A man who was shot dead last month as authorities attempted to serve him an indictment on federal gun charges has been identified as the killer of an 18-year-old Ohio woman in a case that had gone unsolved for 43 years, police announced Monday. Mansfield Police Chief Jason Bammann said the cold case of Debra Lee Miller, a local waitress beaten to death with an oven grate in her apartment on April 29, 1981, was reopened in 2021 to account for advances in DNA technology and forensic investigative techniques. “They examined the case as if it had happened yesterday, through an entirely new lens,” Bammann said at a news conference. “Their findings were staggering.” The chief said a “firm DNA profile” of James Vanest, at the time Miller’s 26-year-old upstairs neighbor, emerged from evidence left from the room. Vanest had been questioned but never identified as a suspect during the initial investigation, which became mired in allegations of potential police misconduct. Miller was one of several people from the Mansfield area whose suspicious deaths in the 1980s were examined for possible links to Mansfield police officers. A special investigation ordered by the mayor concluded in 1989 that there was no evidence linking any officers with the deaths, but the report raised questions about involvement between police officers and homicide victim Miller and about the way police investigated some homicides. The report noted that Miller wrote in her diary that she was involved with several Mansfield police officers. The local police chief retired in January 1990, after subsequent complaints arose over alleged irregularities in the investigation of the death of the ex-wife of a Mansfield patrolman. Miller’s case was reopened several times during the ensuing years. This time, Richland County Prosecutor Jodie Schumacher said the DNA evidence against Vanest was strong enough that her office was preparing a case against him for the killing to take to a grand jury. But the case was never able to be presented. Police had found Vanest living in Canton, about 100 miles (160.93 kilometers) east of Mansfield, in November 2021 and re-interviewed him about Miller’s killing. He had admitted to lying to investigators during his first interview in 1981 and investigators sensed this time that he was trying to create an alibi to account for his DNA being present in Miller’s apartment, Bammann said. Mansfield Police Detective Terry Butler sought a second interview in spring 2024, but Vanest refused to speak and requested an attorney. Authorities said he subsequently sold his house in Canton, bought a pickup truck and trailer and fled to West Virginia. He left several firearms at his Canton home and was stopped in West Virginia with two more. He was arrested on state charges and released on bond. The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives took over his case and later indicted him on the federal gun charges. On Nov. 18, U.S. Marshals and Canton-area SWAT officers attempted to serve Vanest with that indictment at a North Canton motel where he was holed up. “It is our understanding that when confronted by Marshals and the Canton Regional SWAT team, Mr. Vanest pointed a gun at them and barricaded himself inside the hotel,” Bammann said. “After a short shootout, one Canton SWAT member was shot in the arm, and

When two octogenarian buddies named Nick discovered that ChatGPT might be stealing and repurposing a lifetime of their work, they tapped a son-in-law to sue the companies behind the artificial intelligence chatbot. Veteran journalists Nicholas Gage, 84, and Nicholas Basbanes, 81, who live near each other in the same Massachusetts town, each devoted decades to reporting, writing and book authorship. Gage poured his tragic family story and search for the truth about his mother’s death into a bestselling memoir that led John Malkovich to play him in the 1985 film “Eleni.” Basbanes transitioned his skills as a daily newspaper reporter into writing widely-read books about literary culture. Basbanes was the first of the duo to try fiddling with AI chatbots, finding them impressive but prone to falsehoods and lack of attribution. The friends commiserated and filed their lawsuit earlier this year, seeking to represent a class of writers whose copyrighted work they allege “has been systematically pilfered by” OpenAI and its business partner Microsoft. “It’s highway robbery,” Gage said in an interview in his office next to the 18th-century farmhouse where he lives in central Massachusetts. “It is,” added Basbanes, as the two men perused Gage’s book-filled shelves. “We worked too hard on these tomes.” Now their lawsuit is subsumed into a broader case seeking class-action status led by household names like John Grisham, Jodi Picoult and “Game of Thrones” novelist George R. R. Martin; and proceeding under the same New York federal judge who’s hearing similar copyright claims from media outlets such as The New York Times, Chicago Tribune and Mother Jones. What links all the cases is the claim that OpenAI — with help from Microsoft’s money and computing power — ingested huge troves of human writings to “train” AI chatbots to produce human-like passages of text, without getting permission or compensating the people who wrote the original works. “If they can get it for nothing, why pay for it?” Gage said. “But it’s grossly unfair and very harmful to the written word.” OpenAI and Microsoft didn’t return requests for comment this week but have been fighting the allegations in court and in public. So have other AI companies confronting legal challenges not just from writers but visual artists, music labels and other creators who allege that generative AI profits have been built on misappropriation. The chief executive of Microsoft’s AI division, Mustafa Suleyman, defended AI industry practices at last month’s Aspen Ideas Festival, voicing the theory that training AI systems on content that’s already on the open internet is protected by the “fair use” doctrine of U.S. copyright laws. “The social contract of that content since the ’90s has been that it is fair use,” Suleyman said. “Anyone can copy it, recreate with it, reproduce with it. That has been freeware, if you like.” Suleyman said it was more of a “gray area” in situations where some news organizations and others explicitly said they didn’t want tech companies “scraping” content off their websites. “I think that’s going to work its way through the courts,” he said. The cases are still in the discovery stage and scheduled to drag into 2025. In the meantime, some who believe their professions are threatened by AI business practices have tried to secure private deals to get technology companies to pay a

The Center for Investigative Reporting said Thursday it has sued ChatGPT maker OpenAI and its closest business partner, Microsoft, marking a new front in the legal battle between news publications fighting against unauthorized use of their content on artificial intelligence platforms. The nonprofit, which produces Mother Jones and Reveal, said that OpenAI used its content without permission and without offering compensation, violating copyrights on the organization’s journalism. The lawsuit, filed in a New York federal court, focuses on how AI-generated summaries of articles threaten publishers — a move CIR called exploitative. “It’s immensely dangerous,” Monika Bauerlein, the nonprofit’s CEO, told The Associated Press. “Our existence relies on users finding our work valuable and deciding to support it.” Bauerlein said that “when people can no longer develop that relationship with our work, when they no longer encounter Mother Jones or Reveal, then their relationship is with the AI tool.” That, she said, could “cut the entire foundation of our existence as an independent newsroom out from under us” while also threatening the future of other news organizations. OpenAI and Microsoft didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday. The lawsuit is the latest against OpenAI and Microsoft to land at Manhattan’s federal court, where the companies are already battling a series of other copyright lawsuits from The New York Times, other media outlets and bestselling authors such as John Grisham, Jodi Picoult and George R.R. Martin. The companies also face a separate case in San Francisco’s federal court brought by authors including comedian Sarah Silverman. Some news organizations have chosen to collaborate rather than fight with OpenAI by signing deals to get compensated for sharing news content that can be used to train its AI systems. The latest to do so is Time, which announced Thursday that OpenAI will get access to its “extensive archives from the last 101 years.” OpenAI and other major AI developers don’t disclose their data sources but have argued that taking troves of publicly accessible online text, images and other media to train their AI systems is protected by the “fair use” doctrine of American copyright law. Last summer, more than 4,000 writers signed a letter to the CEOs of OpenAI and other tech companies accusing them of exploitative practices in building chatbots. “It’s not a free resource for these AI companies to ingest and make money on,” Bauerlein said of news media. “They pay for office space, they pay for electricity, they pay salaries for their workers. Why would the content that they ingest be the only thing that they don’t (pay for)?” The AP is among the news organizations that have made licensing deals over the past year with OpenAI; others include The Wall Street Journal and New York Post publisher News Corp., The Atlantic, Axel Springer in Germany and Prisa Media in Spain, France’s Le Monde newspaper and the London-based Financial Times. Mother Jones and CIR were both founded in the 1970s and merged earlier this year. Both are based in San Francisco, as is OpenAI. (AP)

