The Bakersfield Californian

Authorities: Student kills 3, wounds 8 at Michigan school

OXFORD TOWNSHIP, Mich. — A 15-year-old sophomore opened fire at his Michigan high school on Tuesday, killing three students and wounding eight other people, including at least one teacher, authorities said.

Oakland County Undersheriff Mike McCabe said at a news conference that investigators were still trying to determine a motive for the shooting at Oxford High School in Oxford Township, a community of about 22,000 people roughly 30 miles north of Detroit.

He said he was aware of allegations circulating on social media that there had been threats of a shooting at the roughly 1,700-student school prior to Tuesday’s attack, but he cautioned against believing that narrative until investigators can look into it.

Authorities didn’t immediately release the suspect’s name, but McCabe said deputies arrested him without incident within minutes of arriving at the school in response to a flood of 911 calls about the attack, which happened shortly before

1 p.m. He said the deputies also recovered the semi-automatic handgun and several clips the suspect used in the attack.

“He fired multiple shots,” McCabe said. “Somewhere in the area of 15 to 20.”

The three students who were killed were a 16-year-old boy and two girls, ages 14 and 17, McCabe said. Two of the wounded were undergoing surgery as of 5 p.m. and the six others who were wounded were in stable condition, he said.

McCabe said the suspect’s parents visited their son where he’s being held and advised him not to talk to investigators, as is his right. Police have to seek permission from a juvenile suspect’s parents or guardian to speak with them, he added.

McCabe said he wasn’t aware of any prior run-ins the suspect had with law enforcement or if he had any disciplinary history at school.

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran struck a hard line after just one day of restarted talks in Vienna over its tattered nuclear deal, suggesting everything discussed in previous rounds of diplomacy could be renegotiated.

Speaking to Iranian state television,

Ali Bagheri, Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, referred to everything discussed thus far as merely a “draft.” It remained unclear whether that represented an opening gambit by Iran’s new president or signaled serious trouble for those hoping to restore the 2015 deal that saw Tehran strictly limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.

The United States left the deal under then-President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran in 2018. Since the deal’s collapse, Iran now enriches small amounts of uranium up to 60 percent purity — a short step from weapons-grade levels of 90 percent. Iran also spins advanced centrifuges barred by the accord, and its uranium stockpile now far exceeds the accord’s limits.

President Joe Biden has said America’s willing to re-enter the deal, though the negotiations continue with U.S. officials not in the room as in previous rounds of talks since Washington’s withdrawal.

“Drafts are subject to negotiation. Therefore nothing is agreed on unless everything has been agreed on,” Bagheri said. “On that basis, all discussions that took place in the six rounds are summarized and are subject to negotiations. This was admitted by all parties in today’s meeting as well.”

That directly contradicted comments Monday by the European Union diplomat

WASHINGTON — Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, is cooperating with a House panel investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, putting off for now the panel’s threat to hold him in contempt, the committee’s chairman said.

The panel “will continue to assess his degree of compliance,” Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson said in a statement. He said Meadows has produced records and will soon appear for an initial deposition.

The agreement comes after two months of negotiations between Meadows and the committee and after the Justice Department indicted longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon for defying a subpoena. Meadows’ lawyer had previously indicated that his client would not comply, a stance the committee said was unacceptable.

“The Select Committee expects all witnesses, including Mr. Meadows, to provide all information requested and that the Select Committee is lawfully entitled to receive,” Thompson said.

Under the tentative agreement, Meadows could potentially decline to answer the panel’s questions about his most sensitive conversations with Trump and what Trump was doing on Jan. 6 as hundreds of rioters violently broke into the Capitol and interrupted the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court directed the Justice Department to disclose certain redacted passages from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation report that relate to individuals who were investigated by prosecutors but not ultimately charged.

The ruling came in a public records complaint from the news organization BuzzFeed News, which sued for an unredacted version of Mueller’s report examining Russian election interference and possible ties to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Though the three-judge panel said a lower court judge was correct in ruling that certain portions of the report should remain redacted, it said in its opinion that other passages that BuzzFeed fought to see can be disclosed because they involve facts available elsewhere in the report and “do not contain new facts or stigmatizing material.”

In particular, the appeals court said the Justice Department must disclose redacted information about the Mueller team’s decision to not prosecute an unnamed person — whom BuzzFeed contends is likely Donald Trump Jr. — for potential campaign finance violations.

NEW YORK — A federal judge should reject a sweeping settlement to thousands of lawsuits against OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, a group of states said at a hearing, arguing that the protections it extends to members of the Sackler family who own the firm are improper.

States have credible claims that family members took more than $10 billion from the company, steered it toward bankruptcy, and then used a settlement crafted in bankruptcy court to gain legal protections for themselves, Washington state Solicitor General Noah Purcell told U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon.

“If that is not an abuse of the bankruptcy process,” Purcell said, “it’s unclear what would be.”

The plan, crafted largely by those with claims against Purdue and approved in September by a federal bankruptcy judge, calls for members of the Sackler family to contribute more than $4 billion in cash, plus the company itself, to fight the opioid epidemic, which has been linked to more than 500,000 U.S. deaths in the past two decades, including deaths linked both to prescription and illicit drugs.

In exchange, members of the family are to be protected from lawsuits accusing them of spurring the crisis. The suits accuse the company and family members of helping to spark the overdose crisis by aggressively marketing OxyContin, a powerful opioid painkiller.

NEW YORK — A woman testified that British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell was often in the room when the witness, then just 14, had sexual interactions with financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Maxwell “was very casual,” she told a New York City jury. “Like it was no big deal.”

She claimed the defendant instructed her on how to give Epstein sexual massages and sometimes physically participated in the encounters as well.

The witness, using the pseudonym “Jane,” was the first of four alleged victims expected to testify against Maxwell at a New York City trial where she is charged with recruiting and grooming girls for Epstein to sexually abuse from 1994 to at least 2004.

CHICAGO — Two brothers arrested for an alleged attack on Jussie Smollett recounted for Chicago police how the ex-“Empire” actor orchestrated the hoax, telling them via text message to meet him “on the low,” paying for supplies and holding a “dry run” in downtown Chicago, the lead investigator testified.

Taking the stand as prosecutors began their case against Smollett, former Chicago police detective Michael Theis said he initially viewed the actor as a victim of a homophobic and racist attack and that police “absolutely” didn’t rush to judgment as Smollett’s defense attorney alleged during opening statements Monday.

Theis said roughly two dozen detectives clocked some 3,000 hours on what they thought was a “horrible hate crime” in January 2019. He said they were excited when they were able to track the movements of two suspected attackers using surveillance video, and cellphone and rideshare records.

MINNEAPOLIS — The suburban Minneapolis police officer who shot Daunte Wright will testify at her trial, her attorney said as jury selection began with potential panelists questioned closely about their attitudes on policing, protests and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Four jurors were seated in a process that may take as much as a week or more. Opening statements are Dec. 8.

One of Kim Potter’s attorneys, Paul Engh, told a potential juror that she would hear directly from Potter about the traffic stop that ended in the death of the 20-year-old Black motorist last April. Potter, who is white, has said she meant to use her Taser on Wright but grabbed her handgun by mistake.

“Officer Potter will testify and tell you what she remembers happened, so you will know not just from the video but from the officers at the scene and Officer Potter herself what was occurring,” Engh said. “I think (you) should be quite interested in hearing what she had to say.”

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2021-12-01T08:00:00.0000000Z

2021-12-01T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://bakersfield.pressreader.com/article/281719797863190

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