In the news
■ Calvin Bahr, a Minnesota state senator, became a reluctant attraction and had no comment after he voted shirtless while lying in bed during a Zoom call with the Legislative Audit Commission that was streamed on YouTube, with a poster on his wall featuring an “I’m Just a Bill” character from “Schoolhouse Rock!”
■ Chris Parrish of the Peregrine Fund said it’s “likely to take decades” for the endangered California condor to recover from a recent string of deaths, with 20 birds in Arizona and Utah having died since March and half of them testing positive for a strain of avian flu.
■ Kimberly Ballard-Washington is stepping down as president of Savannah State University, Georgia’s oldest historically Black university, amid employee layoffs sparked by declining enrollment and a faculty revolt against a top administrator, saying, “I think I moved the needle a bit, but the needle needs to be moved further.”
■ Dean Kapsalis of Hudson, Mass., was convicted of second-degree murder, violation of constitutional rights and other offenses in the death of a Black man after a road rage encounter in which Kapsalis yelled a racial slur.
■ Shannon Brandt of Glenfield, N.D., accused of intentionally running over an 18-year-old at a street dance, had the charge reduced from murder to manslaughter after investigators determined that the confrontation was not political.
■ Lasean Watkins was sentenced to 240 years in prison in the fatal shootings of three men and a woman in an Indianapolis robbery, with the prosecutor saying “we were rocked by this senseless act.”
■ Amy Attas, a New York City veterinarian, said “people are using marijuana on the street and then discarding the unwanted ends of their joints,” dogs are eating them and poisonings are proliferating nationwide.
■ Marcellus Cornwell of Detroit faces up to 10 years in prison as a felon found with 18 firearms and ammunition in his basement, though he was not charged with a drug crime even though he had a marijuana vending machine attached to his home and told investigators he was making $2,000 a day.
■ James Marsh, principal of Zela Elementary in Summersville, W. Va., got quite a scare as he unlocked the school trash bin after the weekend when a black bear emerged, growling and roaring, and man and beast took off in opposite directions.