Marco Rubio rallies GOP conservatives in Utah
SALT LAKE CITY – Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio pitched himself as a fresh face in his party’s crowded primary contest during a Monday night campaign stop in Utah.
The 44-year-old Rubio spoke about outdated government policies that haven’t kept up with disruptive technologies such as ride-hailing company Uber.
He drew his loudest applause in conservative Utah with calls to repeal President Barack Obama’s 2010 health-care law and beef up military spending.
The Florida senator was briefly a member of the faith during his childhood in Las Vegas, a fact that could reverberate with voters in Utah.
Appeals court upholds ban of semi-automatic weapons
NEW YORK – Gun-control laws passed in New York and Connecticut to ban possession of semi-automatic weapons and large-capacity magazines after the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School were mostly upheld Monday by a federal appeals court decision that a gun group vowed to appeal.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan found core parts of the laws did not violate the Second Amendment because there was a substantial relationship between bans on assault weapons and large-capacity magazines and the “important – indeed, compelling – state interest in controlling crime.”
The three-judge panel noted that the Newtown, Connecticut, shooting in December 2012 occurred when 154 rounds were fired in less than five minutes, killing 20 first-graders and six educators. But the court found Connecticut’s ban on a non-semi-automatic Remington 7615 unconstitutional. And it said a seven-round load limit in New York could not be imposed even as it upheld other bans on magazines.
Ohio announces it will put off executions until 2017
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Ohio is putting off executions until at least 2017 as the state struggles to obtain supplies of lethal injection drugs, delaying capital punishment for a full two years, the prisons department announced Monday.
Execution dates for 11 inmates scheduled to die next year and one scheduled for early 2017 were all pushed into ensuing years through warrants of reprieve issued by Gov. John Kasich.
The result is 25 inmates with execution dates beginning in January 2017 that are now scheduled through August 2019. Ohio last put someone to death in January 2014.
Ohio has run out of supplies of its previous drugs and has unsuccessfully sought new amounts, including so-far failed attempts to import chemicals from overseas.
Police investigating five deaths as murder-suicides
PHOENIX – The deaths of two adults and three young children who were in an SUV that plunged into an Arizona lake are being investigated as a murder-suicide as police said Monday that the father of the youngsters deliberately drove the vehicle into the water.
Police spokesman Lt. Mike Pooley said 27-year-old Glenn Edward Baxter purposefully drove himself, his estranged wife and their children into Tempe Town Lake just after midnight Sunday.
Associated Press
