In the news

Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary and former Arizona governor, was approved as the first female president of the 10-campus University of California system and is expected to begin the job in September.

Gloria MacKenzie, 84, the retiree from Maine who won a $590 million Powerball jackpot in May, has bought a 6,300-square-foot, five-bedroom home in a gated golf-course community in southeast Jacksonville, Fla.

Ashley Taylor Wright, 23, of Pensacola, Fla., faces several charges, including child abuse on accusations that she threw her baby, who was not injured, at a deputy in an attempt to escape when the deputy tried to confront her about shoplifting at a mall.

Scott Thorson, an ex-lover of Liberace who was the subject of Behind the Candelabra, a recent HBO film on the pianist’s life, was sentenced in Reno, Nev., to probation on identity-theft charges after lawyers argued over whether it was proper for him to receive drug testing at a Nevada brothel.

Jeffrey Barton, 52, a Vancouver, Wash., man who pleaded innocent to a charge of illegally discharging a firearm, said he fired into the air to chase away car prowlers, and said outside court, “I did what [Vice President] Joe Biden told me to do. I went outside and fired my shotgun in the air.”

Jenna Conti, a hairstylist whose dream is to swim at the Florida Aquarium, which features mermaid performers, was banned from swimming in her community’s pool because she wants to wear a mermaid tail.

Anthony Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said at an Aspen, Colo., national-security conference that fugitive security contractor Edward Snowden “did this country a service” by igniting a debate about the reach of the U.S. government’s electronic surveillance programs.

Army Lt. Col. Sam House, a spokesman at the Guantanamo Bay prison for terror detainees in Cuba, said the number of inmates on hunger strike has dropped to 75 from a peak of 106 last week, and most of the men still listed as strikers had eaten a meal recently.

Luca Parmitano, 36, the Italian astronaut whose helmet flooded during a spacewalk, said in a TV interview from the International Space Station that he “experienced what it’s like to be a goldfish in a fishbowl - from the point of view of the goldfish.”