In the news
⏹ Anne-Marie Eze, associate librarian at Harvard University’s Houghton Library, said human skin removed from the binding of a copy of “Des Destinees de L’ame,” a 19th century book about the afterlife, is in “secure storage at Harvard Library.”
⏹ Alec Donovan, 26, of Brick, N.J., a youth wrestling coach and the NCAA’s first openly gay college wrestler, was sentenced to 87 months in federal prison and 30 years of supervised release on a charge related to distributing images of child sexual abuse, the U.S. attorney’s office said.
⏹ Josh Wagner, who works with sea jellies at the aquarium in Long Beach, Calif., said gelatinous sea creatures known as bythe-wind sailors would be beached “if the winds are going the right way and the currents are going the right way.”
⏹ James Ryder, a 61-yearold Oklahoma inmate sentenced to die for his role in the 1999 slayings of a mother and son, “is not competent to be executed” under state law, Pittsburg County Judge Michael Hogan wrote in his order.
⏹ Lizelle Gonzalez, a Texas woman who was charged with murder over self-managing an abortion and spent two nights in jail, is seeking $1 million in damages in a lawsuit against prosecutors in Starr County who put the criminal case in motion before it was dropped.
⏹ Derrick Chappell, and his first cousins Morton Johnson and Sam Grasty, had their convictions overturned, but will remain in a Pennsylvania prison after the judge ordered new trials in the 1999 death of Henrietta Nickens, 70, of Chester.
⏹ Ike Souzer, 20, was returned to California after he walked away from a halfway house and was captured a week later in Rosarito, Mexico, by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Mexican officials, the Orange County district attorney’s office said.
⏹ Regina Hill, a 63-yearold Orlando city commissioner, pleaded innocent to seven felony charges including elderly exploitation, identity fraud and mortgage fraud after her arrest by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
⏹ Nicholas Cullinan, director of the National Portrait Gallery in London, said he looks forward to leading the British Museum through “the most significant transformations, both architectural and intellectual, happening in any museum globally.”