From incident reports at the Effingham County Sheriff’s Office:

May 10: A woman said a co-worker scratched her vehicle as they traveled on Goshen Road in the Rincon area. She said the man agreed at the time to pay for the damage but has since reneged.

A deputy said she should have reported the accident when it occurred.

Cooking fire

May 23: A couple left a crock pot on while they were away and returned to find their house burned down. Wildwood Lane in the Eden area.

June 1: A man said another vehicle ran him into the median on Ga. 21 at Goshen Road. He wanted a report made.

June 1: A man who tried to steal two beers from the El Cheapo on Long Bridge Road was given a criminal trespass warning.

June 2: A deputy intervened in a civil disagreement about child visitation.

June 2: Two pit bulls were running at large and one bit a man on the leg. The owner was cited for animals running at large and no rabies vaccination. Westwood Drive in the Rincon area.

June 2: A deputy intervened when a drunken man was yelling and screaming at others in his house.

June 3: Someone damaged the front door of a house that had a lock box on it on Blackwater Way in the Springfield area. The house also had some holes in the walls.

Odd threat

June 3: A woman said her neighbor threatened to kill her dog because she refused to loan him her vehicle. McCall Road in the Springfield area.

June 4: A deputy intervened in a custody dispute between a man’s daughter and her former boyfriend.

June 4: A deputy intervened in a dispute between a couple arguing about “life in general.” The man agreed to leave the house.

June 4: A man said his ex-wife has been ignoring court orders regarding child custody visitation. He wanted the incidents documented.

June 4: A deputy stopped a vehicle on Blue Jay Road because the passenger was not wearing a seat belt and the windshield was cracked. The driver was arrested for driving with a suspended license and was given a written warning for the windshield violation.

June 4: A couple said a neighbor’s Rottweiler came into their dog’s pen. They said the same dog attacked their dog before. Lowground Road in the Guyton area.

June 4: A woman and her roommate argued over a leaking washing machine. Second Street in the Meldrim area.

Intruder identified

June 5: A resident of Courthouse Road in the Guyton area said she returned home to find her front and back doors unlocked and a note on the door from a realty company instructing her to fix several things inside the house before another inspection would be conducted.

She said she left the house locked and gave no one permission to enter. The landlord and homeowner said they had nothing to do with the note. A man with Lanier Realty said his operations manager was responsible. He was given a criminal trespass warning.

June 5: A deputy oversaw an exchange of children under a visitation agreement.

June 5: A woman who signed a release to allow people to survey her land for the Palmetto Pipeline called the Sheriff’s Office and said she wants to rescind the permission. The landowner on Blue Jay Road in the Guyton area said the surveyors are traveling “all over her property, more than what she wanted.”

The surveyor said he would “red flag” the property and the property owner said she would contact the individual to whom she gave permission so she could retract it.

June 5: A woman said she struck a dog on Ga. 21 at Old Tusculum Road. Her front bumper was damaged.

June 5: A counterfeit $20 bill was passed at Foghouse Vapors on Ga. 21 in the Rincon area. The store workers did not know who gave them the bill and they had no surveillance video.

June 6: A vehicle caught on fire near the Honey Ridge ball park. It was destroyed. Firefighters do not suspect foul play or arson.

June 6: A deputy answered a call about an aggressive black Lab and yellow Lab on Olde Manor Lane in the Guyton area. The dogs attacked a feral cat and its kittens. Humane Enforcement was notified.

Coyote injured

June 6: A deputy found a coyote, very badly injured on Old Augusta Road, north of Fort Howard Road. He shot it in the head and moved the body off the road.

June 6: A couple said they allowed their daughter and her boyfriend to live in a trailer as long as they paid the electric bill. They said the youngsters moved away three weeks ago, but were storing their things in the trailer.

The electrical box had been tampered with, and they left a bill of $630 unpaid. Eviction procedures were explained. Harvey Road in the Meldrim area.

June 6: A couple who are separating argued about getting rid of belongings.

June 6: A man said someone stole fuel from his vehicle while it was parked at his sister’s house on Courthouse Road in the Guyton area.

June 6: A man was accused of kidnapping a 12-year-old girl at gunpoint. A deputy investigated and found the claims to be untrue and part of a family dispute.

June 6: A woman and her granddaughter were bitten trying to break up a fight between two of their male dogs over a female dog in heat. Ga. 119 in the Clyo area.

June 7: A bedroom window was broken on a house on Zeigler Road in the Bloomingdale area. The tenant said he doesn’t lock the door. A gun was stolen from the house the week before.

June 7: A deputy responded to a window sensor setting of the burglar alarm at a house on Cobbleton Drive in the Springfield area. The windows were secure, but a garage door was unlocked.

June 7: A South Carolina man said his ex-wife failed to deliver their child for visitation.

June 7: A woman said her boyfriend struck her and threatened her with a gun. The man said she struck him first and that he didn’t threaten her with a gun. No arrests were made.

June 7: A resident of Clyo Shawnee Road in the Clyo area said a juvenile removed two posts she had blocking a trail. She also said someone spray-painted her “No trespassing” signs.

