-exact copy of an earlier paper, but the National Autonomous University said it’s blocked by court order from discussing the case.
■ Edson Chianca, who brought his dog to Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival canine competition dressed in a Minnie Mouse costume just like his owner, embraced “a great initiative” and “a good moment for pets to socialize.”
■ Rebecca Lightbourn of Exuma Water Sports in the Bahamas says she’s familiar with the medium-sized, black-and-tan dog that runs along the shore to greet the tour boat, but this time it dove in to confront a 12-foot hammerhead shark, with the two animals circling each other until the shark slowly swam away, much to the delight of the crowd.