Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Navy medic shoots 2, is shot and killed on base, authorities say
FREDERICK, Md. — A Navy medic shot and critically wounded two people at a Maryland business park Tuesday, then fled to a nearby Army base, where he was shot and killed, police and Navy officials said.
The man entered a business at the Riverside Tech Park, causing people inside to flee, but it was unclear if the shooting took place inside or outside, Frederick police Chief Jason Lando said. Lando said detectives are still trying to determine a possible motive and what the shooter’s relationship was to his victims.
After the shooting, the medic drove about 10 minutes to Fort Detrick, where he was shot by base personnel, Lando said at a news conference. The two people who were critically wounded by the shooter were airlifted to a hospital, he said. A spokeswoman for Shock Trauma at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore did not immediately respond to an email asking for an update on their conditions.
The medic, who was assigned to Fort Detrick, drove through a gate at the entrance to the base but only got about a quarter of a mile before he was stopped by military personnel, said Fort Detrick spokeswoman Lanessa Hill. She said Frederick police had given base officials advance notice, “so we knew that he was out there.”
Fort Detrick is home to the military’s flagship biological defense laboratory and several federal civilian biodefense labs. About 10,000 military personnel and civilians work on the base, which encompasses about 1,300 acres in the city of Frederick.
McConnell warns big biz:
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that “it’s quite stupid” for corporations to speak out politically, intensifying his warnings for big business to stand down as Congress delves into voting rights, President Joe Biden’s infrastructure package and other defining issues.
Speaking in Kentucky, the GOP leader said he still wants companies to give freely to political campaigns. But as lawmakers wrestle with big issues, he warned CEOs off the kinds of public statements made by Delta Air Lines, Coca-Cola and Major League Baseball in opposition to Georgia’s new restrictive voting laws.
“It’s quite stupid to jump in the middle of a highly controversial issue,” he told reporters.
“Republicans drink CocaCola, too, and we fly and we like baseball,” he said. “It’s irritating one hell of a lot of Republican fans.”
The colorful language from the typically reserved Republican leader shows the dilemma ahead for the party in the post-Trump era. Many Trump-styled lawmakers are bucking big business and leaning more heavily into the populist, working-class themes championed by the former president — even as they rely on deep-pocketed business donors to fuel their political campaigns.
By wading into the debate, McConnell is situating himself in the emerging culture wars with the progressive groups that are pressuring business not to sit silently on voting rights, gun violence and other big issues before Congress.
Netanyahu’s tough task:
Israel’s president Tuesday handed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the difficult task of trying
to form a new government, giving the embattled Israeli leader a chance to extend his lengthy term in office.
But with the newly elected parliament deeply divided and the prime minister on trial for corruption charges, Netanyahu had little to celebrate.
He now has up to six weeks to lure his political foes into a coalition, an effort that appears to have slim odds of success. At the same time, those opponents will be working to form an alternative government that could end his 12-year reign.
In a meeting with members of his Likud party, Netanyahu struck a statesmanlike tone, saying he would be the prime minister of all of Israel’s citizens, Jewish and Arab, religious and secular.
“We will take care of everyone,” he said, vowing to “take Israel out of the cycle of recurring elections and to establish a strong government for all citizens of Israel.”
2 fired after NYC attack:
Two New York City apartment building workers have been fired for failing to help an Asian American woman as she was being violently attacked on the sidewalk outside, the building’s management company said Tuesday.
Surveillance video of the March 29 attack near Times Square showed that the doormen didn’t step outside and approach the woman until more than a minute after the violence stopped and the assailant walked away.
The men watched from the lobby as 65-year-old Vilma Kari was repeatedly kicked and stomped, the video showed. One of them closed the building’s door as Kari lay on the ground seconds after the attack ended.
Arrest in artwork thefts:
Dutch police arrested a suspect Tuesday in the theft last year of two valuable paintings by Vincent
van Gogh and Frans Hals from different museums, a spokeswoman said. The paintings, however, remain missing.
In a statement posted on Twitter, police spokeswoman Maren Wonder said a 58-year-old man was arrested at his home in the Dutch town of Baarn, 25 miles southeast of Amsterdam. His identity was not released, in line with Dutch privacy guidelines.
Van Gogh’s “The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring 1884” was snatched from the Singer Laren museum east of Amsterdam in the early hours of March 30, 2020. The museum was closed at the time due to a coronavirus lockdown.
The Hals work, “Two Laughing Boys,” was stolen some five months later from Museum Hofje van Mevrouw van Aerden in Leerdam, about 35 miles south of Amsterdam.
Navalny backers detained: Supporters of Russian opposition
leader Alexei Navalny were detained Tuesday outside a penal colony east of Moscow where the Kremlin critic is currently serving time.
Navalny has been on a hunger strike for nearly a week to protest what he says is the failure of authorities to provide proper medical treatment for his back and leg pains.
Doctors from the Navalny-backed Alliance of Doctors union and supporters of the politician gathered in front of the prison. Navalny’s physician and the union leader, Dr. Anastasia Vasilyeva, tried to get inside to meet with prison officials and see Navalny or talk to the prison medics about his condition.
Local police said they detained nine people who allegedly “breached public order.” They included Vasilyeva and a CNN crew. Vasilyeva and the journalists were soon released, while other members of the union remained in custody.