1 deputy killed, 2 hurt in ambush at Houston bar, authorities say
HOUSTON — Three constable deputies were shot in an ambush early Saturday while working an extra shift at a Houston bar, leaving one deputy dead and two others wounded, authorities in Texas said.
Authorities took one person into custody but were still searching for a man believed to be the shooter, Houston Police Executive Assistant Chief James Jones told reporters
The Harris County constable deputies were working at the bar when they responded to a disturbance outside the business around 2:15 a.m., Jones said.
They were trying to arrest someone when another person with a rifle opened fire on the deputies from behind, Jones said, according to preliminary information from the scene.
One deputy was shot in the back and another was shot in the foot, said Mark Herman, Harris County Constable Precinct 4. The third deputy was pronounced dead at the hospital.
It was unclear whether the deputies returned fire, Jones said. He said Houston police were still investigating, but authorities believe the disturbance may have been a robbery that the constables stopped.
A person of interest was taken into custody at the scene, but authorities were not certain whether the person was a suspect or a witness.
Film and TV crew strike
averted: An 11th-hour deal was reached Saturday, averting a strike of film and television crews that would have seen some 60,000 behindthe-scenes workers walk off their jobs and would have frozen productions in Hollywood and across the U.S.
Representatives from the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and from the studios and entertainment companies who employ them reached the three-year contract agreement before a Monday strike deadline, avoiding a serious setback for an industry that had just gotten back to work after long pandemic shutdowns.
Jarryd Gonzales, spokesman for the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents the studios and other entertainment companies in negotiations, confirmed the agreement.
Details of the new contracts were not immediately revealed but the union’s members still must vote to approve the tentative agreement.
Bow-and-arrow attack: Norway on Saturday announced it will hold an independent investigation into the actions of police and security agencies following a bow-and-arrow attack that killed five people and injured three others.
Police have been criticized in the media for reacting too slowly to contain the massacre, acknowledging that the five deaths took place after police first encountered the attacker.
Norway’s domestic intelligence agency, known by the acronym PST, said it decided to seek the review after consulting with the country’s national and regional police commanders about the attack Wednesday night in the southern town of Kongsberg. Espen Andersen Braathen, 37, a local resident who police said has admitted to the killings, has been detained and is undergoing psychiatric evaluation.
According to a police timeline, the first information on the attack was logged at 6:13 p.m. and Andersen Braathen was caught at 6:47 p.m.
Authorities haven’t revealed what precisely happened within that 34-minute period.
Lucy in the sky with
diamonds: A NASA spacecraft named Lucy rocketed into the sky with diamonds Saturday morning on a 12-year quest to explore eight asteroids.
Seven of the mysterious space rocks are among swarms of asteroids sharing Jupiter’s orbit, thought to be the pristine leftovers of planetary formation.
An Atlas V rocket blasted off before dawn, sending Lucy on a roundabout journey spanning nearly 4 billion miles. Researchers grew emotional describing the successful launch — lead scientist Hal Levison said it was like witnessing the birth of a child.
“Go Lucy!” he urged. Lucy is named after the 3.2 million-year-old skeletal remains of a human ancestor found in Ethiopia nearly a half-century ago. That discovery got its name from the 1967 Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” prompting NASA to send the spacecraft soaring with band members’ lyrics and other luminaries’ words of wisdom imprinted on a plaque. The spacecraft also carried a disc made of lab-grown diamonds for one of its science instruments.
In a prerecorded video for NASA, Beatles drummer Ringo Starr paid tribute to his late colleague John Lennon, credited for writing the song that inspired all this.
“I’m so excited — Lucy is going back in the sky with diamonds. Johnny will love that,” Starr said. “Anyway, if you meet anyone up there, Lucy, give them peace and love from me.”
China space station:
Chinese astronauts began Saturday their six-month mission on China’s first permanent space station, after successfully docking aboard their spacecraft.
The astronauts, two men and a woman, were seen floating around the module before speaking via a livestreamed video.
The new crew includes Wang Yaping, 41, who is the first Chinese woman to board the Tiangong space station, and is expected to become China’s first female spacewalker.
The space travelers’ Shenzhou-13 spacecraft was launched by a Long March-2F rocket at 12:23 a.m. Saturday and docked with the Tianhe core module of the space station at 6:56 a.m.
They are the second crew to move into China’s Tiangong space station, which was launched last April.
Afghan mosque blast:
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for a deadly suicide bombing on a Shiite mosque in southern Afghanistan that killed 47 people and wounded scores more. Relatives laid the bodies of the victims to rest Saturday and called on the Taliban to protect them.
IS said in a statement posted late Friday on social media that two of the group’s members shot and killed security guards manning the entrance of the Fatimiya mosque in Kandahar province.
Durst contracts COVID-19: New York real estate heir Robert Durst, who days ago was sentenced in a two-decade-old murder case, has been hospitalized after contracting COVID-19, his lawyer said Saturday,
Defense Attorney Dick DeGuerin said he was notified that Durst was admitted after testing positive for the coronavirus.
Durst, 78, was sentenced Thursday to life in prison without a chance of parole for the murder of his best friend more than two decades ago.