She said the juvenile rode his ATV in a ditch, damaging the ditch. The juvenile was advised to stay off of other people’s property unless he had permission.

Family dispute

June 7: A father and son argued on John Glenn Drive in the Rincon area. The father had to be hit with a stun gun to be subdued. He grabbed the officer in the groin. The son was beating his head and his feet against the window of the patrol car.

They were charged with obstructing or hindering law enforcement officers, disorderly conduct, simple battery against a police officer, sexual battery and drunken driving.

June 7: A deputy helped a Springfield police officer with a patient who was mentally unstable, who broke the window of the secure room at Effingham Hospital. The deputy and officer arrested the man for breaking the window and took him to jail.

June 7: A woman said she has custody of her three grandchildren and her daughter has been visiting them at all hours of the night. A worker with the Division of Family and Children Services brokered more reasonable times for the mother to visit.

June 8: Two men argued in the Clyo area. One broke the other’s new car battery and stole two nail guns. He was arrested for criminal trespass and burglary. 

 LEXINGTON, S.C. — In recent weeks, Dylann Storm Roof reconnected with a childhood buddy he hadn't seen in five years and started railing about the Trayvon Martin case, about black people "taking over the world" and about the need for something to be done for "the white race," the friend said Thursday.

On Thursday, Roof, 21, was arrested in the shooting deaths of nine people at a historic black church in Charleston — an attack decried by community leaders and politicians as a hate crime.

In the hours after the Wednesday night bloodbath, a portrait began to take shape of Roof as someone with racist views. On his Facebook page, he wore a jacket with the flags of the former white-racist regimes of South Africa and Rhodesia.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Joseph Meek Jr. said he and Roof had been best friends in middle school but lost touch when Roof moved away about five years ago. The two reconnected a few weeks ago after Roof reached out to Meek on Facebook, Meek said.

Roof never talked about race years ago when they were friends, but recently made remarks about the killing of unarmed black 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida and the riots in Baltimore over the death of Freddie Gray in police custody, Meek said.

"He said blacks were taking over the world. Someone needed to do something about it for the white race," Meek said. "He said he wanted segregation between whites and blacks. I said, 'That's not the way it should be.' But he kept talking about it."

He said that when he woke up Wednesday morning, Dylann was at his house, sleeping in his car outside. Later that day, Meek went to a nearby lake with a couple of other people, but Roof hated the outdoors and decided he'd rather go see a movie.

Meek said he didn't see his friend again until a surveillance-camera image of a man walking into the church was broadcast on television Thursday morning. Meek said he didn't think twice about picking up the phone and calling authorities.

"I didn't THINK it was him. I KNEW it was him," Meek said.

CHARLESTON, S.C. — One was a longtime librarian looking forward to retirement. Another had recently graduated from college with a business degree. At least two died in the church that they had attended for decades.

A closer look at some of the nine lives that were cut short by the gunman who opened fire in a black church in downtown Charleston:

CLEMENTA PINCKNEY

Clementa Pinckney, 41, was the beloved pastor of Emanuel African Methodist Church, one of the country's oldest black churches, and had been a state legislator for 19 years.

Just one year after graduating from Allen University in 1995, Pinckney became, at 23, the youngest African-American elected to the South Carolina Legislature. In 2000, he was elected to the state Senate.

He earned a master's degree in public administration from the University of South Carolina in 1999 and studied at the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary.

A native of Beaufort, Pinckney began preaching at age 13 and was first appointed pastor at 18. He was named pastor of Mother Emanuel AME Church in 2010, according to the state Democratic Party.

"He had a core not many of us have," said Sen. Vincent Sheheen, who sat beside him in Senate chambers. "I think of the irony that the most gentle of the 46 of us — the best of the 46 of us in this chamber — is the one who lost his life."

He is survived by his wife and two children.

SHARONDA COLEMAN-SINGLETON

Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, 45, was a part-time minister at Emanuel AME Church and worked as a speech pathologist at Goose Creek High School, where she was also the girls track coach.

Principal Jimmy Huskey said she was so dedicated she was at work before 8 a.m. and typically didn't leave until 8 p.m.

"She had a big smile," Huskey said. "Her No. 1 concern was always the students. She made a difference in the lives of children. She cannot be replaced here at this school."

The mother of three had run track herself as a student at South Carolina State University, helping lead her team to a conference championship.

ETHEL LANCE

Ethel Lance, 70, was a Charleston native who had been a member of the church for most of her life. She retired after working for more than 30 years on the housekeeping staff at the city's Gaillard Auditorium.

She had served as a sexton at the church for the last five years, helping to keep the historic building clean. She was also a lover of gospel music.

"She was a God-fearing woman," said granddaughter Najee Washington, 23, who lived with Lance. "She was the heart of the family, and she still is. She is a very caring, giving and loving woman. She was beautiful inside and out."

Lance had five children, seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

CYNTHIA HURD

Cynthia Hurd's brother took some comfort in knowing his happy-go-lucky sister died in the church she grew up in and loved.

Hurd, 54, was the manager of one of the busiest branches of the Charleston County library system. In her honor, the system closed all 16 of its branches Thursday, the day after her death.

