Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
In the news
■ Laura Loomer, 24, a conservative blogger who rushed onstage in protest during a New York performance of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, which features a Donald Trump look-alike as the assassinated emperor, has been charged with criminal trespass and disorderly conduct.
■ Michael Arad, who designed the National September 11 Memorial in New York, has been chosen to create a memorial for the nine worshippers gunned down in 2015 at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C.
■ Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state, canceled his trip this week to Mexico so he can focus “his efforts to de-escalate tensions” between Qatar and a Persian Gulf bloc led by Saudi Arabia, the State Department said.
■ Billie Jean King, the tennis player who defeated Bobby Riggs in the 1973 Battle of the Sexes match, told graduates at Northwestern University, where she was given an honorary doctorate for her work on gay rights, that they are “the best generation so far” when it comes to inclusion.
■ Sylvester Turner, mayor of Houston, led a rededication of Emancipation Park, which for decades was the city’s only park that allowed blacks, and characterized the space’s $34 million restoration as a continuation of the “vision” of the ex-slaves who first bought the park land in 1872.
■ Christine Strauss, a spokesman for airport customs in Frankfurt, Germany, reported that the agency has confiscated 39 tons of fidget spinners shipped from China in the past month and will destroy the toys that have been found to fall apart and present a choking hazard for small children.
■ Michael Dippolito said he’s “5,000 percent happy” about Friday’s conviction of his wife, Dalia Dippolito, 34, who told a Florida police officer posing as a hit man in 2009 that she was “5,000 percent sure” she wanted her husband dead.
■ Joseph Valenzuela, 38, Carlos Chavez, 28, and Rahim Leblanc, 30, were charged with grand theft of fruit, accused of stealing $300,000 worth of avocados from a ripening facility in Oxnard, Calif., according to the Ventura County sheriff’s office. ■ Lila Bryan, 82, of Texas, who hit an airport security agent in Wichita, Kan., after the agent refused to let her take an over-the-limit bottle of hand gel aboard a flight, will not face charges because the agent requested that the case be dismissed, the city’s attorney said.