In the news

Ann Marie Corgill, Alabama’s 2014-15 Teacher of the Year and a national teacher-of-the-year finalist, said she has resigned after 21 years of teaching in grades one through six after state officials told her she’s not certified to teach her fifthgrade class at a Birmingham school.

Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla of Puerto Rico issued an executive order prohibiting the use of plastic shopping bags across the U.S. territory beginning in mid-2016, defying legislators who days earlier had rejected a similar bill.

Ryan Palmer, a police officer and firearms training instructor in Windsor, Vt., who is facing gun charges in the shooting of a fleeing suspect, was denied in his request to use a firearm for a day so he could maintain his firearms certification, a judge’s ruling said.

Patrick Sparkes of Big AZ Promotions of Phoenix said it took him about 40 minutes to track down a 25-foot-tall inflatable pumpkin that bounded down the streets of nearby Peoria after gusty winds broke it free, causing it to sail away and damage two streetlights.

Margaret Thome Bekema, 97, of Walker, Mich., finally was able to don a mortarboard and fulfill a lifelong goal when she received an honorary high school diploma eight decades after she dropped out to care for three younger siblings because her mother was ill with cancer.

Jeffrey Man, sheriff of DeKalb County, Ga., is investigating how inmates inside one of the state’s largest jails were able to produce a 2½-minute rap music video, “Thuggin’ Live from DeKalb Jail,” that was later posted on YouTube.

Chris White, an assistant prosecutor in Logan County, W.Va., has been suspended after pulling an unloaded gun and threatening to shoot fake spiders scattered around the office after telling co-workers he is “deathly afraid of spiders.”