She grew up in Charleston, and her mother made sure they went Emanuel AME Church on Sundays, Wednesdays and any other time it was open, said her brother Malcom Graham, a former state senator from North Carolina.

"I wasn't surprised on a Wednesday night she was there," Graham said Thursday.

Hurd's husband is a merchant sailor currently at sea near Saudi Arabia. Graham was trying to help him get home.

When Graham spoke to his sister last weekend, she said she couldn't wait for her 55th birthday on Sunday, he said.

She was also looking toward retirement after 31 years of library work. The library issued a statement remembering Hurd as "a tireless servant of the community who spent her life helping residents, making sure they had every opportunity for an education and personal growth."

DEPAYNE DOCTOR

DePayne Doctor, 49, was an enrollment counselor at Southern Wesleyan University's Charleston campus, according to a friend.

She joined the Emanuel AME church at the beginning of the year and soon began teaching Wednesday evening Bible class.

Doctor had four daughters, ranging in age from elementary school to a senior in college. She was separated from her husband.

Latrice Smalls described her cousin as "a songstress" who began singing as a girl, particularly gospel music, and performed for her church and her family. She attended Columbia College and then moved back to her hometown of Charleston.

TYWANZA SANDERS

Tywanza Sanders, 26, graduated last year from Allen University, where he studied business. In a news release, the school described Sanders as "a quiet, well-known student" with "a warm and helpful spirit."

On his Instagram account, Sanders called himself a poet, artist and businessman. His photos were filled with friends, smiles, family members and motivational quotes.

Hours before the shooting, he put up his final post, a meme with a quote from Jackie Robinson: "A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives."

A man was "blown away" by word that his wife discussed having two inmates kill him as she helped them plot their successful escape from the maximum-security prison in northern New York, his lawyer said Thursday.

Both Joyce and Lyle Mitchell worked as instructors at the Clinton Correctional Facility where convicted murderers Richard Matt and David Sweat were discovered missing June 6 and remain at large.

Joyce Mitchell is jailed on charges she gave the inmates hacksaws and other tools used to cut through their cell walls and a steam pipe to get beyond the prison walls. Authorities say Mitchell had planned to be the inmates' getaway driver but backed out.

Authorities have said Mitchell, who got close to the men while working with them in the prison tailor shop, discussed killing her husband.

"Joyce Mitchell tells us that was discussed between her and Matt and that upon their escape, they were going to return back to Joyce Mitchell's home at which time Matt and Sweat were going to kill her husband," said Andrew Wylie, Clinton County district attorney.

Lyle Mitchell's lawyer, Peter Dumas, said Thursday his client was shocked by word of the plot and that Joyce Mitchell had told her husband that she couldn't go through with it.

"Toward the end, Joyce had told Lyle — and we have no reason to doubt it — that she told Sweat and Matt that she wasn't going to go through with it," he said. "At that point, they threatened her by threatening Lyle, saying they were going to have someone on the outside do something to him or someone on the inside when he was back at work do something to him so I think it was a point of control."

Lyle Mitchell is cooperating with authorities and isn't facing charges.

"He's still in love with her, but I don't know that he is going to be very supportive," Dumas said.

Joyce Mitchell has pleaded not guilty.

As the search for the men stretched into a 13th day Thursday, corrections officials lifted a lockdown that had limited activities in the prison. They said inmates are eating again in the mess hall rather than in their cells and a number are going to work assignments. Recreation activities and use of the phones are also resuming. Visitors are expected to be allowed starting Friday.

Sweat, 35, was serving a life sentence without parole in the killing of a sheriff's deputy. Matt, 48, was doing 25 years to life for the kidnap, torture and hacksaw dismemberment of his former boss.

Wylie on Thursday also offered a new detail on the relationship between Matt and Joyce Mitchell, saying the inmate painted a picture of her children after Mitchell gave him boxing gloves.

"She provided him the speed boxing gloves for the picture of her children. So she gave it to her husband, Lyle, for their anniversary," Wylie said.

Savannah-Chatham police have charged a suspect in one case and they are looking for more information on two other incidents after three separate shootings Wednesday afternoon and night.

At 7:30 p.m., Central Precinct Patrol officers responded to the 600 block of West 40th Street where they a 30-year-old male victim, of a Manchester Court address, on the floor of a house with a non-life threatening gunshot wound. Officers immediately detained Stanley Eugene Robinson, 25. Violent Crimes detectives later charged him with aggravated assault, said Julian Miller, Savannah-Chatham police spokesman.

Earlier Wednesday, a 24-year-old male victim, of a Quail Forrest address was found with gunshot wounds in a yard on the 2400 block of East DeRenne Avenue about 3:30 p.m. and transported for treatment of injuries expected to be non-life threatening.

He reported he had been standing in the yard of a house when a male walked up and began shooting at him, hitting him twice before walking towards him and firing at him again as he lay on the ground. The gunman then fled west onto LaRoache Avenue, Miller said.

At 10:29 p.m., Central Precinct Patrol officers responded to a shooting call on the 1700 block of East 39th Street where they found an 81-year-old male victim, with a non-life threatening wound in his house. Hamilton said he had sold sodas to two younger males who returned and fired at him.

