In the news

■ Scott Moser, who helps a high school 4-H Club with its animals, figures a 7-year-old brown and white, 1,500-pound Hereford cow named Stormy thought it was a game to twice open a gate latch at a church’s live Nativity scene and wander in Philadelphia until corralled by police.

■ Mason Paden, a police K-9 officer in Stafford, Kan., said he’s out to change the pit bull’s bad reputation with his new partner of that breed, 55-pound Kano, which is trained to sniff out narcotics or explosives and participated in his first drug bust Monday.

■ Simon Bramhall, 53, a British surgeon, pleaded guilty to two assault counts for using a cauterizing device to burn his initials onto his patients’ livers during transplant operations.

■ Henri Piette, 63, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Muskogee, Okla., on charges of kidnapping his stepdaughter and holding her captive for 19 years in Mexico and elsewhere, during which time he fathered her nine children, until the now 33-year-old escaped in 2016, investigators said.

■ Ayrton Little, 16, created a viral sensation by posting a video of himself, wearing a Harvard University hoodie, and his classmates at a prep school in Breaux Bridge, La., jumping up and down and cheering when they learned that he had been accepted into the Ivy League school.

■ Alyse Gossman, a Salvation Army official in Broward County, Fla., said the charity will sell three 1947 Mexican 50-peso gold coins, each worth about $1,300, that were wrapped in dollar bills and dropped into a red kettle outside a store in Pompano Beach.

■ Anne Klein of Support Dogs Inc. in St. Louis, said a black-and-white cat named D-O-G (dee-OH’jee) is “fearless” in getting future service dogs comfortable around other animals by playing with their tails, sleeping in their beds, and eating and drinking from their bowls.

■ Jason Wilkins, an assistant police chief, said police acting on a tip went to a Saline, Kan., home and found a 150-pound, 4-foottall sculpture depicting a sitting teddy bear covered in chocolate that was stolen a year ago from in front of the Russell Stover Candies factory in Abilene.

■ Samuel Johnson, 34, faces arson and other felony charges after telling police in Mesa, Ariz., that he used a book of matches to ignite the city’s four-story tall “Merry Main Christmas Tree,” causing about $40,000 in damage.