AP News in Brief at 11:59 p.m. EST
Fate of Paris attacks mastermind unclear after bloody raid
SAINT-DENIS, France (AP) - The hunt for the mastermind of last week's attacks took a bloody turn Wednesday to a Paris suburb where a fierce gunbattle with police left at least two people dead and eight arrested. The fate of the alleged ringleader was unclear, with authorities saying he was not taken alive and they were trying to determine if he died in the raid.
Police launched the operation after receiving information from tapped phone calls, surveillance and tipoffs suggesting that 27-year-old Abdelhamid Abaaoud was holed up in an apartment in Paris' Saint-Denis neighborhood.
Terrified residents awoke to gunfire and explosions as a SWAT team swooped in and "neutralized" what Paris Prosecutor Francois Molins called a "new team of terrorists" that appeared ready for a new attack.
Molins said the identities of the dead were still being investigated, but that neither Abaaoud nor another fugitive, Salah Abdeslam, was in custody.
"At this time, I'm not in a position to give a precise and definitive number for the people who died, nor their identities, but there are at least two dead people," Molins said.
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Stories of those who died in the Paris attacks
They were artists and students, music lovers, parents and newlyweds. The victims of last week's attacks in Paris had varied backgrounds and interests. Among the 129 killed in the attacks, here are some of their stories:
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--- He was Christophe Lellouche to some, Chris Kelevra to others, and "Moke" online - a communications worker, musician, and soccer fan site provocateur. And he was at the Bataclan when the attackers stormed in.
Lellouche, 33, was a guitarist and backup vocalist in an indie pop band, Olivier, and he had composed music for "Jung Forever," a 2014 Belgian short film about a therapist and a despondent, cancer-stricken woman.
He and director Jean-Sebastien Lopez had barely met, but Lellouche immediately grasped the film's nuances, and he and another musician quickly created exactly what Lopez was looking for, the director wrote on his Facebook page in a tribute to Lellouche. Lellouche had an instinct "that captured all of what I was feeling and that transformed all of it into notes and melody," he wrote.
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To US mass shooting victims, Paris attacks sadly familiar
DENVER (AP) - When Sandy Phillips saw the bloodbath in Paris unfold on her television screen, she knew instantly that hundreds of families would be getting phone calls like the one she got three years ago.
She has become painfully familiar with mass shootings since a gunman killed her daughter in a crowded suburban Denver movie theater, and she's frustrated when pundits wonder if similar attacks on "soft targets" could happen in America.
"What 'soft-target' are you talking about? A school? Oh, gee, it's already happened, several times. A movie theater? Oh, gee, it's already happened," Phillips said. "Who are we fooling? We've been living under terrorist attacks since Columbine. They're just being done by our own people."
In fact, mass shootings are increasingly frequent, and only a few dozen of the more than 215,000 people murdered in the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks were killed by Muslim extremists, despite fears that an attack similar to Paris could happen at U.S. stadiums, theaters or sidewalk cafes.
Tom Sullivan's son Alex also died in the Colorado theater, where a deranged neuroscience student assembled an arsenal of weapons and attacked unsuspecting moviegoers watching a Batman film, killing 12 and wounding more than 70. He gets why James Holmes wasn't called a terrorist, but he says the heartbreak is identical for families of the 89 people killed in the Bataclan concert hall last Friday.
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APEC leaders: Urgent need to cooperate against terrorism
MANILA, Philippines (AP) - Asia-Pacific leaders called Thursday for increased international cooperation in the fight against terrorism as they held annual talks overshadowed by the Paris attacks.
A copy of the declaration that the leaders will issue following their talks, seen by The Associated Press, strongly condemned "all acts, methods, and practices of terrorism."
The statement on terrorism, which also mentions attacks in Beirut and the bombing of a Russian airliner over Sinai, is a rare departure from convention for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum which normally focuses on trade and business issues.
The APEC bloc accounts for about 60 percent of the global economy. It groups the United States and China with middle powers such as Australia as well as developing nations in Asia and South America.
The leaders said they are stressing the "urgent need for increased international cooperation and solidarity in the fight against terrorism."
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IS releases photo of bomb it says downed Russian jetliner
CAIRO (AP) - The Islamic State group on Wednesday released a photo of a bomb hidden in a soft drink can that it said had brought down a Russian passenger jet over Egypt last month, and it also announced it had killed hostages from Norway and China.
The disclosure of the new violence by the militants came as Russian and French warplanes continued their stepped-up airstrikes against IS targets in Syria. The attacks on civilians in Paris and aboard the Russian jetliner have galvanized international determination to confront the extremists.
The photo, which has not been corroborated, was released by the group's English-language online magazine. It showed a can of Schweppes Gold, a soft drink sold in Egypt, and what appeared to be other bomb components next to it.
