NEWS OF THE DAY
From Across the Nation
Saturn finale: NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has ventured into the never-before-explored region between Saturn and its rings. Cassini was out of radio contact with Cape Canaveral early Wednesday as it became the first spacecraft to enter the gap between Saturn and its rings. That’s because its big dish antenna was maneuvered face forward to protect science instruments from potentially damaging ring particles. If Cassini survives this first round, it will make 21 more crossings before its demise in September. Launched in 1997, Cassini has been orbiting Saturn since 2004. Because the fuel tank is practically empty, NASA decided on one last dangerous, but science-rich adventure.
Stop and frisk: The rate at which minorities are subjected to stops, searches and frisks by police doesn’t appear to be improving in Boston in the year since the department claimed it was narrowing racial disparities in its tactics. At least 71 percent of all street level, police-civilian encounters from 2015 through early 2016 involved persons of color, while whites comprised about 22 percent, an Associated Press review of the most recently available data shows. That’s only a slight decline from the 73 percent that minorities comprised in such streetlevel encounters between 2011 and early 2015, according to data the city made available last year.
Fox News lawsuit: A Fox News Channel anchor who is black has joined a racial discrimination lawsuit against his company, saying Wednesday that the network marginalized him and has little interest in promoting diversity. Kelly Wright, who primarily works an overnight shift at Fox, said at an emotional news conference in New York that his efforts at promoting diversity at Fox have largely failed. He said former Fox host Bill O’Reilly rejected a piece Wright had prepared after racial protests in Ferguson, Mo., because it showed blacks in “too positive” a light. Fresno shootings: The black suspect in a racially motivated shooting rampage in Fresno was charged Wednesday with three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of white men he targeted randomly on the street, prosecutors said. The charges come just over a week after Kori Ali Muhammad was charged with killing a white motel security guard days before. Muhammad told investigators that learning he was wanted for that slaying led him to try to kill as many white people as possible before he was caught. He faces a death sentence or life in prison if convicted. JFK diary: A diary kept by John F. Kennedy during his brief stint as a journalist after World War II was put up for auction this week. Boston’s RR Auction says the diary was expected to fetch at least $200,000 at the auction Wednesday. The 61page diary was written in 1945 when the 28-yearold Kennedy was a correspondent for Hearst newspapers and traveled through a devastated Europe. It provides insights into Kennedy’s thoughts on world leaders of the era.