3 dead after attack in central Japan; suspect holed up in building

TOKYO (AP) — Three people including two police officers were killed in Nagano in central Japan on Thursday and a suspect with a rifle and knife was holed up inside a house, police said. They said two women later escaped from the house. NHK public television said one of the women told police that the attacker is her son and that his father is chairman of the city assembly. Police did not comment on the report. A witness earlier told NHK that a woman fell while being chased by the suspect, who then stabbed her with a knife and shot at two police officers as they arrived at the scene in a patrol car in Nakano city in Nagano prefecture.

French magistrates probing deaths file charges against maritime rescuers

PARIS (AP) — French magistrates on Thursday filed preliminary charges against five French maritime rescue personnel in a probe of the deadly sinking of a flimsy migrant craft in the English Channel in 2021 that killed 27 people. The five, all military personnel, were handed a preliminary charge of not assisting people in danger, judicial authorities said. Preliminary charges allow magistrates further time to investigate. Magistrates have previously filed preliminary charges against 10 other people suspected of manslaughter and assisting the illegal entry of migrants.

Centuries-old cotton tree felled by storm in Sierra Leone

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Torrential rains in Sierra Leone’s capital felled the centuries-old Cotton Tree, a national treasure whose loss has left “a gap” in people’s hearts, the country’s President Julius Maada Bio said Thursday. “There is no stronger symbol of our national story than the Cotton Tree, a physical embodiment of where we come from as a country,” Bio told the Associated Press. Standing 70 meters tall and 15 meters wide, the roughly 400 year-old tree has been Sierra Leone’s national symbol for decades.

Man arrested after car collides with gates of Downing Street

LONDON (AP) — A car collided Thursday with the gates of Downing Street in central London, where the British prime minister’s home and offices are located, setting off a rapid, intense security response at one of London’s most-fortified sites. No one was injured and police said they were not treating the incident as terror-related. Police arrested a man on suspicion of criminal damage and dangerous driving, and local officers, rather than counterterrorism detectives, were handling the investigation. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was in his office at the time of the crash, which revived memories of attacks on London’s government district.