Medal honors slain collegian's bravery
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- A college student who died tackling a gunman last year at a North Carolina university was posthumously awarded one of the U.S.' highest civilian honors on Wednesday, the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation announced.
The family of Riley Howell accepted the Citizen Honors Award on his behalf, his parents told The Charlotte Observer on Wednesday.
A livestreamed wreath-laying without attendees was held at Arlington National Cemetery after the usual ceremony was canceled to protect against the coronavirus.
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Riley Howell, 21, suffered eight gunshot wounds while taking down the gunman carrying out a rampage at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte in April. Ellis Reed Parlier, 19, also was shot to death and four other students were wounded in the attack.
Of the six people who were honored this year, half were involved in school shootings, The Charlotte Observer reported. Those recipients included Keanon Lowe, who wrestled a gun away from a student at an Oregon high school, and Christian Garcia, who was shot through a door and killed while guarding it from a gunman at a high school in Texas.
Bomb-plot suspect fatally injured in raid
BELTON, Mo. -- A man fatally injured as FBI agents served an arrest warrant Tuesday was planning a bomb attack on a medical facility in the Kansas City area, the agency said.
Timothy Wilson, 36, was injured when FBI agents served a probable-cause warrant in Belton after a long-running domestic terrorism investigation, according to a statement Wednesday from Timothy Langan, special agent in charge of the FBI's Kansas City office.
The statement did not detail what happened when agents served the warrant, but said Wilson was armed when he was injured and died later at a hospital.
A monthslong investigation determined that Wilson was a potentially violent extremist, motivated by religious, racial and anti-government beliefs, according to the statement. He had planned for several months to carry out a bombing and decided to target a Kansas City-area hospital using a "vehicle-borne" improvised explosive.
The FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force monitored Wilson and was prepared to arrest him when he tried to pick up what he thought was a bomb, although there was no bomb, the statement said.
Mormons pausing activities at temples
SALT LAKE CITY -- The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is suspending all temple activity over the coronavirus.
The Utah-based faith said Wednesday that the suspension would start at the end of the day, said Irene Caso, a church spokeswoman. The church said the decision was made after careful consideration and "with a desire to be responsible global citizens."
Separately, a Utah county hard hit by the coronavirus is telling residents to stay home except for essential errands and asking visitors to the ski-resort community of Park City to stay away.
The shelter-in-place order issued in Summit County, a hot spot for cases statewide, is the first such declaration in the state.
Anti-Trump ads draw threat of lawsuit
WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump's reelection campaign is threatening legal action against TV stations in Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin if they don't pull a Democratic anti-Trump commercial that uses clips of the president talking about the coronavirus outbreak. The campaign says the ad is false.
Priorities USA Action Fund, the Democratic super political action committee that created the 30-second spot and supported Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, responded by soliciting financial contributions to keep the ad on the airwaves.
Trump's campaign said the commercial contains the "false assertion" that Trump called the coronavirus a "hoax."
The ad strings together audio of recent comments by Trump in which he attempts to minimize the seriousness of the coronavirus outbreak, including a snippet in which he says, "This is their new hoax."
Trump's campaign said Wednesday that it had delivered "cease and desist" letters to the stations demanding that they pull the ad or face legal action. The stations were not named in a news release announcing the action or in a copy of the letter accessed by a hyperlink included in the emailed release.
Guy Cecil, chairman of Priorities USA, tweeted Wednesday that Trump wants to block the ad "because he doesn't want Americans to know the truth."
A Section on 03/27/2020