An estimated 320 journalists around the world were imprisoned because of their work toward the end of 2023, according to a report issued Thursday by the Committee to Protect Journalists, which called it a disturbing attempt to smother independent voices. That’s the second-highest number of jailed journalists since the committee began its annual census in 1992. It’s down from 367 in 2022, due primarily to the release of many in Iran, either on bail or as they await sentencing, the committee said. “Our research shows how entrenched authoritarianism is globally, with governments emboldened to stamp out critical reporting and prevent public accountability,” said Jodie Ginsberg, the committee’s chief executive officer. More than a third of the journalists in jail according to the CPJ’s Dec. 1, 2023, census were in China, Myanmar and Belarus, the report said. Israel is tied with Iran for sixth place, the country’s highest ranking ever on CPJ’s annual list. Each of the 17 that were held in Israel at the time of the census were Palestinians arrested in the West Bank since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas on Oct. 7, the report said. Twelve of the 17 nonlocal journalists who CPJ says are imprisoned throughout the world were being held in Russia. They include two U.S. citizens: Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and Alsu Kurmasheva of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, both of whom are being held in pretrial detention. (AP)

A barrage of high-profile lawsuits in a New York federal court will test the future of ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence products that wouldn’t be so eloquent had they not ingested huge troves of copyrighted human works. But are AI chatbots — in this case, widely commercialized products made by OpenAI and its business partner Microsoft — breaking copyright and fair competition laws? Professional writers and media outlets will face a difficult fight to win that argument in court. “I would like to be optimistic on behalf of the authors, but I’m not. I just think they have an uphill battle here,” said copyright attorney Ashima Aggarwal, who used to work for academic publishing giant John Wiley & Sons. One lawsuit comes from The New York Times. Another from a group of well-known novelists such as John Grisham, Jodi Picoult and George R.R. Martin. A third from bestselling nonfiction writers, including an author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography on which the hit movie “Oppenheimer” was based. THE LAWSUITS Each of the lawsuits makes different allegations, but they all center on the San Francisco-based company OpenAI “building this product on the back of other peoples’ intellectual property,” said attorney Justin Nelson, who is representing the nonfiction writers and whose law firm is also representing The Times. “What OpenAI is saying is that they have a free ride to take anybody else’s intellectual property really since the dawn of time, as long as it’s been on the internet,” Nelson said. The Times sued in December, arguing that ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot are competing with the same outlets they are trained on and diverting web traffic away from the newspaper and other copyright holders who depend on advertising revenue generated from their sites to keep producing their journalism. It also provided evidence of the chatbots spitting out Times articles word-for-word. At other times the chatbots falsely attributed misinformation to the paper in a way it said damaged its reputation. One senior federal judge is so far presiding over all three cases, as well as a fourth from two more nonfiction authors who filed another lawsuit last week. U.S. District Judge Sidney H. Stein has been at the Manhattan-based court since 1995 when he was nominated by then-President Bill Clinton. THE RESPONSE OpenAI and Microsoft haven’t yet filed formal counter-arguments on the New York cases, but OpenAI made a public statement this week describing The Times lawsuit as “without merit” and saying that the chatbot’s ability to regurgitate some articles verbatim was a “rare bug.” “Training AI models using publicly available internet materials is fair use, as supported by long-standing and widely accepted precedents,” said a Monday blog post from the company. It went on to suggest that The Times “either instructed the model to regurgitate or cherry-picked their examples from many attempts.” OpenAI cited licensing agreements made last year with The Associated Press, the German media company Axel Springer and other organizations as offering a glimpse into how the company is trying to support a healthy news ecosystem. OpenAI is paying an undisclosed fee to license AP’s archive of news stories. The New York Times was engaged in similar talks before deciding to sue. OpenAI said earlier this year that access to AP’s “high-quality, factual text archive” would improve the capabilities of its

A barrage of high-profile lawsuits in a New York federal court will test the future of ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence products that wouldn’t be so eloquent had they not ingested huge troves of copyrighted human works. But are AI chatbots — in this case, widely commercialized products made by OpenAI and its business partner Microsoft — breaking copyright and fair competition laws? Professional writers and media outlets will face a difficult fight to win that argument in court. “I would like to be optimistic on behalf of the authors, but I’m not. I just think they have an uphill battle here,” said copyright attorney Ashima Aggarwal, who used to work for academic publishing giant John Wiley & Sons. One lawsuit comes from The New York Times. Another from a group of well-known novelists such as John Grisham, Jodi Picoult and George R.R. Martin. A third from bestselling nonfiction writers, including an author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography on which the hit movie “Oppenheimer” was based. THE LAWSUITS Each of the lawsuits makes different allegations, but they all center on the San Francisco-based company OpenAI “building this product on the back of other peoples’ intellectual property,” said attorney Justin Nelson, who is representing the nonfiction writers and whose law firm is also representing The Times. “What OpenAI is saying is that they have a free ride to take anybody else’s intellectual property really since the dawn of time, as long as it’s been on the internet,” Nelson said. The Times sued in December, arguing that ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot are competing with the same outlets they are trained on and diverting web traffic away from the newspaper and other copyright holders who depend on advertising revenue generated from their sites to keep producing their journalism. It also provided evidence of the chatbots spitting out Times articles word-for-word. At other times the chatbots falsely attributed misinformation to the paper in a way it said damaged its reputation. One senior federal judge is so far presiding over all three cases, as well as a fourth from two more nonfiction authors who filed another lawsuit last week. U.S. District Judge Sidney H. Stein has been at the Manhattan-based court since 1995 when he was nominated by then-President Bill Clinton. THE RESPONSE OpenAI and Microsoft haven’t yet filed formal counter-arguments on the New York cases, but OpenAI made a public statement this week describing The Times lawsuit as “without merit” and saying that the chatbot’s ability to regurgitate some articles verbatim was a “rare bug.” “Training AI models using publicly available internet materials is fair use, as supported by long-standing and widely accepted precedents,” said a Monday blog post from the company. It went on to suggest that The Times “either instructed the model to regurgitate or cherry-picked their examples from many attempts.” OpenAI cited licensing agreements made last year with The Associated Press, the German media company Axel Springer and other organizations as offering a glimpse into how the company is trying to support a healthy news ecosystem. OpenAI is paying an undisclosed fee to license AP’s archive of news stories. The New York Times was engaged in similar talks before deciding to sue. OpenAI said earlier this year that access to AP’s “high-quality, factual text archive” would improve the capabilities of its

