Hong Kong police let barricades stand

Hong Kong police let barricades stand

HONG KONG

Police briefly scuffled with protesters camped out in Hong Kong’s streets overnight but held back from dismantling barricades erected by the activists pushing for greater democracy in the Chinese territory.

Earlier this week, police had removed barriers on the edges of the protest zones.

Protesters reacted to those moves by building bamboo structures that police dismantled. Later, they occupied an underpass that police then cleared out aggressively, using pepper spray and dragging activists away.

Shortly after midnight this morning, police clashed again with some demonstrators on a main road in front of the government headquarters. Police said two protesters were arrested and three officers were injured.

Texas clinics reopen with court reprieve

AUSTIN, Texas

Texas abortion clinics that closed under tough new restrictions began reopening Wednesday after winning a reprieve at the U.S. Supreme Court, but the facilities were scheduling women with uncertainty and skeleton staffs.

A five-sentence ruling late Tuesday blocked parts of a sweeping Texas abortion law that required clinics to meet hospital-level operating standards starting Oct. 3. That had left only eight abortion facilities in the nation’s second-most populous state.

Celebration among some abortion providers, however, was muted by logistics and fears that the victory is only temporary.

Mom charged; son took gun to school

LOS ANGELES

The mother of a 17-year-old boy was charged Wednesday with allowing him to take a loaded handgun to school.

Leah Wilcken, 41, faces four misdemeanor counts, each carrying a potential penalty of a year in jail and a $1,000 fine, the city attorney’s office said.

Wilcken couldn’t immediately be reached to comment, and it wasn’t immediately clear whether she had an attorney.

Prosecutors said that in May, the woman’s 17-year-old son brought a loaded .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun and a spare magazine containing seven bullets to Will Rogers High School in Van Nuys.

Hurricane Gonzalo aims for Bermuda

HAMILTON, Bermuda

Hurricane Gonzalo barreled toward Bermuda as a major Category 3 storm Wednesday, threatening the tiny archipelago where people rushed to repair homes and clear trees and power lines knocked down by a weekend tropical storm.

Gonzalo had top sustained winds of 125 mph and was about 590 miles south-southwest of Bermuda in the evening. It was moving north-northwest at 9 mph and was expected to be near Bermuda early Friday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said. Gonzalo had become a Category 4 storm earlier Wednesday, with forecasters noting that major hurricanes often fluctuate in intensity.

Journalist’s statue contains a typo

BLOOMINGTON, Ind.

Ernie Pyle’s statue needs an edit.

A bronze statue of the famed World War II journalist on the Bloomington campus of Indiana University misspells the word “correspondent” by dropping an “r.”

University officials found the mistake Wednesday, two days before the sculpture is to be formally dedicated, the Herald-Times reported.

Sculptor Tuck Langland says it won’t be easy to correct the misspelling, which is located on Pyle’s jacket, but it will be done — just not by Friday.

“We’re going to fix it,” said Langland, an IU-South Bend professor emeritus of sculpture.

Associated Press