In the news
J.K. Rowling is urging Harry Potter fans not to buy a handwritten, 800-word prequel to the boy wizard’s adventures that she wrote for a 2008 charity auction and which was stolen during an April burglary from a home in Birmingham, England.
Richard Overton of Austin, Texas, one of the nation’s oldest veterans, was honored Thursday by his hometown on his 111th birthday, telling reporters that while he is “pretty old,” he still feels good and that his secret to a long life is smoking cigars and drinking whiskey.
Lee Walker of Virginia’s Department of Game and Inland Fisheries said bears are more afraid of people than the other way around after police in Roanoke, Va., said a young black bear quickly fled from a car in which it got trapped and honked the horn while looking for treats.
Elizabeth Gooding filed a lawsuit against a YMCA in Westerly, R.I., after being told she couldn’t nurse in public spaces there despite a Rhode Island law passed in 2008 that expressly allows breast-feeding in public.
Wesley Correa-Carmenaty, 24, unlocked shackles and handcuffs as he was being taken to the Pottawattamie County, Iowa, jail, shot two deputies — killing one — and then took the keys to an inmate-transport van to escape before being recaptured in Omaha, Neb., court records say.
Michelle Waycott, chief of an Australian group that coordinates the study of rare plants, said the country’s quarantine service destroyed an “irreplaceable” collection of more than 100 French plant specimens from the 1800s, which had been mailed to a center in Brisbane, after researchers didn’t provide the proper paperwork.
James McDaniel of Indianapolis said he was protecting his 4-year-old son and shouldn’t have gotten an animal-cruelty ticket for hitting an aggressive Canada goose three times with a plastic bat when the bird crossed a field and began chasing the child.
Ranae Van Roekel of Boyden, Iowa, was sentenced to 51 months in prison and ordered to pay $468,000 in restitution for duping dozens of people into buying nonexistent tickets to the Super Bowl and other events.
Megan McGraw, 32, who offers a topless cleaning service, was charged with felony theft after Bangor, Maine, police reported catching her shoplifting lingerie, which a police report said “would fully cover, support, and contain much of what her business title promised her customers.”