Officer dies in shootout on Calif. freeway

LOS ANGELES — A driver stopped by police pulled out a rifle and opened fire, killing a California Highway Patrol officer and wounding two others during a shootout on a freeway overpass that left the gunman dead and sent terrified motorists running for cover.

Officer Andrew Moye Jr., 34, died in the gunfight as dozens of bullets flew late Monday afternoon in Riverside, east of Los Angeles. Two civilians received minor injuries.

One wounded officer was in critical condition and the other was serious, but both are expected to survive, Riverside police Officer Ryan Railsback said Tuesday.

The gunman was identified by the Riverside County coroner’s office as Aaron Luther, 49, and authorities say he had a criminal record that included an attempted murder conviction in 1994.

Officer Moye had pulled over a pickup truck and was doing paperwork to impound it when Luther — who was outside the vehicle — reached in, grabbed a rifle and fatally wounded the officer, authorities said.

Russia evacuates village

The Russian authorities on Tuesday announced the evacuation of the village nearest to the site of a nuclear accident in northern Russia, suggesting dangers more grave than initially reported.

The still- mysterious episode last week killed seven people and released radiation, apparently when a small nuclear reactor malfunctioned during a test of a novel type of missile near a naval weapons testing site.

Russian officials have released a flurry of misleading or incomplete statements playing down the severity of the accident, which the military first reported on Thursday as a fire involving a liquidfueled rocket engine. It was not until Sunday that Russian scientists conceded that a reactor had released radiation during a test on an offshore platform in the White Sea.

Officials have insisted radiation levels are not elevated and that the displacement of the population of the village, home to about 450 people, should not be called an evacuation, a word redolent of disaster.

CNN anchor explodes

CNN anchor Chris Cuomo unleashed a spate of profanitylaced insults and threatened to throw a man down some stairs after the man apparently called him Fredo, a reference to “The Godfather” film trilogy, according to a video that spread across social media Monday night.

The video does not show the comment that sparked the incident, but it captures Mr. Cuomo’s furious response as he takes umbrage at the remark, which he called tantamount to “the Nword” for Italian Americans.

“My name is Chris Cuomo,” he says in the video. “I’m an anchor on CNN. Fredo is from ‘ The Godfather.’ He was that weak brother. And they use it as an Italian aspersion.”

Opera singer accused

Two music companies canceled appearances by Placido Domingo and the Los Angeles Opera said Tuesday it would launch an investigation in response to an Associated Press story in which numerous women accused the opera legend of sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior spanning decades.

Mr. Domingo has been general director of the LA Opera since 2003 and previously served as the company’s artistic director, jobs that gave him the power to cast roles and — his accusers say — make, or break, careers.

Some of the women told the AP that Mr. Domingo used his power to try to pressure them into sexual relationships, with several saying that he dangled jobs and then sometimes punished them professionally if they refused his advances.