Violent Crimes detectives continue to investigate the three shootings. Anyone with information on a case is asked to call CrimeStoppers at 912-234-2020 or text CRIMES (274637) using the keyword CSTOP2020. Tipsters remain anonymous and may qualify for a cash reward.

A Tip Line also is open directly to investigators at 912-525-3124 and most area clergy have agreed to serve as liaisons for anyone who would like to share information with police anonymously.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The House dramatically rescued President Barack Obama's trade agenda from near oblivion Thursday, and supporters urged the Senate to finish the job and give him a signature achievement in his final years in office.

The turnabout gave a much-needed lift to a president recently rebuffed by his own party after years of fighting Republicans.

In one of the strangest twists of his presidency, most fellow Democrats oppose Obama on trade, forcing him to rely heavily on Republicans to ease the path for possibly far-reaching trade accords in Asia and elsewhere.

The president needs comparatively small numbers of Democrats in both chambers. His supporters were encouraged by Thursday's events.

Setting up votes early next week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., alluded to the bill's near death last week, but he maintained that the measure could be sent to Obama before July 4.

McConnell said it would require "working together toward the shared goal of a win for the American people. ... Trusting each other to get there. I think we can."

The same 28 House Democrats who previously backed Obama's bid for "fast track" negotiating authority held firm, despite withering criticism from unions and liberal groups. Under that authority, a president can negotiate liberalized trade deals that Congress can only approve or reject, not change.

Opponents of Obama's path on trade now are focusing on 14 Democratic senators who backed fast track earlier. There were no open signs of erosion Thursday, although Democrats are demanding inclusion of a job retraining program, with details of it still incomplete.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Republicans are committed to ensuring that the negotiating authority and retraining program pass for Obama's signature into law.

Corporate groups and other free-trade supporters hailed the House vote Thursday approving the negotiating authority. It passed 218-208, proving the importance of the 28 Democratic supporters.

"This vote is a huge step with the administration and for a nation which rejects isolationism and protectionism," said Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Electronics Association.

Liberal groups fumed.

"A handful of turncoat Democrats" who backed the legislation "should know that we will not lift a finger or raise a penny to protect you when you're attacked in 2016," said Jim Dean of Democracy for America. He said the group will try to oust those lawmakers in future Democratic primaries.

Lawmakers agree that major trade deals, including the long-negotiated Trans-Pacific Partnership, cannot be completed unless negotiating partners know that Congress won't tinker with the final agreement. Previous presidents have negotiated such deals with fast-track authority.

Democratic opposition to free trade has grown since the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, lowered barriers with Canada and Mexico.

Republicans, and pro-trade Democratic presidents such as Obama and Bill Clinton, have tried to ease concerns by offering a union-backed program, Trade Adjustment Assistance, that provides help to workers displaced by trade.

Many Republicans consider it wasteful but a reasonable price for Democrats' help on liberalized trade.

That strategy seemed sound last month, when the Senate passed a bill that linked the assistance with the negotiating authority.

House Democrats sabotaged that last week, however. They voted to kill the worker assistance program in order to derail the fast track. The stinging rebuke of Obama forced Republican leaders to repackage the trade legislation and try again.

That worked as the House passed the new bill, which dealt solely with the negotiating authority.

Pro-trade forces hope for similar results in the Republican-dominated Senate, perhaps as early as next week.

Last month, the Senate passed legislation that combined fast track with worker assistance, getting two more votes than needed to stop fatal delaying tactics by opponents. Support from the 14 Democratic senators who backed the bill was vital to that victory and Obama's backers are keen to hold them.

Most if not all of the 14 say it's crucial that Congress approve, and Obama sign, a renewal of the trade adjustment assistance in conjunction with the negotiating authority.

Some of fast track's staunchest opponents say it's inconceivable to negotiate a lowering of trade barriers without looking after those who lose their jobs.

"I can't believe Congress would vote for a trade agreement and not help these workers," said Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio. "It's morally shameful not to take care of these workers."

Brown said the Senate shouldn't vote on fast track until that assistance "is locked down."

Other opponents of fast track were ready to move to other issues. "I think most Democrats, at the end of the day, realize that we now have an even more important obligation" to pass the assistance bill along with fast track, said Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y. Dwelling on a procedural process that divides Obama and House Democrats, he said, is "not a good message. So we need to put the period at the end of the sentence and move on to another topic."

And White House spokesman Eric Schultz said: "The only strategy that we support moving through Congress is one that includes both of those pieces getting to his desk for his signature."

___

Associated Press writers Erica Werner, Nedra Pickler and Darlene Superville contributed to this report.

Candles were lit as dusk fell in. Then, 27 balloons were released into the sky above Planters Commons as friends and family members remembered Lorraine Manuel, who died after being shot this month.

“Things like this can happen to anybody,” the Rev. Charles Roberson told the more than 100 people who gathered around Manuel’s family members Thursday night in the Sandfly neighborhood. Manuel, 27, died at Memorial University Medical Center on June 10, six days after being shot in a southside home. A 68-year-old woman, Vivian Corley, has been charged with murder and related crimes in Manuel’s death, and Savannah-Chatham police say she called 911 to report she’d shot someone in her rental home off Beaumont Drive.

