NEWS OF THE DAY
From Across the Nation
1 Wintry storm: A pre-winter storm slammed parts of the South and lower Midwest, causing two deaths on slippery roads in Mississippi, three near Little Rock, Ark., and one each in Ohio and Indiana. The wintry weather moved eastward Thursday, bringing a mix of rain and snow also to New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
2 Hate crime: A federal grand jury in Kentucky charged a white man with three hate crimes in the shooting deaths of two African Americans last month at a grocery. U.S. Attorney Russell Coleman announced the indictment Thursday in Louisville against 51-year-old Gregory Bush. Bush is charged with three hate crimes, one for each person who was killed and one for attempting to shoot another person based on race or color. He was also charged with three firearms counts. He could face the death penalty if convicted.
3 Democrat flips seat: A Democrat who finished behind Republican Rep. Bruce Poliquin in the first round of balloting has come from behind to flip the seat in the second of its two U.S. House races. Election officials declared Jared Golden the winner Thursday after a federal judge denied Poliquin’s request to halt tabulations under Maine’s new voting system. The outcome was a dramatic reversal in a four-way race. Poliquin received the most first-place votes on Election Day but additional tallies were required because no one won a majority. The rankedchoice voting system lets voters rank candidates from first to last on the ballot. It provides for eliminations of last-place candidates and re-allocations of votes.
4 Nazi interruption: An audience member says a man interrupted a performance of “Fiddler on the Roof ” in Baltimore with a pro-Nazi and pro-Trump salute. Rich Scherr, a contributing sportswriter for the Baltimore Sun, told the newspaper that a man seated in the balcony of the Hippodrome Theatre on Wednesday night began shouting “Heil Hitler, Heil Trump” during intermission. Scherr says people started running and he was “waiting to hear a gunshot.” But the man was escorted out and the show continued. “Fiddler on the Roof ” is based on a Yiddish story that tells the story of a Jewish family persecuted in tsarist Russia.
5 IHOP escape: An inmate fled a Georgia jail with the help of his mom and then went out for pancakes. News outlets report 27-year-old Joshua Gullatt and 54-year-old Kathy Lynn Pence were arrested at an IHOP restaurant where they met with his children. Gullatt had slipped out a side door of the Heard County jail hours earlier. Investigators then listened to a phone call Gullatt made to Pence about the escape. Sheriff ’s Office Sgt. Dan Boswell said that during that same phone call, Pence was pulled over for running a stop sign, so authorities identified her car, and tracked her phone to the IHOP in Newnan, Ga. Gullatt had been slated for work release. Now he’s charged with felony escape and his mother is charged with aiding and abetting.