Prosecutors brought forward a string of law enforcement officials Monday to provide context around video that’s at the crux of their case against David DePape, the man accused of attacking former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband at the couple’s San Francisco home last year. DePape has pleaded not guilty to attempted kidnapping of a federal official and assault on the immediate family member of a federal official with intent to retaliate against the official for performance of their duties. Prosecutors say DePape bludgeoned Paul Pelosi with a hammer in the early hours of Oct. 28, 2022, just days before that year’s midterm elections. Federal prosecutors quickly moved through their witness list on the trial’s second day, bringing forward an FBI agent who collected the electronics DePape was carrying, a U.S. Capitol police officer who watches the surveillance cameras at the Pelosis’ home and another who has protected Nancy Pelosi since 2006, and a Bay Area Rapid Transit police sergeant. Paul Pelosi was also expected to testify. Some witnesses helped verify time stamps on footage from surveillance cameras at the Pelosis’ home, which are set to Eastern Time, and on BART trains, which were an hour behind Pacific Time. FBI Special Agent Stephanie Minor testified that video showed DePape hit Paul Pelosi at least three times. Prosecutors played police body camera footage in which paramedics help Paul Pelosi, who is facedown on the floor. One paramedic holds a white towel against Pelosi’s head as another puts a neck and head brace on him before several first responders help him onto a stretcher chair. Pelosi’s face and hands are covered in blood. Defense attorney Jodi Linker told jurors last week that she won’t dispute that DePape attacked Paul Pelosi. Instead, she will argue that DePape believed “with every ounce of his being″ that he was taking action to stop government corruption and the abuse of children by politicians and actors. She said that means the government’s charges that DePape was trying to retaliate or interfere with Nancy Pelosi’s official duties don’t fit. Federal prosecutor Laura Vartain Horn told jurors during opening statements Thursday that DePape started planning the attack in August and that the evidence and FBI testimony will show he researched his targets online, collecting phone numbers and addresses, even paying for a public records service to find information. If convicted, DePape faces life in prison. He also has pleaded not guilty to charges in state court of attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse, residential burglary and other felonies. A state trial has not been scheduled. Federal prosecutors say DePape smashed his shoulder through a glass panel on a door in the back of the Pelosis’ Pacific Heights mansion and confronted a sleeping Paul Pelosi, who was wearing boxer shorts and a pajama top. “Where’s Nancy? Where’s Nancy?” DePape asked, standing over Paul Pelosi around 2 a.m. holding a hammer and zip ties, according to court records. Nancy Pelosi was in Washington and under the protection of her security detail, which does not extend to family members. Paul Pelosi called 911 and two police officers showed up and witnessed DePape strike him in the head with a hammer, knocking him unconscious, court records showed. Nancy Pelosi’s husband of 60 years later underwent surgery to repair a skull fracture

Even after escalating its strike against Detroit automakers on Friday, the United Auto Workers union still has plenty of leverage in its effort to force the companies to agree to significant increases in pay and benefits. Only about 12% of the union’s membership is so far taking part in the walkout. The UAW could, if it chose to, vastly expand the number of workers who could strike assembly plants and parts facilities of General Motors, Ford and Stellantis, the owner of the Jeep and Ram brands. Yet the UAW’s emerging strategy also carries potentially significant risks for the union. By expanding its strike from three large auto assembly plants to all 38 parts distribution centers of GM and Ford, the UAW risks angering people who might be unable to have their vehicles repaired at service centers that lack parts. The union’s thinking appears to be that by striking both vehicle production and parts facilities, it will force the automakers to negotiate a relatively quick end to the strike, now in its second week. To do so, though, some analysts say the union might have to act even more aggressively. “We believe the next step for UAW is the more nuclear option — going for a much more widespread strike on the core plants in and around Detroit,” said Daniel Ives, an analyst with Wedbush Securities. “That would be a torpedo.” Sam Abuelsamid, an analyst at the consulting firm Guidehouse Insights, suggested that with so many workers and factories still running, the union has a number of options with which to squeeze the companies harder. “They could add more assembly plants to the list,” Abuelsamid said. “They could target more of the plants that are building the most profitable vehicles.” As examples, he mentioned a plant in Flint, Michigan, where GM builds heavy-duty pickups, and a Stellantis factory in Sterling Heights, Michigan, that produces Ram trucks. All three companies said that talks with the union continued on Saturday, though officials said they expected no major announcements. In Canada on Saturday, Ford workers began voting on a tentative agreement that their union said would increase base pay by 15% over three years and provide cost-of-living increases and $10,000 ratification bonuses. The tentative deal was forged earlier this week, hours before a strike deadline. The union, Unifor, said the deal, which covers 5,600 workers, also includes better retirement benefits. If the deal is ratified in voting that will end Sunday morning, the union will use it as a pattern for new contracts at GM and Stellantis plants in Canada. In the United States, the UAW began its walkout more than a week ago by striking three assembly plants — one each at GM, Ford and Stellantis. In expanding the strike on Friday, the UAW struck only the parts-distribution centers of GM and Stellantis. Ford was spared from the latest walkouts because of progress that company has made in negotiations with the union, said UAW President Shawn Fain. Striking the parts centers is designed to turn up pressure on the companies by hurting dealers who service vehicles made by GM and Stellantis, the successor to Fiat Chrysler. Service shops are a profit center for dealers, so the strategy could prove effective. Millions of motorists depend on those shops to maintain and repair their cars

ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and The Associated Press said Thursday that they’ve made a deal for the artificial intelligence company to license AP’s archive of news stories. “The arrangement sees OpenAI licensing part of AP’s text archive, while AP will leverage OpenAI’s technology and product expertise,” the two organizations said in a joint statement. The price of the deal was not disclosed. OpenAI and other technology companies must ingest large troves of written works, such as books, news articles and social media chatter, to improve their AI systems known as large language models. Last year’s release of ChatGPT has sparked a boom in “generative AI” products that can create new passages of text, images and other media. The tools have raised concerns about their propensity to spout falsehoods that are hard to notice because of the system’s strong command of grammar and human language. They also have raised questions about to what extent news organizations and others whose writing, artwork, music or other work was used to “train” the AI models should be compensated. Along with news organizations, book authors have sought compensation for their works being used to train AI systems. More than 4,000 writers — among them Nora Roberts, Margaret Atwood, Louise Erdrich and Jodi Picoult — signed a letter late last month to the CEOs of OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Meta and other AI developers accusing them of exploitative practices in building chatbots that “mimic and regurgitate” their language, style and ideas. Some novelists and the comedian Sarah Silverman have also sued OpenAI for copyright infringement. “We are pleased that OpenAI recognizes that fact-based, nonpartisan news content is essential to this evolving technology, and that they respect the value of our intellectual property,” said a written statement from Kristin Heitmann, AP senior vice president and chief revenue officer. “AP firmly supports a framework that will ensure intellectual property is protected and content creators are fairly compensated for their work.” The two companies said they are also examining “potential use cases for generative AI in news products and services,” though didn’t give specifics. OpenAI and AP both “believe in the responsible creation and use of these AI systems,” the statement said. The AP deal is valuable to a company like OpenAI because it provides a trove of material that it can use for training purposes, and is also a hedge against losing access to material because of lawsuits that have threatened their access to material, said Nick Diakopoulos, a professor of communications studies and computer science at Northwestern University. “In order to guard against how the courts may decide, maybe you want to go out and sign licensing deals so you’re guaranteed legal access to the material you’ll need,” Diakopoulos said. The AP doesn’t currently use any generative AI in its news stories, but has used other forms of AI for nearly a decade, including to automate corporate earnings reports and recap some sporting events. It also runs a program that helps local news organizations incorporate AI into their operations, and recently launched an AI-powered image archive search. (AP)