Manuel’s parents told reporters last week their daughter had been trying to get a home with her boyfriend but backed out and wanted her deposit back. The slaying remains under investigation.

Roberson, Manuel’s uncle, stressed the impact of violence on families.

“All of us are hurting, but none of us are hurting like (the Manuels) are hurting,” he said.

Police Chief Joseph Lumpkin and Assistant Chief Julie Tolbert both spoke at the vigil.

“Senseless acts like this must stop,” Lumpkin said.

Tolbert echoed his statements.

“We’ve been fighting this battle for far too long,” she said.

She asked everyone in attendance to put the word out that police need help from the community. There’s an arrest in Manuel’s death, but perpetrators of other homicides are free, and people with information that can put killers behind bars don’t always come forward.

“We pray for this family, but also for all the families who have lost a loved one to violence,” she said.

Roberson asked those in attendance to pray for Charleston, S.C., where a white gunman shot and killed nine people inside a historic black church Wednesday night in what’s being investigated as a hate crime.

The crowd prayed for violence in Savannah to subside as well.

Lorraine Manuel was well-liked in the community and well-known in the neighborhood.

“We pretty much grew up together,” said Netta Howell, who, like Lorraine, is 27.

Howell spent much of the vigil with her 1-year-old daughter, Ayana, on her shoulder. She said everyone who grew up in the neighborhood is close friends with each other.

“Any time something happens to one of us, it’s like it happens to us all,” she said. “… This turnout is no surprise at all.”

Lorraine Manuel’s father, the Rev. Ricardo Manuel, said the turnout told him a lot about the people of Savannah. Despite violence problems, he said, people are there for one another.

“We hurt because we lost our daughter — I lost my ‘Cuppie,’” he said, using his nickname for Lorraine. “But her impact is being felt. It’s going to continue to be felt. But I love this city. Violence doesn’t outweigh the love.”

For the last two years the Savannah-based elite aviation soldiers with the 3rd Battalion, 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment executed countless missions in several parts of the world.

Primarily in secret and often under the cover of night, the Hunter Army Airfield Night Stalkers have flown their specially outfitted Chinook and Blackhawk helicopters in both Iraq and Afghanistan and on training missions in the United States and South America under the command of Lt. Col. Chris Black since June 2013.

“The missions they executed were historic and unlike anything ever accomplished before,” said Col. Michael Hertzendorf, the Fort Campbell, Ky.-based commander of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. “They made it look easy; I can tell you it wasn’t. That’s what has become expected of this organization… and you cannot understate the value of their leader to accomplish their missions. Lt. Col. Chris Black (was) that leader.”

Thursday morning at Hunter AAF, Black relinquished command of his battalion as he handed the reins to his longtime friend, Lt. Col. Reginald Harper, a master Army aviator and a longtime Night Stalker who has served in several roles including platoon leadership and company command at Fort Campbell’s 1st Battalion, 160th SOAR.

Black will move to Fort Bragg, N.C. and serve as the executive officer to the commanding general of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command.

Black — who crediting his soldiers for all of the accomplishments 3-160 made under his guidance — said it would be difficult to leave Savannah.

“I’m not sure I have the appropriate words for how much I feel for this unit and how special this place really is,” Black said Thursday morning as he stood in front of a large formation of the maroon beret-wearing Night Stalkers along Hunter’s flightline. “What I hope is that what I lack in words will be made up for by how I feel in my heart. Every day during my command what I continued to see and what continues to amaze me is the professionalism, the dedication of a group of people who go out and do their best every single day for their country, for their unit and for each other. We are a can-do, make-it-happen, no-excuses battalion.”

Harper, Black said, “is a perfect fit for this battalion.”

The unit will continue to operate around the world under Harper’s watch. The incoming commander said he was honored to be given an opportunity to serve with the 3rd Battalion’s soldiers.

“This unit is a fantastic unit with a rich history, and (my wife) Karen and I are very, very honored to be a part of it... It’s about what the men and women of this battalion do every day and are going to continue to do. We’re happy to be a part of the team and happy to be of continued service to our nation as a unit.”

An estimated 50 children and their families were on hand Thursday at the Chatham County Aquatic Center to take part in what’s billed as “The World’s Largest Swimming Lesson.”

The inaugural event in 2010 established a Guinness World Record for the largest simultaneous swimming lesson ever conducted. It was staged to build awareness of the importance of teaching children to swim to prevent drownings.

Last year’s event grew more than 400 percent with more than 20,000 participants representing 13 countries and 45 states in the United States.

Drowning is the second leading cause of unintended, injury-related deaths of children ages 1-14, and research shows if a child doesn’t learn to swim before the third grade, they probably never will.

OKLAHOMA CITY — The remnants of a tropical storm that moved in from the Gulf of Mexico this week focused most of its fury Thursday on Oklahoma and Arkansas, pushing rivers to record-high levels and causing flooding as it crawled northward through the nation’s midsection.

