Police say Memphis shooting suspect killed 4 during rampage
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Police in Memphis, Tennessee, said a man who drove around the city shooting at people, killing four, during an hours-long rampage that forced frightened people to shelter in place Wednesday, has been arrested.
Ezekiel Kelly, 19, who was charged as an adult with attempted first-degree murder in 2020, was taken into custody at around 9 p.m. in the Memphis neighborhood of Whitehaven, police spokeswoman Karen Rudolph said. Memphis Police Director Cerelyn “CJ" Davis said charges were pending during a news conference early Thursday.
Four people were killed and three others were wounded in seven shootings across Memphis, Davis said. The rampage began at 12:56 a.m. Wednesday and continued to about 8:30 p.m.
There was at least eight crime scenes: the seven shootings and the carjacking of a Dodge Challenger in Southaven, Mississippi, Davis said. Kelly was arrested when he crashed during a high speed chase after the carjacking in Southaven, which is located south of Memphis.
That was about two hours after police sent out an alert saying a man driving a light blue Infiniti was responsible for multiple shootings in the city. Police said he later killed a woman in Memphis and took her grey Toyota SUV, which he left behind when the carjacked the Dodge Challenger in Southaven. Police said he recorded his actions on Facebook.
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Canada's horrific knife rampage over as last suspect dies
ROSTHERN, Saskatchewan (AP) — The last suspect in a horrific stabbing rampage that killed 10 and wounded 18 in western Canada is dead following his capture, and police hope the stunning end to a gripping hunt that stretched into a fourth day will bring some peace to victims' families.
One official said Myles Sanderson, 32, died from self-inflicted injuries Wednesday after police forced the stolen car he was driving off a highway in Saskatchewan. Other officials declined to discuss how he died, but expressed relief the final suspected killer was no longer on the loose.
“This evening our province is breathing a collective sigh of relief,” Assistant Commissioner Rhonda Blackmore, commander of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Saskatchewan, said at a news conference Wednesday night.
The other suspect, Sanderson's 30-year-old brother, Damien Sanderson, was found dead Monday near the scene of the bloody knife attacks inside and around the James Smith Cree First Nation reserve early Sunday. Both men were residents of the Indigenous reserve.
Blackmore said Myles Sanderson was cornered as police units responded to a report of a stolen vehicle being driven by a man armed with a knife. She said officers forced Sanderson’s vehicle off the road and into a ditch. He was detained and a knife was found inside the vehicle, she said.
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Blinken unveils $2B in new US military aid for Europe
RZESZOW, Poland (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday announced major new military aid worth more than 2 billion dollars for Ukraine and other European countries threatened by Russia.
Blinken said the Biden administration would provide $2 billion in long-term foreign military financing to Ukraine and 18 of its neighbors, including NATO members and regional security partners “most potentially at risk for future Russian aggression."
That’s on top of a $675-million package of heavy weaponry, ammunition and armored vehicles for Ukraine alone that Defense Secretary Llloyd Austin announced earlier Thursday at a conference in Germany. That package includes howitzers, artillery munitions, Humvees, armored ambulances, anti-tank systems and more.
Austin said that “the war is at another key moment,” with Ukrainian forces beginning their counteroffensive in the south of the country. He said that “now we’re seeing the demonstrable success of our common efforts on the battlefield.”
“The face of the war is changing and so is the mission of this contact group,” Austin told the meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which was attended by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and Ukraine’s defense minister as well as officials from allied countries.
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Gloves off, Biden embraces tough tone on 'MAGA Republicans'
WASHINGTON (AP) — In recent days, President Joe Biden has sharpened his attacks against Donald Trump and the so-called MAGA Republicans for posing a threat to democracy. He’s likened the philosophy undergirding the dominant strain of the modern-day GOP to “semi-fascism.”
And Democrats are taking notice.
The gloves-off, no-holds-barred approach from Biden as of late has emboldened Democrats across the country, rallying the party faithful ahead of the November elections even as his harshest rhetoric makes some vulnerable incumbents visibly uncomfortable.
Biden’s increasingly stark warnings about Trump-fueled elements of the Republican Party are making up the core part of his midterm message, combined with repeated reminders to voters about recent Democratic accomplishments and a promise that democracy can still produce results for the American people. But it’s the blistering statements from Biden about his predecessor and adherents of the “Make America Great Again” philosophy that have given many Democrats a bolt of fresh energy as they campaign to keep control of Congress.
“It’s a particularly strong issue for our base,” said Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, who leads the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the official campaign arm of Senate Democrats. “Folks want us, want people to show that there is a clear contrast in the election between where Democrats are and Republicans have been."
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UK's Truss to announce plan to tame soaring energy bills
LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Liz Truss will announce Thursday how her new government plans to ease the burden of soaring energy bills that have left people and businesses across the U.K. facing a bleak winter.
Truss is due to make a statement in the House of Commons and is expected to impose a cap on bills that are skyrocketing because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the economic aftershocks of COVID-19 and Brexit.
The announcement, on Truss’s second full day in office, comes after a summer in which the government refused to say how it would respond. Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson was not able to make major decisions after announcing in July that he would resign. Truss, who won the Conservative Party contest to replace Johnson as leader, declined to announce her plans before she was in office.
