• Brianne Altice, 35, a former English teacher in Farmington, Utah, who is accused of having sexual relationships with two of her former students, ages 16 and 17, now faces nine felony counts after being ordered to stand trial on charges of rape and forcible sodomy.
• Yovani Rodriguez, 21, the driver of a stolen van that hit and crushed the hip of Gordo, a white Maltese mix dog, during a televised police chase in Los Angeles, pleaded guilty to hit-and-run, among other charges, and was sentenced to two years in prison.
• Gordon Burgess, president of Tangipahoa Parish, La., said the parish is stepping up investigation of traffic-sign thefts and will prosecute anyone possessing one, even if that person didn't steal it.
• Jay Nixon, the governor of Missouri, has frozen $735 million in spending on programs and facilities because of concerns about finances, but state officials are moving forward with a $750,000 renovation of the Senate chambers to restore them to their original appearance.
• Pete Wheeler, the Georgia Department of Veterans Services commissioner, said the state will honor 30 Georgians declared missing in action during the Vietnam War who still have not been found.
• Rayma Suprani, an award-winning cartoonist in Caracas, Venezuela, said she was fired by El Universal, one of the country's largest and most-prestigious daily newspapers, over her representation of the late Hugo Chavez's iconic signature as a flat-lined heartbeat to dramatize the country's health care crisis.
• Lenise Littlejohn, a Knoxville, Tenn., mother of a sixth-grade boy with cerebral palsy, said her son was left on a bus for more than five hours after he fell asleep on the way to school, and the school said the driver has been permanently removed from its list of bus operators.
• Kyle Smith, the Campbellsville, Ky., fire chief, said firefighter Tony Grider, 41, died Saturday, a month after he and another man were shocked when a firetruck's ladder got too close to a power line while they were dumping water on Campbellsville University's marching band as part of the "ice bucket challenge."
• Adam Adli, a student democracy activist in Malaysia, was sentenced to a year in jail under the colonial-era charge of sedition after he made statements after national elections last year that included urging people to "go down to the streets to seize back our power."
A Section on 09/21/2014