In the news
■ Eric Valentine, 80, a retired judge, needed a rescue when he fell 60 feet down a slope and broke some bones while hiking along Hells Canyon, and Boy Scout Troop 77 of Eagle, Idaho, came through, though the former Scoutmaster had “asked God to send angels.”
■ Kami Rita, considered one of the greatest mountain guides, regained his title for the most climbs of Mount Everest after scaling it for the 27th time, just three days after a fellow Sherpa had equaled his record.
■ Matt Harvill of Mobile, Ala., exclaimed that he “didn’t want to step foot in the water” after spotting an alligator bobbing near bathers at Dauphin Island where he had gone to take pregnancy announcement photos with his girlfriend.
■ Anthony Saad, police chief of Oxford, Mass., said a 23-year-old man faces attempted murder and other charges after he was shot while holding a sword over his head and running at an officer at a “full sprint.”
■ Ryan Railsback of the Riverside Police Department in California said a victim in his 60s who’s believed to be homeless is expected to survive after a sword-wielding assailant chopped off his hand in what police think was not a random attack.
■ River Smith, 21, of Savage, Minn., could get 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to illegally possessing a machine gun, having been tripped up when he told an FBI informant that he was building an arsenal of automatic weapons to use against police and that he admired mass shooters.
■ Nihar Malaviya of Penguin Random House said censorship in the form of book bans is “a direct threat to democracy and our constitutional rights” as the publisher teamed with PEN America to sue Florida’s Escambia County School District for removing books about race and LGBTQ+ issues.
■ Chris Sells of the Alabama House coaxed his colleagues to vote 70-8 in favor of a bill to protect children by requiring phone and tablet manufacturers to filter pornography and sexually explicit content by default, and the bill moved to the Senate.
■ Chris England of the Alabama House won 64-37 approval of legislation to establish a review process for eligible inmates serving life sentences as habitual offenders, and he said, “My hope is that we find a bunch of individuals who are more than their worst moment.”