In the news

■ Laine Hardy, 19, of Livingston, La., the 2019 winner of American Idol, said he has been diagnosed with covid-19 but has mild symptoms and is recovering under home quarantine, writing on social media: “This wasn’t what I expected on the first day of summer.”

■ Diontre Evans, 4, who was sleeping in the back seat when several men stole his father’s car and drove off while the man was inside a St. Louis gas station, was found safe a few hours later when police located the vehicle parked about 5 miles away.

■ Benedict XVI, 93, the pope emeritus, has returned to the Vatican after traveling to his native Germany to visit his ailing 96-year-old brother, the Rev. Georg Ratzinger, during a trip in which Benedict also met with old neighbors and prayed at his parents’ grave.

■ Ashley Kroese, 24, of Thompson’s Station, Tenn., remains hospitalized and faces a felony vehicular homicide charge after being accused of traveling north in a highway’s southbound lane, resulting in a head-on collision that killed a Brentwood police officer.

■ Pytor Verzilov, a Russian political activist and member of the Pussy Riot protest group, has been sentenced to 15 days in jail for swearing in public after he was released by police after more than 12 hours of questioning about a protest held a year ago.

■ Leora Martin of Elkhart, Ind., a 100-yearold woman who has lived through World War II, survived cancer and battled a bout of pneumonia last year, can now say she’s also a survivor of covid-19, having tested negative for the disease weeks after she was one of 76 residents at her assisted-living facility to be infected.

■ Tremecius Dixon, 49, of Shreveport was arrested on four counts of aggravated animal cruelty after more than 250 starving cattle were found on overgrazed land that he leased, Caddo Parish Sheriff Steve Prator said.

■ Phil Hudnall, 49, of Lenexa, Kan., and his brother, Brian Hudnall, 43, of Kansas City, Mo., both pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering in what federal prosecutors described as a scheme that defrauded oil and gas investors out of more than $4 million.

■ Steve Michael, a police spokesman in Florissant, Mo., said it’s not the message but rather the potential to confuse motorists that prompted the arrests of two women and the repainting of a street near the Police Department where protesters had begun to paint the words “Black Lives Matter.”