In the news

■ Claudia Tenney, a firstterm Republican New York congressman under fire for saying on a radio talk show that “it’s interesting that so many of these people that commit the mass murders end up being Democrats,” says the quote is being taken out of context.

■ Kevin Beasley, coach of an under-10 girls softball team in Lawrenceburg, Ky., said that while he’s heard a few complaints, most of the feedback has been supportive of a decision to forge ahead with raffling off an AR-15 rifle to raise money for the team.

■ Vontyna Durham, 44, a contractor hired to clean up blighted properties in Memphis, was charged with aggravated criminal littering after prosecutors accused Durham of dumping truckloads of tires, debris and garbage along a road and down an embankment in Shelby County.

■ Stephen Christinzio and James Abbes, two New Jersey state troopers, were honored with Trooper of the Year awards for deactivating two improvised explosive devices found after a pipe bomb exploded along the route of a Marine Corps race in Seaside Park in 2016.

■ Joseph Mathlin, property manager for a bank branch in DeWitt, N.Y., said the bank is hoping a fake owl will scare off a Cooper’s hawk after workers repeatedly complained about finding the feathery remnants of slaughtered pigeons near the front entrance.

■ Stephan Limani, a Pennsylvania state trooper, said a sleepingwalking student in Hempfield crawled into a middle school through a window screen and walked around for about 15 minutes before waking up and calling 911, prompting school officials to cancel classes the next day to do a security sweep.

■ Steven Ellam, 27, of Middletown, Conn., was critically burned when he crashed a car filled with gasoline containers into a hospital emergency room and then set himself on fire, authorities said.

■ Thomas Lucey, a trolley driver from Saugus, Mass., was indicted on insurance-fraud charges after prosecutors said he paid a man $2,000 to attack him while wearing a Halloween mask so he could collect workers’ compensation and other benefits.

■ Cardinal Joseph Tobin, 65, archbishop of the Roman Catholic diocese in Newark, N.J., raised a few eyebrows with a now deleted tweet that read, “Nighty-night, baby. I love you,” which his spokesman described as an errant message intended for one of his eight younger sisters.