In the news

■ Ben Hart, an atheist, won his three-year fight to personalize a Kentucky license plate with the phrase “IM GOD” when a federal judge ruled that “vanity plates” are private speech protected by the First Amendment and that the state had violated Hart’s rights by denying him the plate.

■ Ricoh McClain, 30, accused of fatally stabbing a man who was cutting in line for chicken sandwiches at a Popeyes in Oxon Hill, Md., was charged with murder 10 days after the confrontation, police said.

■ Trent Shores, a Tulsa-based U.S. attorney, said 10 men have been charged in an online romance money-laundering scheme involving people in Nigeria who swindled victims, mostly elderly people, out of more than $1.5 million. ■ Pam Navari of Madison, Miss., and her husband, are facing city fines and potential jail time because their homeowners association objected to them living in an RV in their driveway as they dealt with insurance matters related to a Christmas Eve fire that partially gutted their home.

■ Poncho Nevarez, a state legislator from Eagle Pass, Texas, admitted that as he got into a vehicle at an Austin airport, he dropped an envelope bearing his official state letterhead and containing several small bags of cocaine, saying he will be seeking drug treatment.

■ Margaret Breeze, 47, of Georgetown, Ohio, faces child-endangerment and other charges after a teacher called police when she overheard an 11-year-old student, who weighed 47 pounds, say that she was hungry but was allowed to eat only a small plate of rice a day.

■ Samuel Schaffrin, who found an injured bald eagle near his family’s ranch in Montgomery County, Mo., took the 12-pound bird to a sanctuary near St. Louis where it is being nursed back to health and is expected to be released back into the wild.

■ Jessica Lumpkins, 33, an animal-sciences teacher at a high school in Nashville, Tenn., faces a cruelty charge after an emu in her care at the school died, and animal-services officers determined that it and other animals there weren’t receiving proper care.

■ Greg Hallgrimson, 50, a former police chief of Greenwood, Mo., accused of striking a handcuffed man after the chief helped rescue the man’s infant daughter from a pond where the father had tried to drown her, has been indicted, accused by a federal grand of violating the man’s civil rights.