In the news

Arick Whitson, owner of a barbecue restaurant in Stockbridge, Ga., will receive $1.7 million to settle a federal lawsuit claiming his business was harassed by city officials and employees after declining to give a city councilman a free meal.

Phillip Hurley Jr., wanted in Texas on an aggravated assault charge, was arrested in Anderson, Ind., and is facing additional charges after a high-speed chase in a stolen state police car that ended when the vehicle crashed into a semi-tractor-trailer, according to authorities.

John-Paul Hodnett, a paleontologist in Laurel, Md., said the 300-million-year-old species of shark he discovered in New Mexico as a graduate student has been named Dracopristis hoffmanorum, or Hoffman’s Dragon Shark, in honor of the family that owns the land where the fossils were found.

Philip Gunn, the Mississippi House speaker, was among the crowd of 150 people who gathered to watch the release of five endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtles that were nursed back to health after being stranded in Massachusetts in December.

AlessandraGalloni, the global managing editor of Reuters, has been promoted to be the news service’s new editor-in-chief, making her the first woman to take that role in the company’s 170-year history.

Jen Riley, a veterinarian at The Blue Ridge Wildlife Center in Boyce, Va., said she believes two male snapping turtles brought to the center days apart with gunshot wounds were intentionally shot, which is a crime in the state.

Kristi Wade, who was attacked by a rabid bobcat outside her home in Burgaw, N.C., said her injuries would have been much worse if her husband, Happy, hadn’t sprung into action, pulling the animal off his wife’s back, throwing it across the lawn and shooting it.

Nate Moss a captain with the Fire and Emergency Services Department in Athens, Ga., said the estimated 500 partygoers at a house near the University of Georgia “should consider themselves fortunate” that only 22 people were injured when the first floor of the home collapsed into a crawl space.

Anthony Jones, 35, of Kansas City, Kan., was charged with second-degree murder in the fatal beating of his girlfriend, Michelle Long, who investigators said had been dead for a few days before her body was found inside her Kansas City, Mo., apartment.

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