In the news

■ Lt. Gen. Laura Richardson, 57, has been confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the next commander of U.S. Southern Command, becoming the first woman to lead the Doral, Fla.-based joint military command responsible for operations in South America, Central America and the Caribbean.

■ George King-Thompson, 21, a British free climber, scaled his second London skyscraper in nine days, climbing the 23-story, 305-foot Unex Tower without ropes in about 10 minutes, including a quick stop to smoke an e-cigarette two stories from the top.

■ Dan Guenther, a St. Louis alderman, has been knocking on doors in the city’s Benton Park neighborhood as he and police try to find out who hung a noose outside a home owned by an Asian woman who had hired a Black contractor to do renovations.

■ Rene Thibodeaux, sheriff of Pointe Coupee Parish, La., said state fish and wildlife investigators are searching for the operator and passengers of a pontoon boat who fled the scene after the boat struck and injured three children riding tubes on the False River.

■ Takashi Kawamura, the mayor of Nagoya, Japan, apologized and offered to pay for a replacement after he bit the Olympic gold medal of softball pitcher Miu Goto who had paid the city a courtesy visit after Japan defeated the United States.

■ Rob Portman, the Republican U.S. senator from Ohio, observed that for astronaut Neil Armstrong, an Ohio native and the first man to walk on the moon, “It was about the mission,” at a ceremony marking the renaming of NASA’s Plum Brook Station in Sandusky to the Neil A. Armstrong Test Facility.

■ Chad Scott, 53, a former Louisiana-based U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent convicted of stealing money from narcotics suspects, falsifying government records and committing perjury during a federal trial, was sentenced to more than 13 years in prison.

■ Tericus Dinkins, 49, a correctional officer at Kilby Prison in Montgomery County, Ala., was jailed on felony charges after evidence found in a cellphone confiscated from an inmate indicated the guard was selling contraband to the prisoner.

■ Vicente Fernandez, the 81-year-old ranchera music icon, is in critical but stable condition according to his doctors after being hospitalized with a spinal cord injury and placed on a ventilator after taking a fall at his ranch near Guadalajara, Mexico.