Ask ChatGPT about comedian Sarah Silverman’s memoir “The Bedwetter” and the artificial intelligence chatbot can come up with a detailed synopsis of every part of the book. Does that mean it effectively “read” and memorized a pirated copy? Or it scraped so many customer reviews and online chatter about the bestseller or the musical it inspired that it passes for an expert? The U.S. courts may now help sort that out after Silverman sued ChatGPT-maker OpenAI for copyright infringement this week, joining a growing number of writers who say they unwittingly built the foundation for Silicon Valley’s red-hot AI boom. Silverman’s lawsuit says she never gave permission for OpenAI to ingest the digital version of her 2010 book to train its AI models, and it was likely stolen from a “shadow library” of pirated works. It says the memoir was copied “without consent, without credit, and without compensation.” It’s one of a mounting number of cases that could crack open the secrecy of OpenAI and its rivals about the valuable data used to train increasingly widely used “generative AI” products that create new text, images and music. And it raises questions about the ethical and legal bedrock of tools that the McKinsey Global Institute projects will add the equivalent of $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion to the global economy. “This is an open, dirty secret of the whole machine learning industry,” said Matthew Butterick, one of the lawyers representing Silverman and other authors in seeking a class-action case. “They love book data and they get it from these illicit sites. We’re kind of blowing the whistle on that whole practice.” OpenAI declined to comment on the allegations. Another lawsuit from Silverman makes similar claims about an AI model built by Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta, which also declined comment. It may be a tough case for writers to win, especially after Google’s success in beating back legal challenges to its online book library. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2016 let stand lower court rulings that rejected authors’ claim that Google’s digitizing of millions of books and showing small portions of them to the public amount to “copyright infringement on an epic scale.” “I think what OpenAI has done with books is awfully close to what Google was allowed to do with its Google Books project and so will be legal,” said Deven Desai, associate professor of law and ethics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. While only a handful have sued, including Silverman and bestselling novelists Mona Awad and Paul Tremblay, concerns about the tech industry’s AI-building practices have gained traction in literary and artist communities. Other prominent authors — among them Nora Roberts, Margaret Atwood, Louise Erdrich and Jodi Picoult — signed a letter late last month to the CEOs of OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Meta and other AI developers accusing them of exploitative practices in building chatbots that “mimic and regurgitate” their language, style and ideas. “Millions of copyrighted books, articles, essays, and poetry provide the ‘food’ for AI systems, endless meals for which there has been no bill,” said the open letter organized by the Authors Guild and signed by more than 4,000 writers. “You’re spending billions of dollars to develop AI technology. It is only fair that you compensate us for using our writings, without which

On Feb. 14, 1904, someone curious about the emerging possibilities of a key force of nature checked out James Clerk Maxwell’s “An Elementary Treatise on Electricity” from the New Bedford Free Public Library. It would take 119 years and the sharp eyes of a librarian in West Virginia before the scientific text finally found its way back to the Massachusetts library. The discovery occurred when Stewart Plein, the curator of rare books at West Virginia University Libraries, was sorting through a recent donation of books. Plein found the treatise and noticed it had been part of the collection at the New Bedford library and, critically, had not been stamped “Withdrawn,” indicating that while extremely overdue, the book had not been discarded. Plein contacted Jodi Goodman, the special collections librarian in New Bedford, to alert her to the find. “This came back in extremely good condition,” New Bedford Public Library Director Olivia Melo said Friday. “Someone obviously kept this on a nice bookshelf because it was in such good shape and probably got passed down in the family.” The treatise was first published in 1881, two years after Maxwell’s death in 1879, although the cranberry-colored copy now back at the New Bedford library is not considered a rare edition of the work, Melo said. The library occasionally receives books as much as 10 or 15 years overdue, but nothing anywhere close to a century or more, she said. The treatise was published at a time when the world was still growing to understand the possibilities of electricity. In 1880, Thomas Edison received a historic patent embodying the principles of his incandescent lamp. When the book was last in New Bedford, the nation was preparing for its second modern World Series, incumbent Republican President Theodore Roosevelt was on track to win another term, Wilbur and Orville Wright had conducted their first airplane flight just a year before and New York City was celebrating its first subway line. The discovery and return of the book is a testament to the durability of the printed word, especially in a time of computerization and instant access to unfathomable amounts of information, Melo said. “The value of the printed book is it’s not digital, it’s not going to disappear. Just holding it, you get the sense of someone having this book 120 years ago and reading it, and here it is in my hands,” she said. “It is still going to be here a hundred years from now. The printed book is always going to be valuable.” The New Bedford library has a 5-cent-per-day late fee. At that rate, someone returning a book overdue by 119 years would face a hefty fee of more than $2,100. The good news is the library’s late fee limit maxes out at $2. Another lesson of the find, according to Melo? It’s never too late to return a library book. (AP)

