In the news
■ Jon Haskett of the Fire Department in Osceola County, Fla., offered an apparently unintended pun, saying hundreds of pallets holding plastic pots for plants were “the root of the issue” when a big fire broke out at a nursery supply company.
■ Marco Goecke, the German ballet director who smeared dog feces on the face of a newspaper critic whose reviews he took exception to, then issued what some considered a tepid apology, was fired by the Hanover State Opera.
■ Christi Michaud, schools superintendent in Milford, N.H., said “the board has listened to folks” as it reversed a policy banning middle and high school students from using urinals after dozens protested such a solution to a gender-identity controversy.
■ Ernestine Anderson-Trahan, a city court judge in New Orleans, had “a good day,” her attorney said, as a U.S. district judge acquitted her of federal taxfraud charges after a trial that ended with a hung jury.
■ Bob Menendez, a U.S. senator from New Jersey, called on Mexico to do more in the fight against fentanyl, and that same day the Mexican army seized more than half a million pills in a raid on what it called the largest synthetic drug lab it’s ever found.
■ Judy Kline was hit with a protection order by a St. Louis circuit judge and faces charges in the face of doorbell videos on social media showing a woman pounding on a door, terrorizing a family of Mexican descent and hurling racial insults as well as damaging property with a hammer.
■ Armando Bustamante, a former Memphis police officer, faces up to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to violating the civil rights of a man in custody, injuring him by hitting him in the head with his gun as well as his hands.
■ LeRonne Armstrong, police chief of Oakland, Calif., was fired by the mayor, the seventh chief to depart in as many years, after a probe concluded the department failed to properly investigate and discipline a sergeant who was involved in a hit-and-run with his patrol car and fired his gun in an elevator at police headquarters.
■ Sadae Mills of Houston awaits sentencing after becoming the third of five suspects to plead guilty in an internet romance scam that cheated victims across the country including Arkansas out of $3.2 million, with her role being laundering the money.