In the news

■ Gayle Slossberg, a Democratic state senator of Connecticut, issued a formal apology for using an anti-black racial slur, at a meeting of the University of Connecticut College Democrats, to describe her work removing books with racial epithets from grade school libraries.

■ Joseph Gargiulo of Massachusetts will go to a mental health treatment facility, having pleaded guilty to an ammunition possession charge after authorities — citing handwritten notes uncovered in an FBI raid — said he threatened to assassinate President Barack Obama, bomb police stations and burn down a mosque.

■ Helena Byler, 78, and her 76-year-old husband, Gerald, who are from Texas, were treated for dehydration after they set off for Lake Powell while vacationing in southern Utah and became stranded for six days on a desolate dirt road near the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument that was impassable in their rental car.

■ Nigel Bailey, a 16-yearold of Florissant, Mo., said scuba diving was among his favorites of the 136 Boy Scout merit badges he has earned in his quest to earn all 137 available to him, and will get the final badge at a ceremony later this month.

■ Robert Geschke, 30, faces child-endangerment and related charges after he physically abused his girlfriend’s 8-year-old son and forced the boy to provide urine for a drug test after Geschke used heroin, Pennsylvania police said.

■ Ed Lukin, police inspector for Australia’s Queensland state, said authorities believe that a 79-year-old dementia patient who wandered from a Port Douglas nursing home and into a tropical forest was killed by a crocodile.