Rejon Taylor hoped the election of Joe Biden, the first U.S. president to campaign on a pledge to end the death penalty, would mean a more sympathetic look at his claims that racial bias and other trial errors landed him on federal death row in Terre Haute, Indiana. But two years on, Justice Department attorneys under Biden are fighting the Black man’s efforts to reverse his 2008 death sentence for killing a white restaurateur as hard as they did under Donald Trump, who oversaw 13 executions in his presidency’s final months. “Every legal means they have available they’re using to fight us,” said the 38-year-old’s lawyer, Kelley Henry. “It’s business as usual.” Death penalty opponents expected Biden to act within weeks of taking office to fulfill his 2020 campaign promise to end capital punishment on the federal level and to work at ending it in states that still carry out executions. Instead, Biden has taken no steps toward fulfilling that promise. But it’s not just inaction by Biden. An Associated Press review of dozens of legal filings shows Biden’s Justice Department is fighting vigorously in courts to maintain the sentences of death row inmates, even after Attorney General Merrick Garland temporarily paused executions. Lawyers for some of the over 40 death row inmates say they’ve seen no meaningful changes to the Justice Department’s approach under Biden and Trump. “They’re fighting back as much as they ever have,” said Ruth Friedman, head of the defender unit that oversees federal death row cases. “If you say my client has an intellectual disability, the government … says, ‘No, he does not.’ If you say ‘I’d like (new evidence),’ they say, ‘You aren’t entitled to it.’” Administration efforts to uphold death sentences for white supremacist Dylann Roof, who killed nine Black church-goers, and Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are better known. Lower-profile cases, like Taylor’s, have drawn less scrutiny. The Justice Department confirmed that since Biden’s inauguration it hasn’t agreed with a single claim of racial bias or errors that could lead to the overturning of a federal death sentence. It’s a thorny political issue. While Americans increasingly oppose capital punishment, it is deeply entrenched. And as Biden eyes a 2024 run, it’s unlikely he’ll make capital punishment a signature issue given his silence on it as president. In announcing the 2021 moratorium, Garland noted concerns about how capital punishment disproportionately impacts people of color and the “arbitrariness” — or lack of consistency — in its application. He hasn’t authorized a single new death penalty case and has reversed decisions by previous administrations to seek it in 27 cases. Garland recently decided not to pursue death for Patrick Crusius, who killed nearly two dozen people in a racist attack at a Texas Walmart. His lawyers have said he had “severe, lifelong neurological and mental disabilities.” He could still be sentenced to death under state charges. Garland also took the death penalty off the table for a man accused in 11 killings as part of a drug trafficking ring. Defense lawyers say that makes it all the more jarring that Garland’s department is fighting to uphold some death sentences. In one case, Norris Holder was sentenced to death for a two-man bank robbery during which a security guard died, even though prosecutors said Holder may

At least two dozen people are on hunger strike over conditions at a maximum-security prison in rural eastern Nevada, prison officials and an advocacy organization said Tuesday. The strike was launched Thursday by people incarcerated at Ely State Prison who are fed up over what they say are inadequate food portions and shortages in the prison commissary, among other grievances, said Jodi Hocking, executive director of the prisoners’ rights group Return Strong. She said they’re also protesting longstanding problems at correctional facilities across the state. The Nevada Department of Corrections said in a statement that the number of people on hunger strike fluctuates each day — as of Monday there were 27 people participating. Hocking put the number closer to 40. The corrections department said the strike is “mostly in protest of the food portions being served but also includes conditions of confinement, property issues and disciplinary sanctions.” Hocking said “the straw that broke the camel’s back” was the department’s switch several months ago to a new food vendor that serves smaller portions. She said some prisoners “can’t identify what type of lunch meat” they are being served. A spokesperson for the food vendor, Aramark, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. The corrections department statement said it was auditing food portion sizes at all facilities, and reviewing its contract with Aramark. The people participating in the hunger strike are “being monitored for weight and other health-related statistics.” Still, Hocking said, “How the hunger strike started was really not so much like a specific incident, but a long build.” Her organization is in touch with several of the participants, and is made up of prisoners’ family members and the formerly incarcerated. Many prison conditions have not changed since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, she said. Once the pandemic largely subsided, the corrections department has dealt with critical staffing shortages that have kept conditions poor, including increased lockdowns and modified operations, she said. Among several issues, the hunger strike aims to end the “continued and extended” use of solitary confinement, halt the use of group punishment, make sure prison staff don’t retaliate against prisoners who file grievances, and generally address health and safety concerns in all Nevada correctional facilities. Those include mold, heating and air conditioning problems and rodent infestations, according to a set of demands. The hunger strike was first reported by KLAS-TV in Las Vegas. It’s the latest episode in several negative developments for the state corrections department. In September, department head Charles Daniels resigned at the request of Gov. Steve Sisolak in the wake of a prison escape by a convicted bombmaker that went unnoticed for four days. Just over a month later, Daniels accused Sisolak’s staff of wanting him to reshape accounts of the escape. The governor’s chief of staff said Daniels demanded $1 million while threatening to go public with allegations and costly litigation, providing a letter from Daniels’ attorney detailing the payment request. The department’s medical director also resigned in September after two prisoners died of suicide. (AP)

The clip-on devices that use light to measure oxygen levels in the blood are getting a closer look from U.S. regulators after recent studies suggest they don’t work as well for patients of color. The devices, called pulse oximeters, usually snap onto a finger and are widely used in hospitals across the globe to help guide treatment. At-home versions became popular during the COVID-19 pandemic. But several recent studies have raised concerns that the pigmentation in people’s skin can throw off the readings. In 2021, the Food and Drug Administration issued a warning about possible inaccuracies after a study found the devices tended to overestimate Black patients’ oxygen levels. “The fact that such a commonly used device could have any discrepancy at all was shocking to me,” said Michael Sjoding, a University of Michigan pulmonologist who led the study. “I make a lot of medical decisions based on this device.” The FDA has convened a panel of experts to meet Tuesday to discuss “ongoing concerns” about the devices, recommendations for patients and doctors, and ways to gauge accuracy. Jeff Shuren, director of the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, called racial disparities in these devices “of great public health importance” at the beginning of the meeting Tuesday. He stressed the need to make sure medical devices are safe and effective for all the groups who use them. Oxygen levels can also be measured by drawing blood out of an artery in the wrist. This method is still the “gold standard” for accuracy, but is a bit trickier and more painful so can’t be done as often, said Leo Celi, a physician and MIT researcher who is studying pulse oximetry. By comparison, pulse oximeters are quicker, easier and less invasive. When the device snaps onto a finger, it sends two wavelengths of light into the skin, explained Rutendo Jakachira, a doctoral student at Brown University who is researching pulse oximetry. By measuring how much of that light is absorbed, the pulse oximeter estimates how much oxygen is flowing through the blood. The problem: Melanin — a natural pigment responsible for skin tone — also absorbs light, Jakachira said. And if devices aren’t built with melanin in mind, the extra absorption can throw off their readings. Mounting evidence suggests this seems to be affecting the pulse oximeters on the market. Sjoding’s study found that compared to white patients, Black patients in the hospital were almost three times as likely to experience “occult hypoxemia” — meaning their oxygen levels calculated from blood draws were dangerously low, but their pulse oximeter readings were still normal. Follow-up research showed these errors can have real impacts on health. When patients didn’t have their low oxygen levels recognized, it meant delays in COVID-19 treatment, less supplemental oxygen and a higher risk of organ failure and mortality, according to several recent studies. All of these outcomes affected patients of color more often, the research found. For many doctors, the idea that the tools they rely on could be adding to racial discrepancies came as a shock. “These are fundamental vital signs that we use for patient care,” Sjoding said. “And so if the device is even a small bit less accurate in a particular group of patients, that’s going to have consequences.” Small studies in past decades

