In the news

■ Sheila Platt said she had no idea how her husband’s Vietnam War dog tag ended up among hurricane debris miles from her Florida home but that after her husband’s death of Alzheimer’s disease in 2014 she had searched his clothes for it before donating them to charity.

■ Trisha Ann Ward, a former New Orleans public defender whose friendship with her supervisor’s wife turned romantic, according to court records, will be suspended for a year and a day retroactive to December, when she was put on interim suspension for pleading guilty to stalking the woman, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled.

■ Jace Tunnell, director of an estuarine research reserve in Port Aransas, Texas, said a rescued green sea turtle that was nursed back to health at a sea turtle rehabilitation center, founded four decades ago by self-taught Texas oceanographer Tony Amos, will be released into the Gulf of Mexico, carrying Amos’ ashes on its back out to sea.

■ Mamdouh AbdelSayed, a City University of New York biology professor, was charged after, federal prosecutors say, he created a fake trade school on campus, taught unauthorized courses and issued forged certificates for which he charged $1,000 apiece.

■ Makayla Blakey was getting a behind-the-scenes tour of the Springfield, Mo., zoo and thought it was part of the spiel when zookeepers gave her a branch to feed Mili the giraffe, but when Mili leaned in to accept the treat, Blakey saw an engagement ring hanging from its neck, and her boyfriend popped the question.

■ Dion Stevens, 34, and Malisa Stevens, 41, accused of punishing a 12-year-old girl by leaning her chair back and pouring water over her face to prevent her from breathing, told Aliquippa, Pa., police that it was a technique they learned from a movie.

■ Wyndale Fayson, 32, of Minneapolis faces a murder charge after, prosecutors said, he doused his girlfriend’s bed with gasoline while she slept and set it on fire.

■ Ronnie Fematt, whose pregnant wife, Teresa Broudreaux, was found nude and lifeless on a Los Angeles County beach 37 years ago, welcomed news last week that a suspect was arrested in the case.

■ Patrick Joseph Adams Jr., 36, was arrested after he told friends that he needed help moving and got their unwitting help to steal $40,000 worth of items from another man’s home, said police in Great Falls, Mont.