The Metrojet Airbus 321-200 crashed in the Sinai desert shortly after taking off from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh for St. Petersburg. All 224 people aboard, mostly Russian tourists, were killed.
In the magazine, the group said it "discovered a way to compromise the security at the Sharm el-Sheikh International Airport," without providing details.
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Minneapolis police shooting stirs old racial tensions
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - The fatal shooting of an unarmed black man by a Minneapolis police officer has pushed racial tensions in the city's small but concentrated minority community to the fore, with a police precinct besieged by a makeshift encampment and hundreds of protesters in recent days.
Police have tried to improve race relations in recent years, and succeeded in some areas. But some community activists say racial disparities - high unemployment rates for blacks, a disproportionate number of arrests for minor crimes and inequities in housing and the school system - have been going on for so long that Sunday's shooting of Jamar Clark, and the reaction from the community, was no surprise.
"We call Minneapolis a tale of two cities: The best of times if you're white, and worst of times if you're black," said Nekima Levy-Pounds, president of the Minneapolis chapter of the NAACP, and one of 42 people arrested when protesters shut down an interstate highway Monday night.
Clark, 24, was shot in the head during a confrontation with two officers. Police said he was a suspect in an assault and was interfering with paramedics trying to treat the victim. Police said there was a scuffle, and Clark was shot. Some people who say they saw the shooting claim Clark wasn't struggling and was handcuffed. Police initially said he wasn't handcuffed, but the state agency that's investigating the shooting, the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, said one thing it's looking at is whether Clark was restrained.
The president of the Minneapolis police union, Lt. Bob Kroll, said Wednesday in an email that Clark was "disarming" the officer and was not handcuffed.
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WADA declares Russian anti-doping agency noncompliant
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) - The easy part was shutting down Russia's anti-doping agency until further notice.
The hard part for the World Anti-Doping Agency was, well, everything else.
WADA's top policymaking board handed down a declaration of noncompliance to Russia's anti-doping agency Wednesday, in a much-expected rebuke for the country where corruption has been exposed throughout its sports and drug-fighting systems.
But there were calls from Olympians and other leaders for WADA to do more - including making sure the Russian track team wouldn't compete at the Rio Games next year, and also to investigate whether any other Russian teams doped.
"I feel that there are a lot of athletes watching and waiting right now," said Beckie Scott, the Canadian cross-country skier and chair of the WADA athlete commission. "We're at a crossroads. We urge you to please consider these athletes and consider these sports as a whole."
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Census changes could make whites less than 50 percent sooner
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) - The Census Bureau is considering changes to its race and ethnicity questions that would reclassify some minorities who were considered "white" in the past, a move that may speed up the date when America's white population falls below 50 percent.
Census Director John Thompson told The Associated Press this week that the bureau is testing a number of new questions and may combine its race and ethnicity questions into one category for the 2020 census. That would allow respondents to choose multiple races.
The possible changes include allowing Latinos to give more details about their ethnic backgrounds and creating a new, distinct category for people of Middle Eastern and North African descent.
"We haven't made any decisions yet," Thompson said in an interview before his meeting Tuesday with American Indian leaders in New Mexico. "But I don't think these new questions would diminish anything. It would just give us more information about our diverse populations."
William H. Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program, says the proposed changes would grant residents more freedom to define their race and ethnicity.
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NIH to retire the last of government-owned research chimps
WASHINGTON (AP) - The National Institutes of Health is sending its last remaining research chimpanzees into retirement - as soon as a federal sanctuary has room for them.
The government already had declared that the use of humans' closest relative as a test subject was coming to an end. In 2013, the NIH said it would retire most of the several hundred government-owned chimps still living at research laboratories.
But it set aside 50 animals to be on standby just in case they still were needed for a public-health emergency or some other extreme situation.
Wednesday, the agency said those chimps' lab days are over, too.
"It's time to say we've reached the point in the U.S. where invasive research on chimpanzees is no longer something that makes sense," said Dr. Francis Collins, director of NIH.
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Arrieta wins NL Cy Young Award; Keuchel takes AL honor
NEW YORK (AP) - Jake Arrieta posted one final win, perhaps against his most formidable competition yet.
The Chicago Cubs righty aced out Dodgers stars Zack Greinke and Clayton Kershaw to earn the NL Cy Young Award by a comfortable margin Wednesday.
"There was some anxiety involved," Arrieta said on a conference call.
Arrieta topped the majors with 22 victories, boosted by a record 0.75 ERA after the All-Star break. He acknowledged the super stats piled up by his Los Angeles rivals spurred him.
"Deep down inside, we think we can catch them, do a little bit better," he said.