The IRS commissioner has asked the Treasury Department’s internal watchdog to immediately review the circumstances surrounding intensive tax audits that targeted ex-FBI Director James Comey and former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, frequent targets of Donald Trump’s ire during his presidency. IRS spokesperson Jodie Reynolds said Thursday the agency has officially referred the matter to the inspector general for tax administration after Commissioner Charles Rettig, who was nominated to the job by Trump and is a close ally of the former president, personally reached out. Reynolds insisted it is “ludicrous and untrue to suggest that senior IRS officials somehow targeted specific individuals” for such audits. The New York Times reported Wednesday that the former FBI leaders were subjected to rare IRS audits of their tax returns. The newspaper said Comey was informed of the audit in 2019 and McCabe learned he was under scrutiny in 2021. Rettig, who term is set to expire in November, faced blistering criticism from Democrats for helping to shield Trump’s tax returns from the public. Trump repeatedly attacked Comey and McCabe over the FBI’s Russia investigation that shadowed his presidency for years. Trump fired Comey in 2017 in the midst of that investigation, which ultimately was taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller, named to that job by Trump’s Justice Department. The FBI inquiry began in the summer of 2016, months before Trump was elected. The bureau had learned that a former Trump campaign aide had been saying, before it was publicly known, that Russia had dirt on Trump’s Democratic rival for the White House, Hillary Clinton, in the form of stolen emails. Those emails were hacked from Democratic email accounts by Russian intelligence. They were released by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks before the election in what U.S. officials have said was an effort to harm Clinton’s campaign and help Trump’s. Trump repeatedly called the investigation a “witch hunt.” A 2019 review by the Justice Department’s inspector general knocked down multiple lines of attack against the Russia investigation, finding that officials properly opened the inquiry and that law enforcement leaders were not motivated by political bias. The watchdog did identify a number of problems in the investigation, leading the FBI to take steps aimed at fixing some fundamental operations, such as applying for surveillance warrants and interacting with confidential sources. McCabe was fired in March 2018 after the Justice Department’s inspector general concluded he had authorized the release of information to a newspaper reporter and then misled internal investigators about his role in the leak. The termination by Jeff Sessions, Trump’s attorney general at the time, came hours before McCabe was due to retire. McCabe won back his full pension as part of a settlement of his lawsuit arising from his firing. The settlement agreement vacated that decision, expunged from his personnel folder references to the firing and entitled McCabe, who joined the FBI in 1996, to his full pension. McCabe and Comey were not immediately available for comment Thursday. (AP)

The man who wounded President Ronald Reagan in 1981 apologized for his actions Tuesday and said he doesn’t remember what he was feeling when he fired the shots that also wounded three others. John Hinckley Jr. told CBS Mornings in his first televised interview since he was freed from all court oversight this month that he feels sorry for all the lives his actions affected. “I feel badly for all of them. I have true remorse for what I did,” Hinckley said. “I know that they probably can’t forgive me now, but I just want them to know that I am sorry for what I did.” Going back to that day, Hinckley recalled Reagan walking out of the Washington Hilton after giving a speech: “And I was right there, and I fired shots at him, which so unfortunately hit other people, too.” Asked what feelings led him to shoot, Hinckley said he can’t remember those emotions and doesn’t want to. “It’s such another lifetime ago. I can’t tell you now the emotion I had right as (Reagan) came walking out. I can’t tell you that,” he said, later adding: “It’s something I don’t want to remember.” Hinckley was 25 and suffering from acute psychosis when his gunshots wounded Reagan and three others. The assassination attempt paralyzed Reagan press secretary James Brady, who died in 2014. It also wounded a police officer and a Secret Service agent. Hinckley told Major Garrett, CBS News’ chief Washington correspondent, that he’s glad he didn’t succeed. He said that at the time of the shooting he did “not have a good heart” and was doing things “a good person doesn’t do.” Jurors found Hinckley not guilty by reason of insanity and he spent decades at a mental hospital in Washington. “I was not just a cold, calculating criminal in 1981,” he said. “I truly believe I had a serious mental illness that was preventing me from knowing right from wrong back then.” Hinckley began making visits to his parents’ home in Williamsburg, Virginia, in the early 2000s. A 2016 court order granted him permission to live with his mother full time, albeit under various restrictions, after experts said his mental illness had been in remission for decades. He signed a lease on a one-bedroom apartment in the Williamsburg area last year and has been living alone there with his cat, according to court documents. His mother died in July. He’s also been releasing songs online and looking for a venue willing to let him sing and play guitar before a live audience. Hinckley had previously been under restrictions that barred him from owning a gun, using drugs or alcohol or contacting members of the victims’ families. But a federal judge in Washington had said months ago that he would free Hinckley from those restrictions if he remained mentally stable. Those restrictions were lifted on June 15. Tuesday’s apology was not Hinckley’s first. His attorney Barry Levine said during a court hearing last year that Hinckley wanted to express his “heartfelt” apologies and “profound regret” to the people he shot and their families as well as to actress Jodie Foster, who he was obsessed with at the time of the shooting, and to the American people. As Hinckley expressed his regrets on Tuesday, he said he

With more than two dozen states poised to ban abortion if the U.S. Supreme Court gives them the OK next year, California clinics and their allies in the state Legislature on Wednesday revealed a plan to make the state a “sanctuary” for those seeking reproductive care, including possibly paying for travel, lodging and procedures for people from other states. The California Future of Abortion Council, made up of more than 40 abortion providers and advocacy groups, released a list of 45 recommendations for the state to consider if the high court overturns Roe v. Wade — the 48-year-old decision that forbids states from outlawing abortion. The recommendations are not just a liberal fantasy. Some of the state’s most important policymakers helped write them, including Toni Atkins, the San Diego Democrat who leads the state Senate and attended multiple meetings. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom started the group himself and in an interview last week with The Associated Press said some of the report’s details will be included in his budget proposal in January. “We’ll be a sanctuary,” Newsom said, adding he’s aware patients will likely travel to California from other states to seek abortions. “We are looking at ways to support that inevitability and looking at ways to expand our protections.” California already pays for abortions for many low-income residents through the state’s Medicaid program. And California is one of six states that require private insurance companies to cover abortions, although many patients still end up paying deductibles and co-payments. But money won’t be a problem for state-funded abortion services for patients from other states. California’s coffers have soared throughout the pandemic, fueling a record budget surplus this year. Next year, the state’s independent Legislative Analyst’s Office predicts California will have a surplus of about $31 billion. California’s affiliates of Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, got a sneak preview of how people might seek abortions outside their home states this year when a Texas law that outlawed abortion after six weeks of pregnancy was allowed to take effect. California clinics reported a slight increase in patients from Texas. Now, California abortion providers are asking California to make it easier for those people to get to the state. The report recommends funding — including public spending — to support patients seeking abortion for travel expenses such as gas, lodging, transportation and child care. It asks lawmakers to reimburse abortion providers for services to those who can’t afford to pay — including those who travel to California from other states whose income is low enough that they would qualify for state-funded abortions under Medicaid if they lived there. It’s unclear about how many people would come to California for abortions if Roe v. Wade is overturned. California does not collect or report abortion statistics. The Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights, said 132,680 abortions were performed in California in 2017, or about 15% of all abortions nationally. That number includes people from out of state as well as teenagers, who are not required to have their parents’ permission for an abortion in California. Planned Parenthood, which accounts for about half of California’s abortion clinics, said it served 7,000 people from other states last year. A huge influx of people from other states “will definitely destabilize the abortion provider

