In the news

■ John Bel Edwards, Louisiana’s governor, ordered the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness to forge an emergency contract with the operator of Clayton’s water system after it threatened to cease operation over unpaid bills by the Concordia Parish town.

■ Tierni Williams, 21, a former Tennessee State University student, was indicted by a grand jury on food and drug tampering charges and aggravated assault after, authorities said, she put toilet water in her roommate’s water bottles, causing the woman to become ill.

■ Russell Cohen, 58, of Long Island, N.Y., has been arrested on drunken-driving charges after, police said, the driving instructor’s four students became suspicious he was intoxicated and called 911 before he drove off without his students and rear-ended another car.

■ Tom Valente of the Oregon Department of Agriculture said the state’s cold weather will likely kill the venomous brown widow spider, usually found in South Africa, Florida and Southern California, which was recently discovered living in the northwestern part of the state.

■ Michael McRobbie, president of Indiana University, called the views of former trustee Ora Wildermuth, who opposed racial integration, deplorable after the university’s board of trustees voted to remove Wildermuth’s name from a building on the Bloomington campus.

■ Gary Wyant, 32, of Lawson, Mo., faces 11 felony counts of child abuse and two counts of evidence tampering after, authorities said, he restrained his ex-girlfriend’s son and his daughters with zip ties and kept them in cardboard boxes overnight on multiple occasions.

■ Amanda Ruth Combs, 32, of Brandon, Miss., was sentenced to 10 years in prison with five years suspended after the former Mississippi Public Employees Retirement System worker was convicted of stealing nearly $64,000 from the agency.

■ William Martin Vanuck, 75, a former Oklahoma pain management doctor serving eight years in prison for the overdose deaths of eight patients, has been ordered to pay millions of dollars in damages to families of victims who died while under his care.

■ Fred Durhal III, a Democratic state representative from Detroit, has proposed renaming a portion of Michigan 10 that runs past singer Aretha Franklin’s father’s church for the Queen of Soul, who died of pancreatic cancer in August.