YEREVAN & GEGHARKUNIK PROVINCE, Armenia, November 2 (IPS) – The midday sun shines brightly over Lake Sevan. In the still waters, a flock of cormorants drifts silently, their black feathers glistening in the autumn light.
MUNCIE, Ind. — A Farmland man charged in the shooting death of Yorktown High School football player Christopher Wilson Jr. is being held without bond following his initial court appearance Monday.
Dairus Thompson II, 40, faces charges of aiding, inducing or causing murder, conspiracy to commit murder and obstruction of justice. The murder charge carries a maximum sentence of 65 years in prison.
During Monday’s initial hearing in Delaware Circuit Court 1, Thompson said he plans to hire an attorney. The court is working to secure a public defender in the meantime.
The court also noted that Thompson is the father of six children, including one stepchild. He is unemployed and receives disability benefits.
Thompson’s next hearing is scheduled for 9 a.m. Dec. 14. A pretrial hearing is scheduled for Jan. 27, with a jury trial set for April 6.
The charges stem from the Oct. 5 shooting death of 17-year-old Christopher Wilson Jr. in Muncie. Wilson was sitting in a vehicle with a female friend in the 1400 block of East Cromer Avenue when he was shot multiple times. He died at the scene.
Wilson was a standout defensive end at Yorktown High School who had committed to play football at West Virginia University.
According to court documents, investigators believe Wilson was the victim of mistaken identity. Police believe he was mistaken for a 27-year-old Muncie man who had been involved in a dispute with people connected to Thompson.
Investigators believe Thompson helped coordinate the shooting by driving a vehicle used before and after the gunfire. Court documents also describe evidence from cellphones and surveillance video that investigators used to connect Thompson and a juvenile to the shooting.
Thompson’s 17-year-old son, Dairus Thompson III, has also been charged in connection with Wilson’s death. Investigators believe the younger Thompson carried out the shooting.
INDIANAPOLIS — Gov. Mike Braun announced Monday that Indiana’s childcare voucher waitlist has dropped 78% since May following a $200 million investment to expand access to childcare assistance.
According to Braun’s office, the waitlist fell from 41,175 children in May to 9,006 at the end of October.
Braun announced the investment in April, directing $200 million from the Financial Responsibility and Opportunity Growth (FROG) Fund toward expanding access to Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) vouchers.
The governor’s office said nearly 48,000 children are now receiving child care vouchers.
“Making life more affordable for Hoosiers is a top priority of mine,” Braun said. “These results reflect focused efforts to deliver immediate relief to families and accelerate access to affordable childcare.”
The funding prioritized siblings of current voucher recipients, infants, toddlers and children ages 3 to 5.
Braun’s office also said exemptions were created for children in foster and kinship families, children with special needs, homeless children, children of childcare workers and children of Ivy Tech students.
INDIANAPOLIS — We’re starting the workweek stuck under a blanket of low clouds with occasional patchy drizzle, but don’t let the gray skies fool you: temperatures are running well above normal and will peak on Tuesday before our next weather maker arrives.
Expect overcast skies to dominate throughout the day with areas of patchy drizzle at times. We won’t see much temperature movement today thanks to the persistent cloud cover: morning temperatures will only dip to the low to mid-50s, and afternoon temperatures will struggle to reach the low to mid-60s. Not terrible for early November, but the lack of sunshine will make it feel raw at times.
Look for some breaks in the cloud cover to develop late tonight, which will set the stage for our warming trend on Tuesday. Lows will settle into the low to mid-50s again, quite mild for this time of year.
This will be the pick day of the week. With improving sunshine and strong southerly winds pumping in warmer air ahead of our next system, highs will surge well back into the 70s. Winds will become breezy through the day with gusts of 35 to 40 mph possible by evening.
A cold front will push through late Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, bringing widespread showers and a few rumbles of thunder. The severe threat looks minimal due to limited atmospheric instability, but a few stronger storms could briefly mix down gusty winds to the surface, something we’ll be watching closely. The strongest winds will occur ahead of and just behind the front Tuesday night with gusts potentially reaching 40 mph or more. Showers will taper off late Wednesday as the front clears the area. Expect cooler temperatures to return with highs only reaching the low 60s.
We’ll settle into a pattern near seasonal normals late week into the weekend with highs in the upper 50s to low 60s and lows in the mid-30s to mid-40s. A large upper-level low will hover over the Great Lakes region, which means we’ll need to keep slight rain chances in the forecast through the weekend. Additional disturbances rotating around this system could bring reinforcing shots of cooler air and more showers as we head into next week.
LONDON, November 2 (IPS) – Ours is not a new realisation. The Commonwealth is responding to what world leaders have acknowledged for many years: ‘business as usual’ cannot reverse the unsustainable course the world finds itself, from economic to climate crises and the growing lack of trust in governance institutions, both national and multilateral.
Read the full story, “The Commonwealth Has 2.7 Billion Reasons to Act”, on globalissues.org →
INDIANAPOLIS — A person is in stable condition after being shot on Monument Circle Sunday night.
The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department said at approximately 10:18 p.m., officers were called to the 100 block of Monument Circle on the report of a person shot.
