North America

Houston, Sept 2 (PTI) The gunman who opened fire in the US State of Texas, killing 7 and injuring several others, has been identified, authorities said.

The shooting - the 38th mass killing by firearms in the US this year - occurred on Saturday in the West Texas cities of Midland and Odessa.

The shooter has been identified as a 36-year-old local man named Seth Aaron Ator, police said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump expressed a commitment Sunday, hours after the latest deadly mass shooting, to work with a divided Congress to “stop the menace of mass attacks.” He said any measures must satisfy the competing goals of protecting public safety and the constitutional right to gun ownership and seemed to cast fresh doubt on the merits of instituting more thorough background checks for gun purchases.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States and China on Sunday put in place their latest tariff increases on each other’s goods, potentially raising prices Americans pay for some clothes, shoes, sporting goods and other consumer items before the holiday shopping season.

President Donald Trump said U.S.-China trade talks were still on for September. “We’ll see what happens,” he told reporters as he returned to the White House from the Camp David presidential retreat. “But we can’t allow China to rip us off anymore as a country.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — Facing another deadly mass shooting, President Donald Trump is deflecting on gun control.

Over the weekend, he pointed to mental illness as a likely culprit behind recent shootings in Odessa, Texas and elsewhere, even though criminologists routinely point to gun ownership as a far better predictor of public mass shootings than indicators of mental illness. There were no immediate indications Sunday that mental illness contributed to the shootings that killed 7 and injured 22 others in Texas , a state with one of the most lenient gun control laws.

VERO BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Two days after storm shutters started going up and people waited in long lines for gas and food in anticipation of Hurricane Dorian, the parking lot of a Home Depot a short drive from the beach in central Florida was nearly empty as the sun peeked out behind scattered clouds.

McLEAN’S TOWN CAY, Bahamas (AP) — In a slow, relentless advance, a catastrophic Hurricane Dorian kept pounding at the northern Bahamas early Monday, as one of the strongest Atlantic storms ever recorded left wrecked homes, shredded roofs, tumbled cars and toppled power poles in its wake.

The storm’s top sustained winds decreased slightly to 180 mph (285 kph) while it spun along Grand Bahama island overnight in what forecasters said would be a daylong assault. Earlier, Dorian churned over Abaco island with battering winds and surf during Sunday.

When law enforcement authorities gathered to discuss details of a mass shooting in West Texas that left seven people dead, there was one bit of information they refused to provide on live television: the name of the gunman.

Instead, they decided to release the name through a Facebook post. Odessa Police Chief Michael Gerke made it plain why he wouldn’t mention the name at the news conference: “I’m not going to give him any notoriety for what he did.”

ODESSA, Texas (AP) — Police say they are not sure why a man with a misdemeanor on his record and no warrant for his arrest erupted in a spate of violence after a routine traffic stop in West Texas, killing seven including a man slain outside his parents’ home and a teenager fatally shot as she left a car dealership with her family.

Authorities said that Seth Aaron Ator, 36, also injured 22 people Saturday afternoon before officers killed him outside a busy movie theater in Odessa.

MIAMI (AP) — The Latest on Hurricane Dorian (all times local):

10:15 a.m.

A coastal Florida county is ordering an evacuation of barrier islands, mobile homes and areas that are prone to flood because of Hurricane Dorian.

Palm Beach County issued the evacuation order beginning 1 p.m. Sunday after the county that includes West Palm Beach was placed under a tropical storm warning.

The official forecast path for Dorian curves the storm away from the area before it strikes land.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Thousands of miles from the union halls of Pennsylvania and Michigan, organized labor is flexing its muscles in a pitched battle with Big Tech.

And the Democratic Party’s 2020 class isn’t being shy about picking sides.