US rocked by 3 mass shootings during Easter weekend; 2 dead
HAMPTON, S.C. (AP) – Authorities in South Carolina are investigating a shooting at a nightclub early Sunday that wounded at least nine people. It was the second mass shooting in the state and the third in the nation during the Easter holiday weekend.
The shootings in South Carolina and one in Pittsburgh, in which two minors were killed early Sunday, also left at least 31 people wounded.
No one was reported killed in the violence at Cara’s Lounge in Hampton County, roughly 80 miles (130 kilometers) west of Charleston, according to an email from South Carolina’s State Law Enforcement Division, which is investigating the shooting.
In Pittsburgh, two male youths were killed and at least eight people wounded when shots were fired during a party at a short-term rental property. The “vast majority” of the hundreds of people at the party were underage, the city’s Police Chief Scott Schubert told reporters. Investigators believe there were multiple shooters, and Schubert said police were processing evidence at as many as eight separate crime scenes spanning a few blocks around the rental home.
The two shootings come just a day after gunfire erupted at a busy mall in the South Carolina state capital of Columbia, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) north of Sunday’s nightclub shooting. Nine people were shot, and five people sustained other kinds of injuries while trying to flee the scene at the Columbiana Centre, Columbia Police Chief W.H. “Skip” Holbrook said Saturday. The victims ranged in age from 15 to 73. None faced life-threatening injuries.
Shanghai quarantine: 24-hour lights, no hot showers
BEIJING (AP) – Beibei sleeps beside thousands of strangers in rows of cots in a high-ceilinged exhibition center. The lights stay on all night, and the 30-year-old real estate saleswoman has yet to find a hot shower.
Beibei and her husband were ordered into the massive National Exhibition and Convention Center in Shanghai last Tuesday after spending 10 days isolated at home following a positive test. Their 2-year-old daughter, who was negative, went to her grandfather, while her nanny also went into quarantine.
Residents show “no obvious symptoms,” Beibei, who asked to be identified only by her given name, told The Associated Press in an interview by video phone.
“There are people coughing,” she said. “But I have no idea if they have laryngitis or omicron.”
The convention center, with 50,000 beds, is one of more than 100 quarantine facilities set up in China’s most populous city for those such as Beibei who test positive but have few or no symptoms. It’s part of official efforts to contain China’s biggest coronavirus outbreak since the 2-year-old pandemic began. But it’s also testing patience of people increasingly fed up with China’s harsh “zero-COVID” policy that aims to isolate every case.
Tesla stockholders ask judge to silence Musk in fraud case
DETROIT (AP) – A group of Tesla shareholders suing CEO Elon Musk over some 2018 tweets about taking the company private is asking a federal judge to order Musk to stop commenting on the case.
Lawyers for stockholders of the Austin, Texas-based company also say in court documents that the judge in the case has ruled that Musk’s tweets about having “funding secured” to take Tesla private were false, and that his comments also violate a 2018 court settlement with U.S. securities regulators in which Musk and Tesla each agreed to pay $20 million fines.
Musk, during an interview Thursday at the TED 2022 conference, said he had the funding to take Tesla private in 2018. He called the Securities and Exchange Commission a profane name and said he only settled because bankers told him they would stop providing capital if he didn’t, and Tesla would go bankrupt.
The interview and court action came just days after Musk, the world’s richest person, made a controversial offer to take over Twitter and turn it into a private company with a $43 billion offer that equals $54.20 per share. Twitter’s board on Friday adopted a “poison pill” strategy that would make it prohibitively expensive for Musk to buy the shares.
In court documents filed Friday, lawyers for the Tesla shareholders alleged that Musk is trying to influence potential jurors in the lawsuit. They contend that Musk’s 2018 tweets about having the money to take Tesla private at $420 per share were written to maniuplate the stock price, costing shareholders money.
Tax Day laggards: Consider filing for extension if in a rush
WASHINGTON (AP) – Millions of Americans wait until the last minute to file their taxes and this year is no exception.
Monday is Tax Day – the federal deadline for individual tax filing and payments – and the IRS will receive tens of millions of last-minute filings electronically and through paper forms.
As of April 8, the IRS had received more than 103 million returns for this tax season, and it had issued more than 63 million refunds worth more than $204 billion.
For comparison, last year more than 169 million people completed an income tax return by the end of the year. That probably leaves nearly 40 percent of this year’s taxpayers still unaccounted for, with many scrambling to submit their documents by Monday.
Nina Tross at the National Society of Tax Professionals says if people haven’t filed their taxes by now, “they’re better off filing an extension.”
