In the news
■ Ren Zhiqiang, an outspoken property tycoon in Beijing nicknamed “The Cannon,” has been reported missing by friends after he wrote in a recent essay that China’s leader, Xi Jinping, was a power-hungry “clown.”
■ Eric Kindred, 19, an Alabama man, was indicted in the killing of 78-year-old neighbor Louie Zicarelli after, police said, Kindred had burglarized Zicarelli’s home and stolen his car.
■ Jeremy Anderson,a 29-year-old Louisiana man arrested in the fatal shootings of three homeless people, pleaded innocent to the first-degree murder of one of them — 50-year-old Tony Williams.
■ Angel Myers McIlrath, a district attorney in Mississippi, said any chance for a plea deal is off the table for Jacob Blair Scott after authorities said he faked his own death to avoid charges in the rape of a 14-year-old girl and was found by U.S. marshals hiding in Antlers, Okla., under a false identity.
■ Milton Moore, the police chief in Vicksburg, Miss., said brothers Ed and Jeffery Watts were very intoxicated when Jeffery shot Ed in the foot during an altercation and then killed himself while barricaded inside a house that was destroyed by a fire.
■ Patrick McKenna, a spokesman for the New York Racing Authority, said “we will be reviewing all our security protocols and procedures” after two gunmen wearing surgical masks made off with more than $200,000 from the Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens.
■ Taylor Pratt, a former nurse’s aide at a nursing home in Braymer, Mo., was charged in the theft of fentanyl pain relief patches from hospice patients after an administrator reported having confronted Pratt about the missing patches and that Pratt said she had eaten four of them and taken another home.
■ Rodney Ootton, 53, of Pawtucket, R.I., was arrested on three counts of indecent solicitation of a child after Rhode Island State Police said he responded to a prearranged location to meet who he thought was a 14-year-old girl for sexual acts.
■ Fabio Lopez, 61, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer who worked at Miami International Airport, was charged with engaging in sexual activity with a minor and attempting to produce child pornography after authorities said he fondled a 16-yearold girl and tried to take pornographic photos of her.