NATO: Copter crash at Kabul base kills 5

NATO: Copter crash at Kabul base kills 5

KABUL, Afghanistan

A military helicopter crashed in a nonhostile incident Sunday at the NATO base in the Afghan capital, Kabul, killing five coalition members and injuring five others, authorities said.

A statement from the Resolute Support Mission did not give the nationalities of those killed and injured, all of them NATO personnel. But the British Ministry of Defense said two Royal Air Force members were among those killed when the Puma Mk 2 helicopter crashed while landing at the headquarters of the NATO Resolute Support Mission, which is training Afghan security forces.

In London, the Ministry of Defense also said a convoy of British military vehicles came under attack earlier Sunday in a separate incident in Kabul, but there were no fatalities.

US gasoline prices dip half a cent

CAMARILLO, Calif.

The average price of gasoline has dropped half a cent over the past two weeks, to $2.34 a gallon.

Industry analyst Trilby Lundberg reported Sunday that prices have fallen 52 cents in the past 17 weeks, but the latest cut is the smallest so far.

She says a moderate hike in the cost of crude oil has nudged up wholesale prices, so retailers have stopped cutting their street prices.

Kin of Germanwings dead may sue in US

BERLIN

A lawyer representing more than three dozen families whose loved ones were lost in the Germanwings plane crash in March says his clients want to sue for compensation in the United States, where courts could decide upon much-larger settlements.

German lawyer Elmar Giemulla told the DPA news agency Sunday that he met with 100 family members Saturday, who agreed he should go ahead and pursue legal action in the U.S.

Prosecutors believe the Airbus A320 was intentionally crashed by its co-pilot, killing all 150 people on board the Germanwings Barcelona- to-Duesseldorf flight.

The co-pilot at one point had trained in the United States, and two of the victims of the crash were American.

Off-duty Memphis officer is fatally shot

MEMPHIS, Tenn.

An off-duty police officer died Sunday after being shot multiple times, the fourth Memphis police officer to be fatally shot in slightly more than four years, authorities said.

Memphis Police Director Toney Armstrong said Terence Olridge, 31, was taken to the Regional Medical Center, where he later died.

Officers got a call about 1 p.m. about a shooting at a home in the Memphis suburb of Cordova, Armstrong said. A male suspect is in custody, but Armstrong didn’t say whether the person has been charged.

Hundreds rally to change Miss. flag

JACKSON, Miss.

Civil-rights leader Myrlie Evers-Williams, Mississippi-born rapper David Banner and a prominent South Carolina lawmaker are calling on Mississippi to remove the Confederate battle emblem from its state flag.

About 400 people took part in a change-the-flag rally Sunday outside the Mississippi Capitol. No alternative design was proposed, but rally leaders said the flag is racially divisive. Three men holding large flags with various Confederate emblems watched the rally from a distance across the Capitol lawn.

The emblem – a blue X with 13 white stars, over a red field – has been on Mississippi’s flag since 1894, and voters chose to keep it in 2001. But the massacre of nine black worshippers in June at a church in Charleston, S.C., has renewed the debate about the public display of Confederate symbols.

Associated Press