Arriving officers found a person with injuries consistent with a gunshot wound. Police said the person is stable.
No other information was immediately shared by police.
News 8 has a crew heading to the scene to gather more information. Check back for updates.
In Mexico’s armed forces, an order from a superior is meant to be obeyed without question. For many women in uniform, investigative journalist Zorayda Gallegos found, that can include an order to step into an officer’s bedroom.
Read the full story, “Breaking the silence in Mexico’s barracks”, on globalissues.org →
(CNN) — Nine people died after a Bahamas-bound Learjet crashed and then erupted in a fireball in Palm Beach County, Florida, Sunday afternoon, officials said.
The crash is the second deadliest in the United States this year, according to National Transportation Safety Board records, following June’s skydiving plane crash in Butler, Missouri, which killed 12.
Officials have not identified the nine people who were aboard the plane or said how many were passengers and crew.
“It looked like a missile going down,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said of the crash.
There are no reports of anyone on the ground being killed, but it did create a significant debris field, the governor said. About 600 people are in need of shelter on the ground due to the crash, a county official said
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who confirmed the deaths, called the crash a “horrific tragedy.”
Sunday’s incident is the worst crash involving a Learjet 60, according to data from the Flight Safety Foundation. In 2008, four were killed when a Learjet 60 bound for Los Angeles crashed on takeoff from Columbia, South Carolina.
The plane was a Learjet 60 flying to the Bahamas from Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. It is registered to an LLC in Delaware, according to FAA records, and is listed as available for charter online.
The FAA and NTSB will investigate the crash, the FAA said.
NTSB investigators will arrive at the site Sunday and Monday. A news conference is also planned for Monday.
The crash occurred near Military Trail, between Cresthaven Boulevard and 10th Avenue North, the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.
Minutes before the crash, the pilot of the plane reported ice accumulating on the aircraft, an outside air temperature of -47 degrees Celsius, and moderate turbulence, bouncing the plane by up to 700 feet, according to a recording of air traffic control radio calls captured by LiveATC.net.
“We have light, clear ice that is manageable and moderate turbulence,” the pilot radioed the Miami Air Route Traffic Control Center.
But moments later, after reporting precipitation started to fall and requesting to climb, they declared an emergency.
“We’re descending 8,000 – mayday, mayday – we’re descending 10,000 feet per minute,” the pilot said. “We are in an overspeed condition descending 20,000 feet per minute … We’re going to crash into the ground.”
The jet descended 27,000 feet over the course of one minute, just before flight tracking data cut off, the website ADS-B Exchange shows.
The road is buckled where the plane slammed into it, creating a crater, video from CNN affiliate WPBF showed.
About 600 people are in need shelter after the plane crash because of the damage on the ground, said Joel Flores, Palm Beach County commissioner for District 3, who was the first county official at the scene. The residents are being sent to two shelters in the county while the site is being investigated, he said.
“I heard and felt the boom,” Andrew Mannino told CNN. “The power immediately went out and is still out.”
He said he smelled the smoke and “saw a large black cloud immerse in the air.”
The crash site is about four miles south of the airport in West Palm Beach, which was renamed for President Donald Trump earlier this year. Trump was in West Palm Beach earlier Sunday, but departed the airport on Air Force One a little more than one hour before this crash.
Dash cam video showing the crash is going to be important to investigators piecing together what happened, said Mary Schiavo, CNN aviation analyst and former inspector general for the Transportation Department.
The airport is a good place to wait out the bad weather, Schiavo told CNN’s Fredricka Whitfield Sunday. “That is not a controlled descent. That is a descent where literally you’re exceeding that the speed of the plane on descent. You’re exceeding the descent rate. So at that point, it’s clear whatever happened, they had lost control of the plane.”
The steep descent could have taken parts off the plane, and the flight recorder could have been destroyed in the explosion, Schiavo added.
There were scattered storms in the area at the time of the crash, and the plane passed through a stronger storm cell a few minutes before it began descending. It is unclear if the storm contributed to the crash but at the time, the flight was in an area where the FAA had warned of thunderstorms and threats to aircraft, known as a convective SIGMET.
Ice on wings and other surfaces can pose a major threat to private jets. In January 2024, the NTSB published a safety alert underscoring the risks of in-flight icing conditions, which can cause pilots to lose control. The agency warned ice can “make managing the airplane’s flightpath and airspeed more difficult and can prevent the airplane from maintaining level flight.”
All northbound and southbound lanes of Military Trail are closed until further notice, officials said, and motorists are advised to avoid the area and seek alternate routes.
This story has been updated with additional information.
JACKSONVILLE (WISH) — The Colts lost to the Jaguars, 42-7, and fall to 2-6 on the season. The Colts have now lost four straight games.
The Jaguars scored 35 straight points to start the game. The Colts trailed 28-0 at halftime.
The Colts return home to play the Cowboys next week. Kickoff is scheduled for 1 p.m. on Sunday, November 8.
This story will be updated.
At the halfway mark to 2030, countries meeting in Armenia have agreed a roadmap to accelerate action for nature, after a global review found the world off track to meet its biodiversity targets.
