Ole Miss takes down controversial flag

Ole Miss takes down controversial flag

OXFORD, Miss.

The University of Mississippi quietly pulled down the state flag Monday, deciding that the 121-year-old banner’s Confederate battle emblem sends a harmful message in this age of diversity.

Acting under the order of Interim Chancellor Morris Stocks, three campus police officers furled the flag before most students were awake, taking it down from a circle of honor between the white-columned administration building and a marble statue of a saluting Confederate soldier.

A group of university leaders met Sunday night and agreed to take it down, days after the student and faculty senates urged its removal from the Oxford campus, a bastion for Southern elites since its founding in 1848.

5 Britons confirmed dead in boat sinking

TOFINO, British Columbia

Investigators sought to determine what caused a whale watching boat with 27 people on board to sink off Vancouver Island in seemingly calm weather, killing five people and leaving one person missing. A fisherman who helped in the rescue effort offered a clue Monday: a survivor told him that a sudden wave capsized the boat.

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond confirmed in a statement Monday that the five killed were U.K. nationals.

Baltimore cops to wear body cameras

BALTIMORE

More than 150 Baltimore police officers will be outfitted with body cameras as part of a pilot program that will eventually expand to the entire force.

The program launched Monday. Selected officers will be equipped with one of three types of cameras being tested. In February, the department will select one type of camera and begin giving cameras to all officers who regularly interact with the public. The rollout is expected to last two years.

Rebels attack poll-worker group

BOGOTA, Colombia

Leftist rebels on Monday ambushed election workers transporting ballots cast at an indigenous reservation in Colombia’s Andean highlands, killing 12 security forces members who were protecting the group.

Authorities attributed the attack to the National Liberation Army, or ELN, Colombia’s second-biggest rebel group. The poll workers were transporting to the capital for counting about 130 ballots cast at the remote U’wa reservation during Sunday’s elections for governors, mayors and other local officials.

Of those killed early Monday, 11 belonged to the army while the other was a police officer. Three more soldiers were wounded and six people remain missing, including two poll workers and an indigenous guide, Defense Minister Luis Carlos Villegas said.

2 passengers, 1 in wheelchair, run over

PITTSBURGH

A man in a wheelchair and someone who was with him were run over and killed by a bus they had just exited at the edge of the University of Pittsburgh campus Monday.

The Pittsburgh-area transit bus killed them Monday afternoon near the university’s basketball arena, the Petersen Events Center, Port Authority of Allegheny County spokesman Adam Brandolph said. There was no indication either victim was a student.

The man in the wheelchair got off the bus and was crossing the street when he was hit by another vehicle and was knocked under the rear wheels of the bus as it pulled away, Brandolph said. The second passenger was run over by the bus while trying to help the man in the wheelchair, he said.

Associated Press