Shooting suspect in standoff at LA market; one woman killed
LOS ANGELES — A man shot his grandmother and girlfriend Saturday and then led police on a car chase that ended when he crashed into a pole and ran inside a busy supermarket as bullets from officers shattered the front doors. About three hours after he took hostages in the store, the suspect surrendered.
One woman was killed inside the supermarket, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said.
Officers with riot gear, armed with rifles, stood along the side of the Trader Joe’s in the Silver Lake area on Saturday afternoon and used mirrors to try to look inside as hostages periodically came out the front door with the hands raised. At least one person was injured but expected to survive.
The suspect walked out with a cluster of four hostages and appeared to be already handcuffed as the group emerged through the front door. Police immediately surrounded the suspect, searched him and then brought him to a waiting ambulance. The man appeared to have blood on his left arm.
Investigators believe the suspect, whose name hasn’t been released, had shot his grandmother and girlfriend around 1:30 p.m. in South Los Angeles and then fled in a 2015 Toyota Camry, Sgt. Barry Montgomery, a Los Angeles police spokesman, said.
‘Wonder Woman,’ ‘Aquaman’ and ‘Shazam!’ thrill Comic-Con
SAN DIEGO — Warner Bros. brought out all the stops Saturday at Comic-Con with an army of stars, surprises and new footage from films like “Aquaman ,” ”Shazam! ” and even “Wonder Woman 1984,” which is only three and a half weeks into production. Jason Momoa, Gal Gadot, Chris Pratt, Johnny Depp and Nicole Kidman were just a few of the starry names to grace the stage of the comic book convention’s Hall H.
Momoa, who stars as Aquaman, seemed to be as excited as those in the 6,500-seat audience, if not more so. The actor was downright giddy speaking about the film, which is over five years in the making.
“My heart is big and open,” he said. “I’m really, really happy.”
Director James Wan, best known for his “Conjuring” films, introduced some new footage in two trailers from the origin story, which hits theaters in December.
“I wanted to create a superhero film that we’ve never quite seen before. I wanted our film to be more unique,” Wan said. “My movie plays more like a science fiction fantasy film than a traditional superhero movie.”
Inspector warned duck boat company of design flaws
BRANSON, Mo. — A private inspector said Saturday that he warned the company operating duck boats on a Missouri lake about design flaws putting the watercraft at greater risk of sinking, less than a year before the accident that killed 17 people during a sudden storm.
Steve Paul, owner of the Test Drive Technologies inspection service in the St. Louis area, said he issued a written report for the company in August 2017. It explained why the boats’ engines — and pumps that remove water from their hulls — might fail in inclement weather.
He also told The Associated Press that the tourist boats’ canopies make them hard to escape when they sink — a concern raised by regulators after a similar sinking in Arkansas killed 13 people in 1999.
The accident Thursday evening on Table Rock Lake outside the tourist town of Branson also is raising questions about whether storm warnings in the area went unheeded and whether any agency can keep boaters off the water when inclement weather approaches.
“If you have the information that you could have rough waters or a storm coming, why ever put a boat on that water?” Paul said.
Manley role at Fiat Chrysler a turning point for carmaker
The nomination of Mike Manley as CEO of Fiat Chrysler marks a turning point for the carmaker, putting a brand with historic Italian roots in the hands of someone with no ties to Italy — a Brit who showed his mettle by growing the quintessentially American Jeep into a global brand.
Manley has been one of the closest collaborators with the company’s longtime leader Sergio Marchionne and had been seen as a possible successor since Marchionne announced in January that he planned to step down next year. Those plans were pushed up Saturday after Marchionne’s health deteriorated following surgery.
From wire sources
The 54-year-old Manley also headed the Ram truck brand, which together with Jeep have been the focus of Fiat Chrysler’s growth strategy in North America, whose market represents two-thirds of Fiat Chrysler’s earnings.
“The success of the Jeep brand under Mike Manley and his global background make him the smart choice to be the new head of FCA,” said Karl Brauer, executive publisher of Autotrader and Kelley Blue Book. “His international experience in growing that brand will play a key role as he applies those techniques to all of the Fiat Chrysler divisions.”
Manley had joined the company in 2000. He took over management of the Jeep brand in 2009, just after Chrysler emerged from bankruptcy protection funded by the U.S. government. At the time, the all-SUV Jeep mainly was a U.S. brand, where sales languished at around 232,000 for the year.
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Kavanaugh: Watergate tapes decision may have been wrong
WASHINGTON — Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh suggested several years ago that the unanimous high court ruling in 1974 that forced President Richard Nixon to turn over the Watergate tapes, leading to the end of his presidency, may have been wrongly decided.
Kavanaugh was taking part in a roundtable discussion with other lawyers when he said at three different points that the decision in U.S. v. Nixon, which marked limits on a president’s ability to withhold information needed for a criminal prosecution, may have come out the wrong way.
A 1999 magazine article about the roundtable was part of thousands of pages of documents that Kavanaugh has provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee as part of the confirmation process. The committee released the documents on Saturday.
Kavanaugh’s belief in robust executive authority already is front and center in his nomination by President Donald Trump to replace the retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy. The issue could assume even greater importance if special counsel Robert Mueller seeks to force Trump to testify in the ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
“But maybe Nixon was wrongly decided — heresy though it is to say so. Nixon took away the power of the president to control information in the executive branch by holding that the courts had power and jurisdiction to order the president to disclose information in response to a subpoena sought by a subordinate executive branch official. That was a huge step with implications to this day that most people do not appreciate sufficiently…Maybe the tension of the time led to an erroneous decision,” Kavanaugh said in a transcript of the discussion that was published in the January-February 1999 issue of the Washington Lawyer.
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Top intel official says he meant no disrespect to Trump
BRIDGEWATER, N.J. — The top U.S. intelligence official said Saturday he meant no disrespect to President Donald Trump in a televised interview discussing the summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said his Thursday comments at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado were not intended to be critical of the president’s decision to invite Putin to a meeting in Washington later this year.
“Some press coverage has mischaracterized my intentions in responding to breaking news presented to me during a live interview,” Coats said. “My admittedly awkward response was in no way meant to be disrespectful or criticize the actions of the president.”
Coats has been under scrutiny since he said he wished Trump had not met one-on-one with the Russian leader and expressed dismay that the president had publicly undermined U.S. intelligence agencies.
Coats issued a rare statement rebutting the president’s Monday comments during a press conference with Putin doubting the findings of the intelligence community on Russian election interference. White House aides were fearful that the former lawmaker might resign over the president’s comments, and the president spoke positively of Coats in a television interview Wednesday. But Coats’ display of surprise upon learning that Trump had invited Putin to Washington this fall for a follow-on meeting drew the president’s ire.