Up to half of the $14 trillion spent by the Pentagon since 9/11 went to for-profit defense contractors, a study released Monday found. While much of this money went to weapons suppliers, the research is the latest to point to the dependence on contractors for war-zone duties as contributing to mission failures in Afghanistan in particular. In the post-9/11 wars, U.S. corporations contracted by the Defense Department not only handled war-zone logistics like running fuel convoys and staffing chow lines but performed mission-crucial work like training and equipping Afghan security forces — security forces that collapsed last month as the Taliban swept the country. Within weeks, and before the U.S. military had even completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Taliban easily routed an Afghan government and military that Americans had spent 20 years and billions of dollars to stand up. President Joe Biden placed blame squarely on the Afghans themselves. “We gave them every chance,” he said last month. “What we could not provide them was the will to fight.” But William Hartung, the author of Monday’s study by Brown University’s Costs of War project and the Center for International Policy, and others say it’s essential that Americans examine what role the reliance on private contractors played in the post-9/11 wars. In Afghanistan, that included contractors allegedly paying protection money to warlords and the Taliban themselves, and the Defense Department insisting on equipping the Afghan air force with complex Blackhawk helicopters and other aircraft that few but U.S. contractors knew how to maintain. “If it were only the money, that would be outrageous enough,” Hartung, the director of the arms and security program at the Center for International Policy, said of instances where the Pentagon’s reliance on contractors backfired. “But the fact it undermined the mission and put troops at risk is even more outrageous.” At the start of this year, before Biden began the final American withdrawal from Afghanistan, there were far more contractors in Afghanistan and also in Iraq than U.S. troops. The U.S. saw about 7,000 military members die in all post-9/11 conflicts, and nearly 8,000 contractors, another Costs of War study estimates. The Professional Services Council, an organization representing businesses contracting with the government, cited a lower figure from the U.S. Department of Labor saying nearly 4,000 federal contractors have been killed since 2001. A spokeswoman pointed to a statement last month from the organization’s president, David J. Berteau: “For almost two decades, government contractors have provided broad and essential support for U.S. and allied forces, for the Afghan military and other elements of the Afghan government, and for humanitarian and economic development assistance.” U.S. officials after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks embraced private contractors as an essential part of the U.S. military response. It started with then-Vice President Dick Cheney, the former CEO of Halliburton. Halliburton received more than $30 billion to help set up and run bases, feed troops and carry out other work in Iraq and Afghanistan by 2008, the study says. Cheney and defense contractors argued that relying on private contractors for work that service members did in previous wars would allow for a trimmer U.S. military, and be more efficient and cost effective. By 2010, Pentagon spending had surged by more than one-third, as the U.S. fought dual wars in Iraq

An off-the-grid New Hampshire hermit known to locals as “River Dave,” whose cabin burned down on the wooded property where he was squatting for 27 years, says he’s grateful and overwhelmed by fundraising efforts and offers for a place to live. “I feel about as good as I ever have in my life,” David Lidstone 81, said in a phone interview with The Associated Press on Sunday, saying he has many friends. He added, “I live down there in the woods because I like being alone, being away from people, so this publicity is not anything that I’m used to at all.” Lidstone lived in the woods along the Merrimack River in the town of Canterbury. He was jailed on July 15 on a civil contempt sanction and was told he’d be released if he agreed to leave the cabin. The property owner, 86-year-old Leonard Giles, wanted Lidstone off the property. A fire destroyed the cabin on Wednesday, hours after Lidstone defended himself during a court hearing. He was released Thursday from jail after a judge ruled that he would have less incentive to return to “this particular place in the woods” now that the cabin had burned down. The state fire marshal’s office is investigating the fire. Lidstone, who is currently staying with friends, said he tried to go back to the site to collect some things, but was told he had to go to police first. “The main thing I wanted out of the whole thing was my Bible,” he said. “Hopefully, Canterbury police took it home. … I had the keys to camp and the camp’s just ashes. So I have the keys to God’s heart, and that’s all I got.” The woodlot Lidstone called home was just a few miles away from Interstate 93, north of the capital city of Concord. But it was hidden by the trees; it’s on 73 acres that have been used for timber harvests. The property has been owned by the same family since 1963. There are no plans at this time to develop it. Lidstone had said a prior owner gave his word years ago that he could live there, but had nothing in writing. He later disputed that he was even on the property. “It looks to me like now I may never set foot on that piece of land again,” he said. Still, he wants to be able to prove he was right. He wants to get a surveyor on the property. Another hearing is scheduled for Wednesday. Jodie Gedeon, an avid kayaker and advocate for Lidstone, said there’s been discussion of setting up a trust for him, in addition to finding him a home. There have been at least 20 offers for him to relocate to another plot of land, from California to Maine. “So, it’s really up to David now,” she said. “David, pick where you want to live, and we will get you set up before winter.” (AP)

The suspected gunman in the Boulder supermarket shooting that killed 10 people appeared in court Thursday for the first time, and a defense attorney immediately asked for an assessment of his mental health. Kathryn Herold, the lawyer for suspect Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, provided no details about what condition he might suffer from. During the brief hearing, Alissa did not speak other than to say “yes” to a question from the judge, who advised him of the 10 charges of first-degree murder he faces. He did not enter a plea, which will come later in the judicial process. Alissa entered court in a wheelchair, presumably because of the gunshot wound to the leg that he suffered in the shooting. One of his attorneys leaned down to talk to him before the hearing began, and Alissa nodded his head as the attorney spoke to him. Four deputies with black bands of mourning across their badges stood close by. Alissa appeared alert and attentive. He wore a mask and purple, short-sleeved coveralls. The 21-year-old suspect remains held without bail. Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty said authorities planned to file more charges, but he did not elaborate. At Herold’s request, Alissa’s next hearing will not be scheduled for two to three months to allow the defense team to evaluate his mental health and evidence collected by investigators. “Our position is we cannot do anything until we are able to fully assess Mr. Alissa’s mental illness. We cannot begin to assess the nature and depth of Mr. Alissa’s mental illness until we have discovery from the government,” Herold said, referring to evidence that prosecutors will eventually turn over to the defense. The court appearance marked the first time that Alissa has appeared in public since he was arrested Monday inside the King Soopers supermarket in Boulder. Alissa was last seen handcuffed and being led out of the supermarket by police. He had removed all clothing except his shorts before being taken into custody. A rifle, a green tactical vest and a handgun were recovered inside the grocery store, according to an arrest affidavit. After the hearing, Dougherty told reporters outside the courthouse that he was “confident” that the courts “can find 12 people who will be fair and who will be opened minded and reach the right verdict when the time comes.” A law enforcement official briefed on the shooting previously said that the suspect’s family told investigators they believed Alissa was suffering some type of mental illness, including delusions. Relatives have described times when Alissa told them people were following or chasing him, which they said may have contributed to the violence, the official said. The official was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. While most Colorado court proceedings during the pandemic have been conducted with suspects appearing by video, District Judge Thomas Francis Mulvahill ordered Alissa to appear before him in court, though the public and the media were not allowed inside. Dozens of media trucks and reporters stood outside the courthouse on a cold, clear morning. There was no sign of protesters or victims’ families. In addition to Boulder police Officer Eric Talley, 51, the victims were Denny Stong, 20; Neven Stanisic, 23; Rikki Olds, 25; Tralona Bartkowiak, 49; Suzanne Fountain,

