Nation briefs for August 7

Nobel laureate Toni Morrison dies

NEW YORK — Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, a pioneer and reigning giant of modern literature whose imaginative power in “Beloved,” ”Sula” and other works transformed American letters by dramatizing the pursuit of freedom within the boundaries of race, died at the age of 88.

Publisher Alfred A. Knopf announced that Morrison died Monday night at Montefiore Medical Center in New York after a brief illness.

“Toni Morrison passed away peacefully last night surrounded by family and friends,” Morrison’s family said in a statement through the publisher. “She was an extremely devoted mother, grandmother, and aunt who reveled in being with her family and friends. The consummate writer who treasured the written word, whether her own, her students or others, she read voraciously and was most at home when writing.”

Few authors rose in such rapid, spectacular style. She was nearly 40 when her first novel, “The Bluest Eye,” was published. By her early 60s, after just six novels, she had become the first black woman to receive the Nobel literature prize, praised in 1993 by the Swedish academy for her “visionary force” and for delving into “language itself, a language she wants to liberate” from categories of black and white.

Morrison helped educate her country and the world about the private lives of the unknown and unwanted. In her novels, history — black history — was a hidden trove of poetry, tragedy and good old gossip, whether in small-town Ohio in “Sula” or big-city Harlem in “Jazz.” She regarded race as a social construct, and through language founded the better world her characters suffered to attain, weaving in everything from African literature and slave folklore to the Bible and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

FBI reviewing Ohio shooter’s interest in violent ideology

DAYTON, Ohio — The shooter who killed nine people in Dayton, Ohio, expressed a desire to commit a mass shooting and showed an interest in violent ideology, investigators said Tuesday as the FBI announced it is opening an investigation.

Federal investigators will try to determine what ideologies influenced 24-year-old Connor Betts, who might have helped him or knew in advance of his plan, and why he chose the specific target of Dayton’s Oregon entertainment district for the shooting early Sunday, said Special Agent Todd Wickerham, the head of the FBI’s Cincinnati field office.

Dayton Police Chief Richard Biehl said Betts had “violent ideations that include mass shootings and had expressed a desire to commit a mass shooting.”

Wickerham didn’t say whether the FBI is looking at if the case could be treated as domestic terrorism, as the agency has done in the El Paso, Texas, mass shooting earlier in the weekend. He said Betts hadn’t been on the FBI’s radar. He declined to discuss what specific ideologies might be linked to Betts’ actions but said there was no evidence so far that they were racially motivated.

Meanwhile, public conversation around the shooting shifted Tuesday toward how to address people with mental health issues who might pose a threat of violence, as a woman who briefly dated the gunman recounted their bonding over struggles with mental illness and the governor called for more mental health support along with gun safety measures.

‘Target list’ prompts domestic terrorism case in Gilroy

LOS ANGELES — The discovery of a “target list” containing religious institutions, courthouses and other sites compiled by the gunman in a mass shooting at a California food festival has prompted the FBI to open a domestic terrorism case.

Shooter Santino William Legan, 19, appeared to be interested in conflicting violent ideologies, but authorities still have not determined a motive for the July 28 attack that killed three people, including two children, said John Bennett, the FBI’s agent in charge in San Francisco.

Authorities have not found a written explanation from Legan, but Bennett said they cannot rule out white nationalism as a factor.

On the day of the attack, Legan urged his Instagram followers to read a 19th century book popular with white supremacists who follow extremist websites. He also complained about overcrowding towns and paving open space to make room for “hordes” of Latinos and Silicon Valley whites.

Family members of Legan released a statement saying they were “deeply shocked and horrified” by his actions. They also apologized to the victims and their families.

Peter Strzok sues FBI for firing him over anti-Trump texts

WASHINGTON — A veteran FBI agent who wrote derogatory text messages about Donald Trump filed a lawsuit Tuesday charging that the bureau caved to “unrelenting pressure” from the president when it fired him.

The suit from Peter Strzok also alleges he was unfairly punished for expressing his political opinions, and that the Justice Department violated his privacy when it shared hundreds of his text messages with reporters.

“This campaign to publicly vilify Special Agent Strzok contributed to the FBI’s ultimate decision to unlawfully terminate him,” the lawsuit says, “as well as to frequent incidents of public and online harassment and threats of violence to Strzok and his family that began when the texts were first disclosed to the media and continue to this day.”

The complaint, which names as defendants Attorney General William Barr and FBI Director Chris Wray, revisits a political drama that was seized on by conservative critics of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation as proof that the bureau was biased against Trump. It provides new details about the circumstances of Strzok’s firing and amounts to the latest defense of his reputation, coming months after a fiery congressional hearing in which he insisted that his personal views never influenced his work.

Multiple investigations are underway examining whether the FBI acted properly during the Russia investigation, and Strzok remains a frequent target of Trump’s scornful tweets. A Justice Department inspector general report focused on the early days of the Russia probe is expected to be released in the coming weeks.

Boom in overdose-reversing drug is tied to fewer drug deaths

NEW YORK — Prescriptions of the overdose-reversing drug naloxone are soaring, and experts say that could be a reason overdose deaths have stopped rising for the first time in nearly three decades.

The number of naloxone prescriptions dispensed by U.S. retail pharmacies doubled from 2017 to last year, rising from 271,000 to 557,000, health officials reported Tuesday.

The United States is in the midst of the deadliest drug overdose epidemic in its history. About 68,000 people died of overdoses last year, according to preliminary government statistics reported last month, a drop from the more than 70,000 in 2017.

“One could only hope that this extraordinary increase in prescribing of naloxone is contributing to that stabilization or even decline of the crisis,” said Katherine Keyes, a Columbia University drug abuse expert.

About two-thirds of U.S. overdose deaths involve some kind of opioid, a class of drugs that includes heroin, certain prescription painkillers and illicit fentanyl. Naloxone is a medication that can reverse opioid overdoses, restoring breathing and bringing someone back to consciousness. It first went on sale in 1971 as an injection. An easier-to-use nasal spray version, Narcan, was approved in 2015.

Manson prosecutor: Keep them all locked up forever

LOS ANGELES — Stephen Kay was a fresh-faced prosecutor just 27 years old and three years out of law school when circumstances handed him the Charles Manson “family” murder case.

Over the next half-century, it would come to define his career and lead to death threats that to this day he worries a Manson sycophant might try to carry out.

“I don’t dwell on it, but I’m careful. I always look around to see if I’m being followed or anything,” the retired prosecutor said recently as he paused to discuss the case that punctured the peace, love and happiness movement that flowered in the late 1960s.

Kay helped lock up Manson family members but never really relinquished the case in his decades with the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. He attended some 60 parole hearings over the years where he argued the killers should never be released.

“The crime was simply too heinous,” he said.