• Kirsi Niku, museum director in Kotka, Finland, said a vandalized bronze bust of Lenin was a Moscow-directed gift from the former Estonian Soviet republic, but the war in Ukraine was the last straw and it was relegated to a warehouse.
• Juan Manuel Alvarez Inzunza of Mexico, a lawyer who laundered millions in drug money for a cartel, was sentenced to 15 years and eight months in a U.S. prison and told the judge in San Diego that he was "deeply remorseful" and thankful his criminal career is over.
• Nora J.S. Reichardt, a TV reporter in Des Moines, Iowa, announced on a newscast that she will henceforth publicly identify as a transgender woman, saying "I kind of just reached a personal breaking point" and finally "I am feeling more and more at home in my body."
• Jack Phillips, the Colorado baker who won a partial U.S. Supreme Court victory after refusing to make a gay couple's wedding cake, is now challenging a state ruling that he violated discrimination law by refusing to make a cake celebrating a gender transition.
• Tobias Kormind of 77 Diamonds called it "an astounding result" as the 11.15-carat Williamson Pink Star sold for $49.9 million in Hong Kong, setting a world record for the highest price per carat for a diamond sold at auction.
• Ashley Garner of Fort Myers, Fla., had given up on her wedding ring after losing it in her yard shortly before Hurricane Ian, but amid the cleanup work, "the ring was right there" in a pile of brush and trees, and "I just sat on the curb, and I prayed to God and thanked him for providing and giving us a sign that there's hope for the community."