Vegas suspect surrenders after standoff
LAS VEGAS — A man riding on a double decker bus on the Las Vegas Strip pulled a gun and started shooting, killing one person and wounding another before barricading himself inside in a standoff that lasted hours before he surrendered.
The standoff began about 11 a.m. Saturday near the Cosmopolitan hotel-casino. It shut down the busy tourism corridor.
University Medical Center spokesman Danita Cohen said the two victims were taken to the hospital after the shooting. One died, she said, while the other was in fair condition.
Las Vegas police officer Larry Hadfield said just before 3:30 p.m. that the man had a handgun and surrendered without incident. Police did not open fire. Crisis negotiators, robots and armored vehicles were on the scene.
Police said then that they believed the armed man on the bus was the only suspect and that they have ruled out terrorism.
By 4 p.m., pedestrians were back in the area and northbound traffic on Las Vegas Boulevard had resumed while investigators worked to clean up the other lane, where the bus still sat.
Pro-Trump marchers hit by pepper spray
HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. — Three people were arrested after pepper spray was used in a scuffle at a rally supporting President Donald Trump at a Southern California beach.
Capt. Kevin Pearsall of California State Parks Police said the arrests happened when counterprotesters sprayed pro-Trump supporters.
He said the march of about 2,000 people had started about noon Saturday when its leaders reached a group of about 30 anti-Trump protesters, some of whom began spraying the irritant.
The Los Angeles Times reported that an anti-Trump protester allegedly doused the event’s organizer with pepper spray and was set upon in the sand at Bolsa Chica State Beach by Trump supporters.
Pearsall said there were several other arrests and two people suffered minor injuries.
Counterprotesters said before the pro-Trump march began that they planned to try to stop its progress with a “human wall.”
Filing: Device ban shows U.S. not foiled
HONOLULU — Hawaii’s attorney general says new U.S. government rules restricting laptops and other electronic gadgets on flights from eight Muslim-majority nations prove that President Donald Trump’s control of immigration and national security isn’t hampered by the state’s lawsuit over his travel ban.
The ban on large electronic devices in the cabins of such flights, announced Tuesday, did not trigger widespread condemnation and litigation the way Trump’s March 6 executive order against travel from six Muslim-majority countries did. Several states claim the travel ban has a discriminatory intent.
Hawaii Attorney General Douglas Chin said in court papers Saturday that the easy implementation of the laptop policy belies any claim that Trump’s “hands are tied” by litigation seeking to overturn the travel ban on the grounds that it discriminates against Islam.
Federal judges in Hawaii and Maryland barred enforcement of Trump’s travel ban, while a judge in Virginia on Friday declined to do so.
Uber pauses robo-car tests after crash
Uber said Saturday that it was suspending the testing of its self-driving vehicles, a day after one of the vehicles was involved in a collision in Tempe, Ariz.
The Uber vehicle, which was in self-driving mode, was not at fault in the accident, said Josie Montenegro, a Tempe Police Department spokesman. Uber’s Volvo XC90 SUV was hit when another driver failed to yield, she said. The collision caused Uber’s vehicle to roll onto its side.
Montenegro and an Uber spokesman, Chelsea Kohler, confirmed the accident Friday evening and said neither driver suffered serious injuries.
“We are continuing to look into this incident and can confirm we had no back-seat passengers in the vehicle,” Kohler said in a statement.
Kohler said Saturday that Uber was suspending the testing of its self-driving vehicles in Arizona, pending the results of the investigation of the accident. She said Uber also had suspended testing in Pittsburgh and San Francisco for the day, and possibly longer.
A Section on 03/26/2017