In the news

• Liza Scott, 7, a Homewood, Ala., girl who opened a lemonade stand at her mom's bakery last year to make some extra spending money, is now using it to raise money -- about $15,000 so far in just a few days -- to help pay for her own brain surgery after she was stricken by seizures.

• Banksy, the elusive British street artist, confirmed on social media that he did a drawing of a man escaping with a rope made of paper from a typewriter on the wall of a former prison in Reading that's being considered for redevelopment as an arts venue.

• Braxton Basinger, a livestock company owner in Winfield, Ala., said Jack, a 3½-year-old kangaroo that escaped from a trailer on the way to a new home in Tennessee, has been recaptured, calling it "a big relief," and adding he got calls from around the country about the wayward marsupial.

• David Crawford, 69, the former police chief of Laurel, Md., who is accused of setting fires to multiple structures belonging to his adversaries, was charged with more than 50 felonies, including arson and attempted murder, authorities said.

• Thatsaphon Saii, a Thai navy seaman, jumped into the water to rescue four small cats on a burning and sinking boat and was recorded on video swimming the animals to safety -- with one cat perched delicately upon his back.

• Christina Fay, 62, of Wolfeboro, N.H., convicted of 17 animal cruelty counts in 2018 for keeping dozens of filthy and sick Great Danes at her mansion, was ordered by a judge to pay nearly $2 million to the Humane Society of the United States for the cost of their care.

• Randy James, 56, the former city clerk in Bay Springs, Miss., who pleaded guilty to embezzling more than $300,000 in city funds by creating false invoices and under-reporting his income to the IRS, was sentenced to more than four years in prison, prosecutors said.

• George Blatti, 75, a Long Island, N.Y., doctor who saw patients at parking lots and doughnut shops where he wrote prescriptions for large quantities of opioids that sometimes resulted in the deaths of patients, was indicted on five murder counts, prosecutors said.

• Anthony Nero, 48, of Eagleville, Pa., accused of shooting into a county Democratic Party headquarters on Jan. 20 out of frustration with covid-19 restrictions and Donald Trump's loss in the presidential election, faces federal cyberstalking and other counts, prosecutors said.

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