There have been no reported injuries caused by the storm, which came ashore Tuesday in southeastern Texas as Tropical Storm Bill before settling down into a tropical depression. It has claimed at least one life, though, that of a 2-year-old southern Oklahoma boy who was pulled from his father’s arms by floodwaters late Wednesday. An estimated 10 inches of rain fell overnight on that area north of the Texas border and also forced the partial closure of a major interstate highway.

Farther north, Missouri, Illinois and Indiana were bracing for flooding throughout the weekend.

“The water was just flowing like a river down the streets,” Amber Wilson, the emergency manager in Ardmore, said after the overnight downpour. Even giant trash bins gave way to the water.

“It was so forceful that it washed away the barricades and pushed manhole covers out of the streets,” she said.

Authorities found Jeremiah Mayer’s body Thursday afternoon. It was about 30 yards from where the boy was last seen after being swept out of his father’s arms Wednesday night.

Ardmore police Capt. Eric Hamblin said the boy’s father was fleeing the rising Hickory Creek when floodwaters swamped him. He said the creek rose 12 to 15 feet in less than an hour.

Bill came ashore as a tropical storm Tuesday southwest of Houston and dumped more than 11 inches of rain along the coast before racing north and eventually slowing as it crossed into Oklahoma. The Wa[filtered word]a River basin, which largely runs along Interstate 35 in southern Oklahoma, absorbed the heaviest rains.

Elvin Sweeten, whose family owns a 600-acre homestead a few miles from the Wa[filtered word]a, said the floodwaters had surrounded his ranch.

“I see water everywhere,” Sweeten said Thursday. “The entire ranch is under water.”

He said he and his son spent the night cutting fences so their cows and horses can escape to higher ground.

“We just stay here and hope that the water doesn’t get too much higher,” Sweeten said. “We have a boat. If we have to get out, we can.”

The Oklahoma Department of Transportation shut down I-35 in the Arbuckle Mountains north of Ardmore due to water and fallen rocks on the four-lane road, which connects Oklahoma City and Dallas. Southbound lanes opened Thursday afternoon, but a 4-mile stretch northbound was diverted near Davis.

“I had to turn around. I couldn’t drive on the whole 10-mile stretch,” said Kristen Greenwood, 20, from her job as a supervisor at Original Fried Pies in Davis. She took a backroad to work because a lake was backing up onto the highway.

“I was lucky because my exit was just after the lake, so I could get on, but all the rivers are flooding over the bridges and the lake is overflowing,” she said. “I’m staying at work until they tell me to leave.”

Gazing out the pie shop window, Greenwood estimated that the water on the other side of the parking lot was several feet deep: “Probably waist-deep on me, but I’m short.”

Heavy rains from a separate weather system hit northern Indiana on Thursday, forcing hundreds of people from their homes near the Iroquois River even before the remnants of Bill move in Friday and Saturday. The Kankakee River was at risk, too.

Rains last month triggered floods that killed more than two dozen people in Oklahoma and Texas last month. Texas avoided major problems with Bill — pockets of dry air limited rainfall away from the coast — but a waterlogged Oklahoma had few places that could handle more water.

“There’s going to be little capacity to store (the water) if we get additional rains,” Le Flore County Emergency Manager Michael Davidson said Thursday before Bill’s remains made a turn to the northeast. He joked that he was “hoping for a drought.” Last month’s storms and Bill ended a yearslong dry spell for the region.

The Wa[filtered word]a River was expected to crest nearly 20 feet above flood stage at Dickson, about the the level of its previous record crest, the National Weather Service said.

Campers at the Shangri-La RV Resort south of the Arbuckles were moved to higher ground as a precaution. “We’re ready for some sunshine,” resort co-owner Julene Potter said.

World’s oldest person dies at 116

DETROIT — A woman deemed the world’s oldest person died in Michigan, about a month after her 116th birthday.

Jeralean Talley died Wednesday evening at her home in the Detroit suburb of Inkster, according to her daughter, Thelma Holloway. Holloway said Thursday that her mother was recently hospitalized and treated for fluid in her lungs before returning home “just where she wanted to be.”

Talley turned 116 last month. She celebrated at her church and a local office of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. Attendees at the second event included U.S. Rep. John Conyers. The Democrat is the longest-serving member in the House, but even at 86 he was still three decades younger than Talley.

The Los Angeles-based Gerontology Research Group considered Talley to be the world’s oldest person, based on available records, followed by Susannah Jones of Brooklyn, New York. The group said Jones turns 116 in July.

Talley was born in Montrose, Ga., in 1899 and moved to Michigan in the 1930s.

Talley’s husband died in 1988 at age 95.

Talley’s hobbies included bowling until she was 104, and she went on an annual fishing trip until shortly before her death. Holloway said her mother also enjoyed spending time with “her little baby,” a 2-year-old great-great grandson.

WASHINGTON — The House dramatically rescued President Barack Obama’s trade agenda from near oblivion Thursday, and supporters urged the Senate to finish the job and give him a signature achievement in his final years in office.

The turnabout gave a much-needed lift to a president recently rebuffed by his own party after years of fighting Republicans.

