In the news

■ Meri Mion, 90, of Vicenza, Italy, wiped away tears and said “Mama mia” and “Grazie” as U.S. Army officers and Italian officials sang “Happy Birthday” and gave her a cake to replace the one eaten by hungry GIs as they entered her town during one of the final battles of World War II.

■ Cathy Webre, a veteran of development efforts in Lafayette, La., told council members “he touched every facet of our community,” and they voted unanimously to name the old City Hall in honor of Phil Lank, co-founder of the city’s signature Festival International de Louisiane.

■ Debra Mabry, a supervisor in Holmes County, Miss., said she’s overwhelmed that strangers are helping her community after networking led Virginia’s Loudoun County to donate a fire engine as the start of a partnership between one of the nation’s richest counties and one of the poorest.

■ Kevin James, college president, proclaimed “Morris Brown College just made history” although “a lot of people had written us off,” as the historically Black liberal arts school in Atlanta regained full accreditation after a 20-year journey to correct financial mismanagement.

■ Vally Jan-Louis Bastien, a high school teacher in Miami-Dade County, was disciplined for allowing a French lesson on masculine and feminine pronouns to devolve into speculation about a student’s gender at birth, but a state judge ruled Bastien can keep her job.

■ Jerry Sexton, a legislator in Tennessee who was asked what he’d do with books deemed inappropriate during debate on a bill to scrutinize which ones are allowed in school libraries, responded, “I don’t have a clue, but I would burn them.”

■ Brandon Morris saw his eight months of training in the patrol division of the Ascension Parish, La., sheriff’s office come to an abrupt end as he was arrested on 20 counts of possessing child pornography.

■ A.J. Smith, sheriff of Franklin County, Fla., said he asked a dealer where she’d gotten her drug supply and was stunned to hear the name of his own daughter, who was soon arrested, and although “it didn’t feel good … it had to be done.”

■ William Puzynski, a deputy in Orlando, Fla., said some nights “you don’t really know if you’ve made a difference,” but this time he played Spider-Man to rescue a baby being dangled from a third-story balcony as flames tore through an apartment building, with the mom later getting rescued as well and giving him a hug.