In the news

• Dalila Argaez Wendlandt, 51, who is the daughter of Colombian immigrants, was unanimously confirmed to a seat on the highest court in Massachusetts, becoming the first Hispanic justice on the Supreme Judicial Court, which traces its history to the late 17th century.

• Bernave Millan-Rascon, 40, of Mexico was sentenced to 15 years in prison after prosecutors in North Carolina said he was one of two leaders of an international trafficking organization that shipped drugs, including cocaine, into the U.S.

• Kimberly Drumm, 51, and Bonnie Turner, 49, sisters from Olive Branch, Miss., face up to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to laundering millions of dollars gleaned from distributing synthetic marijuana, which was traced to a fatal overdose by a New Hampshire resident.

• Marcus Hoffmann, 46, a former regional official with the far-right Alternative for Germany party, faces up to 15 years in jail related to allegations that he was involved in smuggling almost 80 pounds of cocaine into a northern port, according to authorities.

• Douglas Matthew Gurkins, 34, of North Carolina was sentenced to more than two years in prison after pleading guilty to driving to a Black family's home, yelling racial slurs at its occupants, and threatening to shoot the mother and her four children for renting the house.

• Kazuya Sato, 40, who caught four octopuses in Minami-Sanriku, Japan, discovered that one of them had nine tentacles, prompting him to call a local nature center where researchers said they will put the creature on display.

• James Daly and Bethany Zarcone, police officers in eastern Missouri, were charged in a jailhouse attack on a handcuffed man during a post-arrest booking in which the officers are accused of grabbing the man by his hair and throat, choking him and kneeing him in the groin.

• Erick Taylor, a Black Louisiana sheriff's deputy, has sued Jessie LeBlanc, a white former judge, saying in a federal lawsuit that a racial slur in LeBlanc's private text messages defamed him and hurt his ability to do his job after the messages were made public.

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