• Cornell William Brooks, an attorney and ordained minister who is the executive director of the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, was named the new leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which has been under interim leadership since its last president resigned six months ago.
• Larry Thompson, who was found innocent in a 1984 New Jersey murder-for-hire case made famous by the book Blind Faith, has confessed that he was the hit man but cannot be tried again for the same crime, prosecutor Joseph Coronato said.
• Reginald Adams, 61, who spent 34 years in a Louisiana prison, had his murder conviction reversed and was released after Judge Laurie White agreed with authorities that former prosecutors and detectives withheld evidence that could have acquitted him in the slaying of a police officer's wife.
• Archbishop Wojciech Polak, 49, was appointed by Pope Francis as the new primate, or honorary leader, of Poland's Roman Catholic Church.
• Brett Bouchard, 17, whose right arm was severed below the elbow in an accident while cleaning a pasta machine at a restaurant in Massena, N.Y., had the limb successfully reattached at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and was able to move it again less than three weeks after the accident.
• Randall Charlton III of Centerville, Pa., faces multiple felony charges, including aggravated assault and corruption of minors, after being accused of tattooing a smiley face and a derogatory word on the arm of a 12-year-old girl.
• Gabriel Diaz, a New York City cabdriver who wore a swastika armband while on the job, said his rights were violated when the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission suspended him for 30 days, arguing that if Muslims can drive taxis while wearing turbans and "a homosexual can walk around with a big rainbow flag," then he should be allowed to wear the Nazi symbol.
• Jairo Orellana Morales, a suspected leader of the Zetas drug cartel who is wanted in the United States, was arrested after a firefight with federal forces in Guatemala that killed a police officer and two others.
• Don Howarth, a Los Angeles attorney, was fined $3,000 for shocking a witness with a trick pen that ran on AAA batteries, conduct that District Judge James Brady said amounted to "battery of a witness," during a Utah trial over whether electrical currents from a power plant are harming nearby cattle.
A Section on 05/18/2014