In the news

■ JoAnne Bass, who joined the Air Force in 1993, has been named the first woman to serve as chief master sergeant of the Air Force, the branch’s top enlisted leader who advises Air Force Secretary Barbara Barrett and Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Brown.

■ Corri Feige, Alaska’s commissioner of natural resources, said a National Guard heavy-lift helicopter removed an abandoned bus popularized by the book Into

the Wild that became a favorite tome of backcountry adventurers, including several who died and others who had to be rescued.

■ Patrick Foy, a captain with California’s Department of Fish and Wildlife, said a Sierra Madre woman sleeping in her backyard fought back with her laptop to drive off a bear that attacked her, giving her time to escape.

■ Victor Sanchez-Santa, 19, of Queens, N.Y., faces an arson charge, accused of setting a glove on fire and tossing it into a New York Police Department van, igniting a blaze, in violence that took place during protests over racial injustice and police brutality.

■ Neil Warren, sheriff of Cobb County, Ga., has agreed to pay a $10,000 fine after state investigators determined his staff worked on his reelection campaign during office hours, including arranging photo shoots and writing emails soliciting donations.

■ Beth Bashert, the white mayor of Ypsilanti, Mich., apologized after saying during a City Council meeting held by videoconference that she supported the reappointment of a human-relations commissioner only because she would be “crucified” if she voted against a black person.

■ Rolandas Skaisgirys said growing up in Lithuania, “We did not have rock ’n’ roll, freedom or other things that young Americans enjoyed,” to explain why the village of Paminklas honored J.D. Salinger, the American writer of the 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye, with a sculpture near where Salinger’s ancestors lived.

■ Tomas Dymek, 31, of Queens, N.Y., who was panhandling at a New Jersey parking lot, is accused of forcing himself into the car of a 66-year-old woman who had given him $1, sitting on her and driving off to lead police on a chase that ended in Pennsylvania.

■ Catherine Pugh, 70, the former Baltimore mayor sentenced to three years in federal prison for a self-dealing scandal, pleaded guilty to a state perjury charge for not disclosing her interests in her Health Holly children’s books.