Yet another Memphis cop is killed

MEMPHIS, Tenn.

- An off-duty police officer died yesterday 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 was taken to the Regional Medical Center, where he died.

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

Armstrong said that the investigation is ongoing and that "details are sketchy." Relatives of the officer could be seen crying outside the hospital.

Police blocked the street in front of the house where the shooting happened. A plainclothes detective spoke with a neighbor and uniformed officers also were on the scene.

Olridge, 31, joined the department in September 2014. He had a fiancee who is pregnant, Armstrong said.

Olridge is the fourth Memphis police officer to be fatally shot in slightly more than four years.

In August, Memphis police officer Sean Bolton was fatally shot in the line of duty.

Police have charged Tremaine Wilbourn, 29, who was on probation for an armed bank robbery, with first-degree murder in Bolton's death.

Bolton was white, and Wilbourn is black.

WASHINGTON

- Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server to conduct government business when she served as secretary of state was a mistake but didn't endanger national security, President Obama said during an interview airing last night on CBS's "60 Minutes."

Obama said public officials have to be more sensitive about how they handle information and personal data. Yet he also said the criticism of Clinton has been "ginned up" because of politics.

"I think she'd be the first to acknowledge that maybe she could have handled the original decision better and the disclosures more quickly," Obama said.

Obama downplayed the threat to national security, and when it was pointed out that his administration has prosecuted people for having classified material on their private computers, the president said he didn't get the impression there was an intent to "hide something or to squirrel away information." He also said he was not initially aware of her use of the private email server.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M

. - More cities are recognizing Native Americans on Columbus Day this year as they revive a movement to change the name of the holiday to celebrate the history and contributions of indigenous cultures around the country.

As the U.S. observes Columbus Day today, it will also be Indigenous Peoples Day in at least nine cities for the first time this year, including Albuquerque; Portland, Ore.; St. Paul, Minn.; and Olympia, Wash.

Encouraged by city council votes in Minneapolis and Seattle last year, Native American activists made a push in dozens of cities in recent months to get local leaders to officially recognize the second Monday of October as Indigenous Peoples Day. Their success was mixed.

The campaigns say the federal holiday honoring Christopher Columbus - and the parades and pageantry accompanying it - overlook a painful history of colonialism, enslavement, discrimination and land grabs that followed the Italian explorer's 1492 arrival in the Americas. The indigenous holiday takes into account the history and contributions of Native Americans for a more accurate historical record, activists have argued.

Columbus Day supporters say the holiday celebrates centuries of cultural exchange between America and Europe, commemorates an iconic explorer and honors Italian-Americans, a group that has endured its own share of discrimination.

NEW YORK

- Amid the bloodbaths of 21st-century America, you might think that there would be a lot of research into the causes of gun violence, and which policies work best against it.

You would be wrong.

Gun interests, wary of any possible limits on weaponry, have successfully lobbied for limitations on government research and funding, and private sources have not filled the breach. So funding for basic gun-violence research and data collection remains minuscule - the annual sum total for all gun violence research projects appears to be well under $5 million. A grant for a single study in areas like autism, cancer or HIV can be more than twice that much.

There are public-health students who want to better understand rising gun-related suicide rates, recent explosions in firearm murders in many U.S. cities, and mass murders like the one this month at an Oregon community college, where a lone gunman killed nine people.

But many young researchers are staying away from the field. Some believe there's little hope Congress will do anything substantive to reduce gun violence, regardless of what scientists find.

- Associated Press