Truss, a free-market conservative, has said she favors tax cuts over handouts, but has been forced to act by the scale of the crisis. She is expected to cap domestic energy bills, which otherwise will hit 3,500 pounds ($4,000) a year for the average household next month, triple the cost of a year ago.
Cabinet minister Simon Clarke said Truss would announce “a lasting settlement that provides both comfort and clarity for both households and businesses.”
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School gun case sparks debate over safety and second chances
Oak Park, Ill. (AP) — Keyon Robinson was just a month away from graduating from high school when he took a loaded gun, placed it in his backpack and headed to campus.
He'd fought with a relative that morning. He was angry, and scared someone would come after him. The firearm, a Glock-style ghost gun with no serial number that he’d bought via social media, was his security blanket.
“I felt like I just needed it for safety because of the stuff I got myself into," said Robinson, now 19.
He insists he never intended to hurt anyone at his school in Oak Park, a suburb that borders Chicago’s West Side. “Realistically, I didn’t need a gun at all.”
And he never fired it. On May 3 — three weeks before a gunman massacred 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas — police arrested Robinson near the school's main entrance as he returned from lunch. He told the officers, who were acting on a tip, that he hadn’t even taken the gun out of his backpack until they asked him to do so.
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Police arrest Vegas-area elected official in reporter death
LAS VEGAS (AP) — A Las Vegas-area elected public official was arrested Wednesday as the suspect in the fatal stabbing of a veteran newspaper reporter whose investigations of the official’s work preceded his primary loss in June.
Clark County Public Administrator Robert “Rob” Telles, a Democrat, was taken into custody at his home by police SWAT officers hours after investigators served a search warrant and confiscated vehicles in the criminal probe of the killing of Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Jeff German, Sheriff Joe Lombardo told the newspaper.
Telles, 45, had been a focus of German’s reporting about turmoil including complaints of administrative bullying, favoritism and Telles’ relationship with a subordinate staffer in the county office that handles property of people who die without a will or family contacts.
The newspaper’s executive editor, Glenn Cook, said in a statement that “the arrest of Robert Telles is at once an enormous relief and an outrage for the Review-Journal newsroom.”
“We are relieved Robert Telles is in custody and outraged that a colleague appears to have been killed for reporting on an elected official,” Cook said.
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Conservation plan highlights Arabs' fraught ties to Israel
HILF, Israel (AP) — Ayoub Rumeihat opened his palms to the sky in prayer as he stood among tombstones for Bedouins killed in action while serving the state of Israel.
Finishing the holy words, he gazed at the distant Mediterranean Sea across a valley full of olives and oak where his community has grazed goats for generations.
Rumeihat says the Bedouins, celebrated by the Israeli military for their knowledge of the land, fear the government now seeks to sever their ties to that same piece of earth.
Rumeihat and his fellow Bedouins see a plan to turn their land into a wildlife corridor as an affront to their service to the country. They say it’s in line with steps taken by nationalist Israeli governments against the Arab minority in recent years that have deepened a sense of estrangement and tested the community’s already brittle ties to the state.
The plan has sparked rare protests from Bedouins in Israel’s northern Galilee region — some of the few native Palestinians to embrace early Jewish settlers before Israel's creation in 1948. Many have since served in the Israeli police and military, often fighting against fellow Palestinians.
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Cheetahs from South Africa go to parks in India, Mozambique
BELA-BELA, South Africa (AP) — South Africa is flying cheetahs to India and Mozambique as part of ambitious efforts to reintroduce the distinctively spotted cats in regions where their population has dwindled.
Four cheetahs captured at reserves in South Africa have been flown to Mozambique this week after being held in quarantine for about a month and cleared for travel. Conservationists are preparing to fly 12 more cheetahs, reputed to be the world's fastest land mammals, to India in October.
Speaking to The Associated Press shortly after those going to Mozambique were tranquilized and placed into crates, wildlife veterinarian Andy Frasier said the relocations are tough for the animals.
"It’s a very stressful process for the cats to be in a boma (livestock enclosure) environment because they have nowhere to go whilst we are darting them," said Frasier of shooting the cats with darts of tranquilizers.
“We need to use our drug doses very carefully and make sure that we give them enough drugs to anesthetize them safely," he said.
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Alcaraz tops Sinner at 2:50 a.m.; latest US Open finish ever
NEW YORK (AP) — This was a match that would not end. Should not end, one might say. Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, two of the brightest young stars of men’s tennis, traded shots of the highest quality and countless momentum swings across five sterling sets for 5 hours, 15 minutes until Alcaraz finally won the last point at 2:50 a.m. on Thursday, the latest finish in U.S. Open history.
It was “only” a quarterfinal, no trophy at stake, yet was as taut a thriller as this year's tournament has produced or, likely, will, a tour de force of big cuts on the full sprint and plenty of guts, concluding as a 6-3, 6-7 (7), 6-7 (0), 7-5, 6-3 victory for the No. 3-seeded Alcaraz, a 19-year-old from Spain.
“Honestly,” said Alcaraz, who saved a match point in the fourth set, “I still don't know how I did it.”
He also used words such as “unbelievable” and “amazing.” No hyperbole there.
“This one will hurt for quite a while,” said No. 11 Sinner, a 21-year-old from Italy. “But tomorrow, I will wake up — or today, I will wake up — trying to somehow (take away) only the positives.”
The Associated Press
