In the news

■ Sid Miller, Texas’ agriculture commissioner, said he sees nothing wrong with the state chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans pushing for a specialty license plate depicting a rebel soldier carrying a Texas regiment’s special flag that doesn’t include the Confederate battle flag.

■ Mark Zuzek, a school superintendent in Rosemount, Minn., confirmed that a teacher resigned after the FBI got reports that she put a message on her now-deleted Twitter account suggesting someone should “take one for the team” and assassinate new U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

■ Claire Simeone, a seal expert and veterinarian in Hawaii, said that after dozens of mysterious calls were made from the animal hospital where she works, she discovered a gecko perched on a lab phone and wrote on Twitter that it called everyone in the recent call history using, in all capital letters: “his tiny gecko feet.”

■ Charles Dudley of Redding, Conn., was cleaning out his wallet when he found a forgotten and soon-to-expire Powerball ticket that had matched five numbers in a May drawing and turned out to be a million-dollar winner.

■ Mason Andrews was 18 years, 163 days old when his Piper PA-32 Lance, called The Spirit of Louisiane, touched down Saturday in his hometown, Monroe, La., making him the youngest pilot to fly solo around the world as well as across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

■ Trevor Long, a marine scientist at a Sea World facility in Gold Coast, Australia, said a mother humpback whale appeared to realize experts were trying to help and didn’t interfere when they spent about two hours untangling her calf from a shark net about 500 yards from shore.

■ Christina Sanchez of Fair Haven, N.J., said she saw a “blur of brown and white fur,” just before she was knocked down by a deer while running a half-marathon, but she got back up and finished the race about 10 minutes slower than her goal time.

■ Cynthia Lord, 34, accused of taking a BMW and several other cars for test drives and never returning them to dealerships in the Birmingham, Ala., area, was arrested on property-theft counts, police in Tarrant, Ala., said.

■ David Castaneda of Chicago was paddling a kayak off Lake Michigan’s Waukegan Harbor when he spotted a 4-foot alligator floating in the water with its mouth held shut by rubber bands and called 911 to report it.