In the news

■ Alake Olawunmi ,a mother of twins, attributes the prevalence of multiple births in Igbo-Ora, Nigeria, to a local delicacy that’s made from yam flour, and a gynecologist says it very well could be diet, but regardless the community holds an annual festival, with one celebrant calling it “a blessing from God.”

■ Brian Andrew Bushell of Marblehead, Mass., purportedly an Orthodox Christian monk, stands accused of stealing $3.5 million in pandemic relief funds and splurging on property renovations, membership in a New York social club, a $40,000 Swiss watch and a $7,000 designer handbag.

■ Hadith Ahmed , who owned Brava Cafe in Minneapolis and worked for the Feeding Our Future program, is the first to plead guilty and testify about a $250 million fleecing, admitting he took $1.3 million in bribes in what prosecutors call the largest pandemic-related fraud in the U.S.

■ Jamie Petrone , a former official at Yale University’s medical school, was sentenced to nine years for a $40 million scam in which she ordered computer and electronic hardware for the school but shipped the goods to a company that paid her and resold them.

■ Fredy Renan Najera Montoya , a former Honduran congressman, was sentenced in New York to 30 years in prison and ordered to ante up $49 million for his role in a drug operation that imported 30 tons of cocaine into the U.S.

■ Randy Easterling , former president of the Mississippi State Medical Association, said “the risk of using kratom far outweighs the benefits” as lawmakers movmed toward banning the herbal drug, popularly used for pain relief and unregulated in most of the U.S.