In one of the strangest twists of his presidency, most fellow Democrats oppose Obama on trade, forcing him to rely heavily on Republicans to ease the path for possibly far-reaching trade accords in Asia and elsewhere.

The president needs comparatively small numbers of Democrats in both chambers. His supporters were encouraged by Thursday’s events.

Setting up votes early next week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., alluded to the bill’s near death last week, but he maintained that the measure could be sent to Obama before July 4.

McConnell said it would require “working together toward the shared goal of a win for the American people. ... Trusting each other to get there. I think we can.”

The same 28 House Democrats who previously backed Obama’s bid for “fast track” negotiating authority held firm, despite withering criticism from unions and liberal groups. Under that authority, a president can negotiate liberalized trade deals that Congress can only approve or reject, not change.

Opponents of Obama’s path on trade now are focusing on 14 Democratic senators who backed fast track earlier. There were no open signs of erosion Thursday, although Democrats are demanding inclusion of a job retraining program, with details of it still incomplete.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Republicans are committed to ensuring that the negotiating authority and retraining program pass for Obama’s signature into law.

Corporate groups and other free-trade supporters hailed the House vote Thursday approving the negotiating authority. It passed 218-208, proving the importance of the 28 Democratic supporters.

“This vote is a huge step with the administration and for a nation which rejects isolationism and protectionism,” said Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Electronics Association.

Liberal groups fumed.

“A handful of turncoat Democrats” who backed the legislation “should know that we will not lift a finger or raise a penny to protect you when you’re attacked in 2016,” said Jim Dean of Democracy for America. He said the group will try to oust those lawmakers in future Democratic primaries.

Lawmakers agree that major trade deals, including the long-negotiated Trans-Pacific Partnership, cannot be completed unless negotiating partners know that Congress won’t tinker with the final agreement. Previous presidents have negotiated such deals with fast-track authority.

Democratic opposition to free trade has grown since the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, lowered barriers with Canada and Mexico.

Republicans, and pro-trade Democratic presidents such as Obama and Bill Clinton, have tried to ease concerns by offering a union-backed program, Trade Adjustment Assistance, that provides help to workers displaced by trade.

Many Republicans consider it wasteful but a reasonable price for Democrats’ help on liberalized trade.

That strategy seemed sound last month, when the Senate passed a bill that linked the assistance with the negotiating authority.

House Democrats sabotaged that last week, however. They voted to kill the worker assistance program in order to derail the fast track. The stinging rebuke of Obama forced Republican leaders to repackage the trade legislation and try again.

That worked as the House passed the new bill, which dealt solely with the negotiating authority.

Pro-trade forces hope for similar results in the Republican-dominated Senate, perhaps as early as next week.

Last month, the Senate passed legislation that combined fast track with worker assistance, getting two more votes than needed to stop fatal delaying tactics by opponents. Support from the 14 Democratic senators who backed the bill was vital to that victory and Obama’s backers are keen to hold them.

Most if not all of the 14 say it’s crucial that Congress approve, and Obama sign, a renewal of the trade adjustment assistance in conjunction with the negotiating authority.

Some of fast track’s staunchest opponents say it’s inconceivable to negotiate a lowering of trade barriers without looking after those who lose their jobs.

“I can’t believe Congress would vote for a trade agreement and not help these workers,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio. “It’s morally shameful not to take care of these workers.”

Brown said the Senate shouldn’t vote on fast track until that assistance “is locked down.”

Other opponents of fast track were ready to move to other issues. “I think most Democrats, at the end of the day, realize that we now have an even more important obligation” to pass the assistance bill along with fast track, said Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y. Dwelling on a procedural process that divides Obama and House Democrats, he said, is “not a good message. So we need to put the period at the end of the sentence and move on to another topic.”

And White House spokesman Eric Schultz said: “The only strategy that we support moving through Congress is one that includes both of those pieces getting to his desk for his signature.”

Senator remembered as advocate of the poor

COLUMBIA — Sickle cell foundations across South Carolina are funded today because of Sen. Clementa Pinckney’s efforts, according to Sen. Darrell Jackson, D-Richland County.

The Jasper County senator, who was gunned down Wednesday night in the historic black church where he was a minister, had also advocated for the Medicaid expansion, AIDS testing programs, food stamp recipients, ETV, and measures to combat human trafficking.

“We need more Clementa Pinckneys. It is my goal that more Clementa Pinckneys step up, and people that run for office don’t run for office just to get headlines, just to have their names in lights,” said Jackson after the Senate adjourned for lunch Thursday.

“He’s now gone. But we can truly say that even at 41 years old, this young man has made a tremendous difference.”

Jackson said the attack in Charleston could have happened at his church here in Richland County. The combination of being a minister and an elected official brings added risks, although Jackson did not specifically emphasize race as an element.

Jackson, who is also an African-American minister, said he has received so many threats over the years that the S.C. State Law Enforcement Division maintains a file on him. The threats were most intense after a bitter debate at the State House over whether to remove the Confederate flag from the Capitol, he said. In fact, added Jackson, a man is serving time in prison for threatening him years ago.

