• Erin Macke, 30, of Johnston, Iowa, was jailed on accusations of child endangerment and other counts after police said she left her four children, two 12-year-olds, a 6- and 7-year-old, home alone while she went to Germany for a 12-day vacation.
• Carolyn Lou Gay, 64, joined her grandson in jail after police in Martinsburg, W.Va., said she smuggled 22 sealed drinking straws containing various drugs into the lockup, resulting in her being charged with drug possession and delivery counts.
• Susan Kosier, who is white, got a permit to place a 30-foot-by-50-foot Black Lives Matter flag on an 80-foot flagpole in her yard after Stafford County, Va., officials told her that they couldn't force a nearby property owner to remove or lower a Confederate battle flag.
• Joe Bagley, Boston's city archaeologist, and volunteers have pulled pottery fragments, bottles and a tobacco pipe from what is believed to be the site of a colonial outhouse next to the house once owned by Revolutionary War hero Paul Revere.
• Jim Matthews, sheriff of Kershaw County, S.C., said two men have been arrested on burglary counts after they didn't see a wildlife camera mounted outside a home that recorded them on the front porch and captured images of their faces, enabling investigators to identify them as suspects in the crime.
• Bernie Lewis, assistant manager of a restaurant in Washington, Pa., said she's been sworn to secrecy about the identities of a couple who have been paying the checks for other customers, most recently for a group of 16 out celebrating a child's birthday.
• John Cauthon, 51, a podiatrist in Murfreesboro, Tenn., was convicted of defrauding Medicare and other benefit programs by submitting claims for surgeries he didn't perform or overstating the treatments he did, federal prosecutors said.
• Lynda Voltz, a member of the Australian Labor Party and a minister for veterans affairs, is calling for a Philadelphia medical museum to return the skull it somehow obtained of an unknown Australian soldier who died after being shot in the head during World War I.
• Dalton Streff, 14, hid in a backyard children's playhouse to shoot and kill a mountain lion that had killed several animals, including a goat, duck, cat and a chicken, on the family's farm in Custer, S.D., saying when he shot, "it jumped about 20 feet and then did a face plant."
A Section on 09/30/2017