In the news

■ Garon Mosby ,a spokesman for the St. Louis Fire Department, said a “great collaborative effort” involving several firefighters and a police officer saved the lives of two children who were handed off and carried down a ladder after they were found trapped in a second-floor bedroom during an apartment building blaze.

■ Larry Nickles , a deputy fire chief and fire marshal in Yankton, S.D., said a house fire believed to have started when an electric heater in an adjacent doghouse failed during a snowstorm, flared up again hours later and destroyed the residence.

■ Valery Plotnikov , a Russian paleontologist, said the remains of an Ice Age woolly rhino that likely drowned when it was 3 or 4 years old have been found well-preserved, with many of the animal’s internal organs still intact, in melting permafrost along a river in Russia’s extreme north.

■ Doug Ford , premier of Ontario, Canada, called it “completely unacceptable” that his finance minister, Rod Phillips, went on vacation to the Caribbean island of St. Barts at a time when the government is urging people to avoid nonessential travel because of the pandemic, and ordered the aide to return home.

■ Hank Wise , a Tennessee prison inmate accused of sending harassing letters, including holiday cards professing his love, to the widow of a Nashville man he was convicted of killing, has been charged with mail stalking, prosecutors said.

■ Meaghan Boudreaux , 31, of Sulphur, La., accused of transferring $ 169,000 from the nonprofit organization where she worked to her personal accounts, has been charged with theft, sheriff’s deputies said.

■ Emily Trumbull ,a veterinarian at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, Calif., said Jenya, a feisty young sea lion, is back in the wild after five weeks of treatment for a severe shark bite, as well as domoic acid poisoning and malnutrition.

■ Leon Taylor , 22, of Hammond, Ind., a murder suspect who escaped from a security van when the driver stopped at a fast-food restaurant, was recaptured in east Chicago after more than two weeks on the lam, authorities said.

■ Timothy Taylor , 29, fired from his job at a church in Jennings, Mo., after being accused of threatening to “shoot up” the building when a co-worker asked him to wear a mask, had three loaded firearms when he was arrested across the street from the church, police said.