NEWS OF THE DAY
From Across the Nation
1 Ship fire: The Navy said Monday that it will decommission a warship docked off San Diego after suspected arson caused extensive damage, making it too expensive to restore. Fully repairing the Bonhomme Richard to battle capabilities would cost up to $ 3 billion, said Navy Rear Adm. Eric Ver Hage. The amphibious assault ship burned for more than four days in July and was the Navy’s worst U. S. warship fire outside of combat in recent memory. Arson is suspected, and a U. S. Navy sailor was questioned as a potential suspect, a senior defense official told the Associated Press. At least 60 people were treated for minor injuries.
2 Execution delayed: South Carolina prison officials say they have to delay an execution scheduled for Friday because they won’t be able to obtain the necessary lethal injection drugs. An attorney for the state Department of Corrections wrote to the South Carolina Supreme Court last week that the agency cannot carry out the execution of Richard Bernard Moore due to the lack of drugs. The court stayed the execution. Moore, 55, has spent nearly two decades on death row following his conviction for the 1999 killing of a convenience store clerk in Spartanburg County. He would be the first person executed in South Carolina in nearly a decade.
3 Mall shooting: An 18-year-old man was arrested in connection with a Black Friday shooting at a Sacramento mall that killed two brothers, police said Monday. Damario Beck was held for the attack at the Arden Fair Mall that killed Sa’Quan Reed-James, 17, and Dewayne James Jr., 19. The shooting erupted after a “verbal altercation” between two groups of people who knew each other, police said. Beck was booked on two counts of murder and is jailed. At a news conference, relatives of the slain brothers said the family had moved to Sacramento a year ago from Monroe, La., in order to find a better life.
4 Hurricane season: Monday marked the official end of an abnormally active Atlantic hurricane season. Forecasters have tallied 30 named storms this year, the most ever recorded. The next closest with 28 systems of tropical storm strength or greater was 2005. And the chance of yet more powerful storms remains. The National Hurricane Center in Miami says a nontropical pressure system in the eastern Atlantic has a chance of strengthening in the next several days. In all, the United States weathered 12 storms that made landfall. The signs for a busy season included warmer than a verage Atlantic sea surface temperatures, a stronger west African monsoon, along with wind patterns that favored storms.
5 Cyberattack: The public schools in Baltimore County, Md., were closed Monday as officials respond to a cyberattack that forced the district to cancel remote classes for its 115,000 students, officials said. The attack, first detected late Tuesday night, affected the district’s websites and remote learning programs, as well as its grading and email systems, officials told WBAL-TV. The district announced on Twitter that classes would be closed due “to the recent ransomware attack.” Officials declined to provide details, including what demands had been made.