In the news

■ Charles Coney, the former city manager of Americus, Ga., who was fired over allegations of sexual harassment, had his appeal rejected by the Americus City Council, which dismissed his claims of racial bias and noted Coney, who is Black, was fired by the same majority-Black council that hired him.

■ Carter Tranh Tran, 43, a Mississippi man, pleaded guilty to selling over 55 grams of fentanyl after authorities, acting on a tip that Tran was using his business and home to sell narcotics, sent an undercover agent to purchase drugs from Tran, officials said.

■ Ivan Geshev, Bulgaria’s chief public prosecutor, said the head of the country’s anti-drug trafficking unit and two other officers arrested in a bribery scheme were “suspected of opening an umbrella above the activity of organized crime groups engaged in trafficking of narcotics in Bulgaria and abroad.”

■ Monte Belew, the sheriff of Henry County, Tenn., said three people people are facing multiple charges after authorities found an 18-month-old boy in a dog kennel as well as 127 marijuana plants, 17 guns and hundreds of animals in and around a mobile home.

■ Justin Wilson , a spokesman for the Gwinnett County, Ga., Fire Department, said fire crews sent to a bridge crossing the Chattahoochee River rescued 111 people on a tubing tour after the group was stranded in the river during a thunderstorm.

■ Bill Lowe, an officer with the Missouri State Highway Patrol, said a 15-year-old and a 17-yearold were arrested and the younger teen was treated for a nonlife-threatening gunshot wound after a shootout with officers responding to a carjacking in Independence.

■ Ken Paulson, the director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, is launching an educational ad campaign featuring artists, authors and athletes discussing the freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment.

■ Mark Brnovich, the state attorney general of Arizona, issued a ceaseand-desist letter to a company touted by Dream City Church, where President Donald Trump held a rally, that claims its air filtration system “kills 99 percent of COVID within 10 minutes.”

■ James Brown, 40, of Marion, Va., was charged in federal court in connection with the burning of a cross on the front lawn a Black teenager who had recently organized a civil-rights protest, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.