In the news

■ Shanquindra Baldwin of Memphis said her daughter Ta’liyah was “having the time of her life” after the Make-a-Wish Foundation arranged for the 5-year-old brain cancer patient, wearing custom-fitted fins, to spend a day with two women dressed as mermaids at a Florida beach club.

■ Shane Ellison, administrative assistant to the mayor of Gadsden, Ala., said the community has been working several years to acquire part of an old Alabama Great Southern Railroad Company line to create a pedestrian trail, agreeing to pay $214,000 for a 3.1-mile section.

■ Rick Smith, warning coordination meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Norman, Okla., office, said the state’s relatively light tornado season in 2018 likely played a major role as Oklahoma recorded no tornado deaths for the first time since 2006.

■ Larry Neal, owner of a historic but dilapidated Mississippi Delta hotel in Greenwood, Miss., is asking a court to block demolition of the Midway Hotel, saying the building is safe and he plans to renovate it as a home for veterans.

■ Brien Basarich, 31, was charged with threatening a mass shooting after, police in Lakeland, Fla., said, the stripper posted about her homicidal urges on social media under the username “taking-lives,” describing herself as a great admirer of serial killers and mass murderers.

■ Mac McCutcheon, Alabama’s House speaker, said improving state infrastructure will be a major topic of the next legislative session in March, with debate on a possible gasoline tax increase to fund road and bridge construction high on the agenda.

■ Kerry Flanagan Bruni, director of an animal shelter in Wilmington, Del., said a female terrier mix abandoned outside the facility arrived with a note saying its owner became homeless and could no longer care for it, adding 6-yearold Sky is “not sick, just hungry, [and] very friendly.”

■ Christian Jensen, editor-in-chief of Politiken,a newspaper in Denmark, announced that domestic air travel by the paper’s staff would end and all international flights, only when absolutely necessary, should be offset by contributions to climate initiatives in a bid to reduce its carbon footprint. ■ Toby Barker, mayor of Hattiesburg, Miss., said Adulting 101 courses, a series of classes about skills grown-ups should know but might never have learned, are designed to help Hattiesburg attract and retain young professionals but are open to grown-ups of any age.