In the news

■ Phil Scott, governor of Vermont, called a new Statehouse lawn marker commemorating the state’s first-in-the-nation civil-union law and subsequent marriage-equality legislation a fitting way to celebrate “Vermont’s commitment to advancing civil rights.”

■ Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera, 59, a Republican candidate for Congress in Florida, is standing by her claim that she was abducted to an alien spaceship at age 7 by tall, blond creatures, saying that the incident shouldn’t detract from her public service as a city councilor and consultant.

■ Lawrence Knox, 32, who vowed to an Ohio judge that he was penniless and couldn’t pay a fine after pleading guilty to a drug charge, got the maximum $20,000 fine after deputies escorting him from court discovered he had more than $4,000 stashed in his clothes.

■ George Saunders, 58, a creative-writing teacher at New York’s Syracuse University, was awarded Britain’s Man Booker Prize for fiction for Lincoln in the Bardo, a novel narrated by a cast of characters who are all dead but unwilling or unable to let go of life.

■ Swahilys Pedraza-Rodriguez, 19, of New Haven, Conn., and Melisa Aquino Arias, 23, of the Dominican Republic were arrested on charges they robbed a pair of New Jersey banks while dressed as nuns and wearing headscarves, police said.

■ Justin Riley, owner of a barbershop in Bridgeport, Conn., said slain barber Deon Rodney was shot protecting five customers, including a young boy whose hair he had just cut, when he punched and tackled a gunman who had chased another man into the shop.

■ Kathy Taylor, the former mayor of Tulsa, filed a federal lawsuit against the insurance company that paid her $4 million for a lost 5-carat blue diamond ring, claiming the payment was more than $75,000 short of the ring’s full value.

■ Veronica Posey, 64, a 325-pound Pensacola, Fla., woman, was charged with homicide and child cruelty on accusations that she sat on her 9-year-old cousin in an armchair as Posey and other relatives punished the girl for “being out of control,” sheriff’s deputies said.

■ Michael Zaydel, 21, who surrendered for probation violations after a social media post by police in Redford Township, Mich., about him was shared 1,000 times, was sentenced to 39 days in jail after he showed up at the police station with a bag of doughnuts and a bagel for officers.