In the news
■ John Bel Edwards, the Democratic governor of Louisiana, said that he will oppose pending legislation to bar transgender girls from competing on school sports teams and to add restrictions on medical treatment for transgender children, calling the measures “unnecessary and discriminatory.”
■ Joseph Cicchetti, 58, and Shirley Limburg, 59, a retired couple in Bloomsbury, N.J., are giving neighborhood residents free rides to vaccine-shot appointments aboard “Joe’s Covee Car,” a black Fiat 500 covered with handcrafted red spikes designed to resemble the coronavirus protein.
■ Maurice Nesbitt, a Georgia man on the run for more than three years after he failed to show up for the final day of his 2017 trial where he was convicted of murder, was arrested in Birmingham, Ala., U.S. marshals said.
■ Rudolf Nikolli, 34, an Albanian man accused of attacking and wounding five people with a knife at a mosque in Tirana, the country’s capital, was quickly arrested, police said.
■ Christopher Pritchard, 45, of Cape Girardeau, Mo., was charged with a hate crime, as well as arson and other counts, after he was accused of starting a fire that destroyed a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints church, prosecutors said.
■ Mike Tregre, sheriff of St. John the Baptist Parish, La., called it “frustrating” that no witnesses have stepped forward to provide information several days after six people were wounded by gunfire at a 12-year-old’s birthday party.
■ Gustavo Vila, 62, a former New York City police lieutenant-turned-lawyer who was convicted of cheating a fellow officer of $900,000 he was due for work at the smoldering World Trade Center site after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, was sentenced to more than four years in prison.
■ Joanna Kij, spokesman for Poland’s Wroclaw Zoo, said two endangered Mexican beaded lizards, a species of venomous lizard that is difficult to breed in captivity, have hatched after eggs laid by an adult lizard were kept for about eight months in an incubator.
■ Christine Koosman, a spokesman for the Gallatin County, Mont., sheriff’s office, said a 40-year-old backcountry guide died at a hospital after being mauled just outside Yellowstone National Park by a large grizzly bear that wildlife officials said was probably defending a nearby moose carcass.