Law enforcement officials and former associates of a 21-year-old accused of killing 10 people at a Colorado supermarket described the suspect as someone prone to sudden rage who was suspended from high school for a sudden attack on a classmate that left the student bloodied. Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, who is from the Denver suburb of Arvada, was booked into jail Tuesday on murder charges a day after the attack at a King Soopers grocery in Boulder. He was due to make a first court appearance Thursday. Alissa had bought an assault weapon on March 16, six days before the attack, according to an arrest affidavit. Investigators have not established a motive, said Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty. It was not immediately known where the suspect purchased the weapon. Among the dead was Boulder police Officer Eric Talley, 51, who was the first to arrive after responding to a call about shots fired and someone carrying a gun, said police Chief Maris Herold. A law enforcement official briefed on the shooting said the suspect’s family told investigators they believed Alissa was suffering some type of mental illness, including delusions. Relatives described times when Alissa told them people were following or chasing him, which they said may have contributed to the violence, the official said. The official was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. After the shooting, detectives went to Alissa’s home and found his sister-in-law, who told them that he had been playing around with a weapon she thought looked like a “machine gun” about two days earlier, according to an arrest affidavit. No one answered the door Tuesday at the Arvada home believed to be owned by the suspect’s father. The two-story house with a three-car garage sits in a relatively new middle- and upper-class neighborhood. When he was a high school senior in 2018, Alissa was found guilty of assaulting a fellow student in class after knocking him to the floor, then climbing on top of him and punching him in the head several times, according to a police affidavit. Alissa “got up in classroom, walked over to the victim & ‘cold cocked’ him in the head,” the affidavit read. Alissa complained that the student had made fun of him and called him “racial names” weeks earlier, according to the affidavit. An Arvada police report on the incident said the victim was bloodied and vomiting after the assault. Alissa was suspended from school and sentenced to probation and community service. One of his former high school wrestling teammates, Angel Hernandez, said Alissa got enraged after losing a match in practice once, letting out a stream of invectives and yelling he would kill everyone. Hernandez said the coach kicked Alissa off the team for the outburst. “He was one of those guys with a short fuse,” Hernandez said. “Once he gets mad, it’s like something takes over and it’s not him. There is no stopping him at that point.” Hernandez said Alissa also would act strangely sometimes, turning around suddenly or glancing over his shoulder. “He would say, ‘Did you see that? Did you see that?’” Hernandez recalled. “We wouldn’t see anything. We always thought he was messing with us.” Arvada police investigated but dropped a separate criminal mischief

Three were gunned down while putting in a day’s work at a Colorado supermarket. Another was a police officer who raced in to try to rescue them and others from the attack that left 10 dead. A picture of the victims of Monday’s shooting began to emerge as the suspect in the killings remained hospitalized Tuesday but was expected to be booked into jail on murder charges. Those who lost their lives at the King Soopers store in Boulder ranged from 20 years old to 65. They were identified as Denny Stong, 20; Neven Stanisic, 23; Rikki Olds, 25; Tralona Bartkowiak, 49; police Officer Eric Talley, 51; Suzanne Fountain, 59; Teri Leiker, 51; Kevin Mahoney, 61; Lynn Murray, 62; and Jodi Waters, 65. Leiker, Olds and Stong worked at the supermarket, said former co-worker Jordan Sailas, who never got the chance to bring his baby son into the store to meet them. Olds’ grandmother choked up on the phone as she described the young woman she played a large role in raising. “She was just a very kind and loving, bubbly person who lit up the room when she walked in,” said Jeanette Olds, 71, of Lafayette, Colorado. Talley joined the police force in Boulder in 2010 with a background that included a master’s degree in computer communications, his father said. “At age 40, he decided he wanted to serve his community,” Homer “Shay” Talley, 74, told The Associated Press from his ranch in central Texas. “He left his desk job. He just wanted to serve, and that’s what he did. He just enjoyed the police family.” Officer Talley was the first to arrive after a call about shots being fired and someone carrying a rifle, Boulder Police Chief Maris Herold said. Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty said Talley was “by all accounts, one of the outstanding officers” in the department. With seven children, ages 7 to 20, Talley was a devoted father who “knew the Lord,” his father said. “When everyone else in the parking lot was running away, he ran toward it,” Shay Talley said. “We know where he is,” he added. “He loved his family more the anything. He wasn’t afraid of dying. He was afraid of putting them through it.” (AP)

Seeking to reclaim his old Senate seat from Alabama, former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions faces former college football coach Tommy Tuberville — a political newcomer endorsed by President Donald Trump. Trump casts a long shadow over the Alabama race, backing Tuberville after turning decisively against his former Cabinet member. Sessions held the seat safely for 20 years before resigning to lead Trump’s Justice Department. He was forced out of the position when their relationship soured over his recusal in the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Sessions hopes his long relationship with state Republicans will carry him through. He was the first U.S. senator to endorse Trump in 2016, and their alliance was solidified as Trump adopted hard-line immigration proposals that Sessions had championed for years in the Senate. “I am asking each of you to stand with me Tuesday,” Sessions said during a recent campaign stop. “I have stood with you. I’ve defended our values, been effective in the United States Senate. I support and totally advanced the Trump agenda. It was my agenda before he announced. It was my agenda when he announced. That’s why I supported him.” Sessions said in campaign appearances that he had no choice but to recuse himself, because he had participated in Trump’s 2016 campaign and could have been a subject or witness. Tuberville has mounted a strong challenge to Sessions, armed with both Trump’s endorsement and name recognition from his years on the Auburn University sidelines. He led Sessions by about 2 percentage points in the March primary before picking up Trump’s endorsement. In campaign appearances, it has not been unusual for people to seek autographs or selfies with the former coach in a state where college football is king. “I’ve met a lot of you who are really looking forward to going out and voting for a true common-sense conservative that is an outsider. I want to go to Washington D.C. to speak for you,” Tuberville said in a social media message. The winner of the runoff will take on the incumbent, Democrat Doug Jones, in a race with major implications for Senate control. The primary was in March, but the runoff was delayed until summer because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill said 40,000 absentee ballots were requested ahead of the Tuesday election. Tuberville in recent weeks appears to have adopted a strategy of trying to run out the clock. His campaign declined to make Tuberville available for an interview or disclose any of his appearances in the week leading up to the primary. He has declined Sessions’ multiple challenges to a debate, despite initially saying that he would participate. Trump weighed in on Twitter over the weekend, calling Tuberville “a winner who will never let you down” and castigating Sessions as “a disaster who has let us all down. We don’t want him back in Washington.” Sessions responded quickly: “My honor and integrity are far more important than these juvenile insults. … As you know, Alabama does not take orders from Washington.” Jack Campbell, a talk radio host who supports Tuberville, said Trump’s disavowal of Sessions has become the chief issue for him and other voters. Campbell said Tuberville also has the appeal of an outsider who hasn’t served in Washington