NEWS OF THE DAY
From Across the Nation
1 South Carolina shooting: Police on Friday identified the suspected gunman in a fatal shooting and hostage standoff at a restaurant in downtown Charleston. Thomas Demetrius Burns, 53, was shot and wounded by officers Thursday at Virginia’s restaurant in a tourist-heavy area of Charleston. Police spokesman Charles Francis said Burns has not yet been charged. Authorities and one of the restaurant’s owners said the gunman was a dishwasher who had been fired. The restaurant’s executive chef, 37-year-old Shane Whiddon, was killed.
2 Ocean rescue: Authorities rescued a man who was thrown out of his boat and was treading water without a life jacket 5 miles off the coast of Long Beach. The Coast Guard says it received a call Thursday about an unmanned 14-foot boat that was spotting moving in circles miles in the ocean. An air and sea search began, and a Los Angeles County sheriff ’s helicopter spotted a man in the water about 2 miles from the boat. The man, who was not injured, told rescuers that he fell off the boat when it hit a wave and had been using flipflops on his hands to tread water for about 20 minutes.
3 Tax cuts: President Trump plans to begin a public drive to overhaul the nation’s tax system next week in Springfield, Mo. The president will make a stop on Wednesday to begin selling his administration’s calls to change the tax system. Administration officials have said Trump plans to hold events around the country in the coming weeks to promote an overhaul. The White House has expressed hope that the changes can be approved in Congress by the end of the year. Administration officials have said that lowering personal and business tax rates will lead to millions of new jobs and spur faster economic growth.
4 Lottery scam: A Texas businessman was sentenced Friday in Des Moines, Iowa, to two years of probation and six months of home confinement for his role in a lottery scandal. Robert Rhodes, who lives near Houston, reached a plea deal to testify against Multi-State Lottery Association computer programmer Eddie Tipton. Tipton rigged computers to make numbers predictable and gave them to Rhodes and others who won $2.2 million in jackpots from four states. Rhodes pleaded guilty to fraud in Iowa and a computer crime in Wisconsin. The sentence Friday resolves cases in both states. Tipton was sentenced Wednesday to up to 25 years in prison. 5 Dress code: The public school system in Durham, N.C., has revised its dress code to prohibit the Confederate flag, Ku Klux Klan symbols and swastikas. Durham Public Schools board voted unanimously Thursday to make the change. Protesters in Durham, home to Duke University, last week toppled a Confederate statue in front of a courthouse following a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., that erupted into deadly violence. The neighboring Orange County and Chapel Hill-Carrboro school systems have issued similar bans.