In the news
■ Brian Tallent, an officer with Mississippi’s Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks Conservation, received a medal of valor from the state for rescuing a woman who had been severely cut and burned and was a passenger in an SUV that Tallent stopped for suspicious behavior, leading to the driver’s arrest on an attempted murder charge.
■ Lawrence Knipel, a judge in the Brooklyn borough of New York who was hospitalized last year with covid-19, tossed a woman’s personal injury lawsuit after her attorney refused to don a mask in court, saying he could not breathe while wearing it.
■ Matt Lewallen is one of several shoppers at an Anchorage, Alaska, Costco who have had their groceries stolen by ravens in the store parking lot, with Lewallen saying he was packing items into his car when the birds swooped in to steal a short rib from his cart.
■ Juliane Colby, 43, of Shawnee, Kan., a former Missouri public defender employee, was indicted on charges that she smuggled heroin and information related to a criminal court case into a state prison.
■ Hayden Philip Breaux, 21, of Houma, La., and D’Quincy Marquis Jones, 23, of Baton Rouge, both former Louisiana College students, are accused of using student identification numbers and passwords to access the college’s online student portal and illegally apply for CARES Act emergency grants.
■ Jermaine Hudson, 42, a Louisiana man who had served more than 20 years of a 99-year armed robbery sentence, gained his freedom after a witness recanted key testimony, a criminal justice advocacy group said.
■ Sonia Tabizada, 36, of San Jacinto, Calif., was sentenced to nearly 1½ years in federal prison after she pleaded guilty to making telephoned bomb threats to a Catholic preparatory school because it was planning to publish same-sex wedding announcements.
■ Dempsey “Bryan” Levi, 51, and Jeffrey Rollins, 44, both of Ocean Springs, Miss., were each sentenced to seven years in prison and ordered to make restitution of more than $16.3 million after they pleaded guilty to being part of a more than $515 million health care fraud scheme involving high-priced pain creams.
■ Douglas Peterson, a former University of Georgia professor who developed an environmentally sustainable way to farm sturgeon, is accused of stealing about $208,000 meant to fund research, authorities said.