A week before Amedy Coulibaly killed a French policewoman and then four hostages at a Parisian kosher supermarket, he rented a cottage in Gentilly, a town south of Paris. When police raided the safe house after the attacks (and Coulibaly's death), they found an arsenal of recent-vintage assault rifles, grenade launchers, and explosives, The Associated Press reports. And according to France's Le Parisien, they also seized a scooter that allowed them to identify "the fourth man," Coulibaly's accomplice.
Le Parisien did not give a name for this alleged accomplice, but said he has a long rap sheet, possibly shot and seriously wounded a jogger in Fontenay-aux-Roses on Jan. 7, may have been involved in the kosher-market attack, and might have escaped to Syria, where Coulibaly widow Hayat Boumeddiene is also believed to be hiding.
In a video released after his death, Coulibaly pledged fealty to Islamic State. A member of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which claimed responsibility for the parallel attack by brothers Chérif and Said Kouachi, tells The New York Times that any coordination was done by Coulibaly and the Kouachis, not between rivals AQAP and ISIS. French police believe as many as six members of the same terrorist cell may still be at large. Peter Weber
A Wonder Years revival is coming to ABC, 27 years after the show ended its six-season run.
The Wonder Years told the story of suburban teenager Kevin Arnold and his middle-class family in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The reboot will feature a Black family in Montgomery, Alabama, in the 1960s, The Hollywood Reporter says. The goal is for the show to start airing during the 2021-22 television season.
Lee Daniels will serve as an executive producer, with Big Bang Theory and Frasier's Saladin K. Patterson writing the script. The Wonder Years co-creator Neal Marlens has signed on as a consultant, while the show's original star, Fred Savage, will executive produce and direct. Catherine Garcia
The Ivy League on Wednesday suspended all fall sports because of the coronavirus pandemic, becoming the first Division I conference to do so.
The decision affects football, soccer, field hockey, volleyball, and cross country, and could influence other leagues as they decide how to proceed with sports during the pandemic. The Ivy League Council of Presidents said in a statement its leaders did not think they could "create and maintain an environment for intercollegiate athletic competition that meets our requirements for safety and acceptable levels of risk."
The New York Times reports all sports will be on hold until at least January, and the league has yet to determine whether fall sports might be moved to the spring. Princeton football Coach Bob Surace told the Times he's hopeful his team will be able to play in early 2021, but that can only happen if there are better treatments and people take social distancing measures seriously. Catherine Garcia
President Trump's campaign rally at a Tulsa, Oklahoma, stadium in late June "likely contributed" to a big jump in new COVID-19 cases, Tulsa City-County Health Department Director Dr. Bruce Dart said Wednesday.
"In the past few days, we've seen almost 500 new cases, and we had several large events just over two weeks ago, so I guess we just connect the dots," Dart said in explaining the case surge. The city saw a record high of 261 new cases on Monday, and another 206 on Tuesday. Several Trump campaign staffers tested positive for COVID-19 before the event, and a reporter who attended the rally and Trump campaign surrogate Herman Cain tested positive after it. Oklahoma is among several southern and western states that have seen massive rises in new coronavirus cases in recent weeks after many of them moved to reopen businesses.
Trump is set to have another rally this weekend in New Hampshire, where case counts have been steadily declining. New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) has encouraged rally attendees to wear masks. Kathryn Krawczyk
Newly-released transcripts of Minneapolis police body camera footage filed in state court Tuesday shed more light on the final moments before Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who faces second-degree murder and manslaughter charges, killed George Floyd in May. The transcripts were filed as part of an effort by another officer, Thomas Lane, to have charges that he aided and abetted Floyd's murder thrown out, The New York Times reports.
One of the more harrowing moments in the transcripts occurs when Floyd, who was arrested on suspicion of using counterfeit money at a nearby store, was on the ground with Chauvin's knee on his neck pleading for his life, a scene captured on video by a passerby. The new transcripts reveal that after Floyd said the officers were going to kill him, Chauvin responded by telling him to "stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."
Later, Lane, who was helping Chauvin restrain Floyd, said he was worried Floyd was having a medical emergency. "Well, that's why we got the ambulance coming," Chauvin replied, as shown in one of the transcripts. Read more at The New York Times. Tim O'Donnell
Facebook has removed dozens of pages and accounts linked to President Trump's longtime adviser Roger Stone for inauthentic behavior.
The company on Wednesday said it took down 54 Facebook accounts, 50 pages, and four Instagram accounts "involved in coordinated inauthentic behavior" and that an investigation linked this network of pages and accounts to Stone and his associates, CNN reports.
Those involved use fake accounts "to pose as residents of Florida, post, and comment on their own content to make it appear more popular than it is," including posts about Stone and "his pages, websites, books, and media appearances," as well as WikiLeaks, the 2016 election, and Stone's trial, Facebook said. This network also spent about $300,000 on Facebook and Instagram ads.
Facebook also took down Stone's Instagram account as part of its removal effort, CNN reports. Facebook's head of security policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, told The Washington Post that Stone's personal accounts were "deeply enmeshed in the activity here." Some of the pages were linked to the Proud Boys, the far-right group that Facebook previously banned, the company said.
Stone, who was convicted last year of witness tampering and lying to investigators, as well as other charges, told The New York Times on Wednesday that "the claim that I have utilized or control unauthorized or fake accounts on any platform is categorically and provably false." He's set to report to prison next week. Brendan Morrow
Phoenix, Arizona, is already the hottest major city in the United States, and climate experts expect temperatures to keep rising to the point where there are more than an additional two dozen days per year when the thermometer hits 105 degrees or higher by 2050. That could lead to what Susan Clark, the director of the Sustainable Urban Environments Initiative at the University of Buffalo, describes as a "Hurricane Katrina"-size heat disaster in the U.S.'s fifth largest city, The Washington Post reports.
Such a scenario could be brought on by water becoming too hot, disrupting a power generation system dependent on cooling towers, or wildfires taking out power lines. Citizens would then potentially be deprived of water and air conditioning, two necessities in dangerous heat. Thankfully, there are efforts, led by both experts and community members, to make sure Phoenix is able to evade this type of disaster, the Post reports.
There's been a push to rely more on solar power, and local electric utilities are trying to install "microgrids" around the city that could serve as backup generators in case of an emergency. And Phoenix's chief sustainability officer, Mark Hartman, is developing a network of "cool corridors" which would mean no resident is more than a five-minute walk from water or shade. Another method is to plant more trees, which can lower air temperatures through a natural process called evapotranspiration; eventually, Hartman hopes the city's tree canopy expands to a quarter of its area. Similarly, there is a multi-million-dollar program to repave roads with materials that reflect rather than absorb heat as asphalt does.
Mayor Kate Gallego (D) says she hopes this all results in Phoenix becoming "the most sustainable desert city on the planet." Read more at The Washington Post. Tim O'Donnell