The nation in brief

California teacher charged in beatings

SAN FRANCISCO — A former San Francisco Bay Area college philosophy teacher and “anti-fascist” activist was charged Friday with hitting people during violent clashes between supporters and detractors of President Donald Trump last month, police said.

Berkeley police officers arrested Eric Clanton, 28, Wednesday at his house in Oakland, Calif.

Police seized “flags, patches, pamphlets” and labels associated with “anti-fascist and anarchist political groups,” according to the complaint filed by prosecutors charging Clanton with four felony counts of assault with a deadly weapon and a misdemeanor charge of wearing a mask while committing a crime.

Clanton has a tattoo on the inside of his left bicep associated with the anti-fascist “Iron Front” movement, police said.

Police arrested 20 people during the April 15 protests in downtown Berkeley.

Videos of a masked man wearing a dark hoodie hitting a pro-Trump protester in the head circulated widely on social media and led to Clanton’s arrest, Berkeley Police Lt. Dan Montgomery said.

Clanton taught philosophy part time at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill for three semesters, his last in the fall of 2016.

Judge throws out sniper’s sentences

NORFOLK, Va. — The life sentences that Lee Boyd Malvo received for his role in the sniper shootings that occurred in Virginia in 2002 were thrown out Friday by a federal judge because he was 17 at the time of the attacks.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that mandatory life sentences without the possibility of parole were unconstitutional for juveniles, and in 2016 the court decided that ruling should be applied retroactively. And so even though Malvo pleaded guilty in Spotsylvania County and agreed to serve two life sentences, in addition to being convicted by a jury and sentenced to two life sentences in Fairfax County, U.S. District Judge Raymond Jackson vacated the four sentences and ordered new hearings for Malvo.

Malvo, now 32, and John Allen Muhammad were both convicted of 10 murders in a three-week period in the Washington area, beginning with trials in Virginia in 2003. Muhammad was sentenced to death for the slaying in Prince William County of Dean Meyers, and he was executed in 2009.

Guns, drugs seized in Chicago gang bust

CHICAGO — Nearly 50 people were charged after a twoyear investigation of a Chicago street gang led to the seizure of drugs and dozens of guns.

Federal prosecutors in Chicago said Friday that investigators working on “Operation Bunny Trap” found a gun-and-drug dealing operation in a suburban pizza parlor as well as several illegal gun deals conducted in various Chicago neighborhoods and surrounding suburbs. The Gangster Two-Six Nation operates from the South Side of Chicago to as far away as Georgia.

Federal and area authorities seized 118 firearms including several assault-style rifles, 800 grams of cocaine, crystal methamphetamine and fentanyl. Investigators broke the case using undercover drug buys and extensive surveillance.

Officials said more than 45 people face state and federal charges.

Nurse charged in earlier infant death

DALLAS — A Texas nurse who is in prison for the 1982 killing of a toddler has been charged with murder in the death of an infant a year earlier, and authorities said Friday that they think she may have killed up to 60 young children around that time.

Genene Jones, 66, has been serving concurrent sentences at a prison in Gatesville for two 1984 convictions: a 99-year prison term for murder in the 1982 death of 15-month-old Chelsea McClelland, who was given a fatal injection of a muscle relaxant, and a 60-year term for giving 4-week-old Rolando Santos a large injection of the blood-thinner Heparin, which he survived.

On Thursday, the Bexar County district attorney’s office announced that Jones has been charged in the 1981 death of 11-month-old Joshua Sawyer, who investigators say died of a fatal overdose of an anti-seizure drug, Dilantin. Jones was working as a nurse in the pediatric intensive care unit at Bexar County Hospital, which is now University Hospital.

During Jones’ time working in hospitals and clinics in San Antonio and elsewhere in Texas, children died of unexplained seizures and other complications.

At a news conference Friday in San Antonio, District Attorney Nico LaHood said investigators believe Jones may have killed some or all of those children because they died under unusual circumstances during or shortly after her shifts.

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