The lawmaker recalled a particularly chilling incident years ago.

A man came to his front door and told his wife he was planning to rape her and kill the whole family.

Jackson, who introduced hate-crime legislation in recent years, said he will refile his bill.

“In light of what has happened with Sen. Pinckney, perhaps it will get more traction,” Jackson said.

“It sends a message for us as a state, like the body cameras (law) did, that we will not tolerate that. Not passing that bill could also send a very sad message. But I am confident that my colleagues will do the right thing.”

On Thursday several members of the Senate wept after giving floor speeches, before leaving the chamber to accept hugs and to comfort others waiting in the lobby. Guns are not permitted inside the S.C. State House.

Sarita Chourey/Morris News Service

Obama: Church shooting shows need for reckoning on guns

WASHINGTON — Giving voice to intense heartache, anger and sadness, President Barack Obama said Thursday the South Carolina church shooting that left nine people dead shows the need for a national reckoning on gun violence. He acknowledged, though, that there’s no appetite in Congress for tighter gun laws.

Obama, who knew the pastor killed in the Charleston attack, said he has been called upon too often to mourn the deaths of innocents killed by those “who had no trouble getting their hands on a gun.”

“Now is the time for mourning and for healing,” the president said. “But let’s be clear. At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency. And it is in our power to do something about it.”

And while Obama said that because the shooting is under investigation, he was constrained from talking about details of the case, he added with clear frustration and anger, “I don’t need to be constrained about the emotions that tragedies like this raise.”

“I’ve had to make statements like this too many times,” the president said.

The president acknowledged there is scant sentiment within the Republican-controlled Congress for stricter gun controls, saying he recognizes “the politics in this town foreclose a lot of those avenues right now.” A federal universal background bill couldn’t muster the 60 votes necessary even in a Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate in the months after the 2012 shooting rampage in Newtown, Connecticut.

But Obama held out hope for an eventual shift in attitudes.

“At some point it’s going to be important for the American people to come to grips with it, and for us to be able to shift how we think about the issue of gun violence collectively,” he said.

Obama said the shooting in a black church also raised questions “about a dark part of our history” of racism, but he said the broad-based outpouring of grief at the tragedy shows “the degree to which those old vestiges of hatred can be overcome.”

Obama, accompanied by Vice President Joe Biden, said that he and Biden had spoken with Charleston Mayor Joseph Riley and other local leaders to express their condolences. Michelle Obama and her daughters, traveling in Italy, lit candles at Milan’s Duomo cathedral in memory of the victims.

CHARLESTON, S.C. — It was an act of “pure, pure concentrated evil,” Charleston’s mayor said — a black community’s leading lights extinguished by gunfire, allegedly at the hands of a young white man who sat among them through an hour of prayer.

In one blow, the gunman added nine victims at The Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church to the ever-lengthening list of America’s racial casualties, and ripped out part of South Carolina’s civic heart.

They included a state senator who doubled as the church’s minister, three other pastors, a regional library manager, a high school coach and speech therapist, a government administrator, a college enrollment counselor and a recent college graduate — six women and three men who felt called to open their church to all.

Police arrested Dylann Storm Roof, a 21-year-old who had complained that “blacks were taking over the world” and that “someone needed to do something about it for the white race,” according to a friend who alerted the FBI.

Roof waived extradition and was put on a plane from North Carolina on Thursday afternoon, authorities said. He was being held at a detention center pending a bond hearing, Charleston Police tweeted Thursday evening.

President Barack Obama called the tragedy yet another example of damage wreaked on America by guns. NAACP President and CEO Cornell William Brooks said “there is no greater coward than a criminal who enters a house of God and slaughters innocent people.” Others bemoaned the loss to a church that has served as a bastion of black power for 200 years, despite efforts by white supremacists to wipe it out.

“Of all cities, in Charleston, to have a horrible hateful person go into the church and kill people there to pray and worship with each other is something that is beyond any comprehension and is not explained,” said Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. “We are going to put our arms around that church and that church family.”

Surveillance video showed the gunman entering the church Wednesday night, and Charleston County Coroner Rae Wilson said the gunman initially didn’t appear threatening.

“The suspect entered the group and was accepted by them, as they believed that he wanted to join them in this Bible study,” she said. Then, “he became very aggressive and violent.”

Roof’s childhood friend, Joey Meek, called the FBI after recognizing him in the surveillance footage, down to the stained sweatshirt he wore while playing Xbox videogames in Meek’s home the morning of the attack.

“I didn’t THINK it was him. I KNEW it was him,” Meek told The Associated Press after being interviewed by investigators.

Roof was arrested without incident Thursday in Shelby, North Carolina, after a motorist spotted him and tipped police.

His previous record includes misdemeanor drug and trespassing charges. He wasn’t known to the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama, and it’s not clear whether Roof had any connection to the 16 white supremacist organizations operating in South Carolina, but he appears to be a “disaffected white supremacist,” based on his Facebook page, said the center’s president, Richard Cohen.

Meek said he and Roof had been best friends in middle school, where “he was just a quiet kid who flew under the radar.” Roof then disappeared and showed up again several weeks ago, seeming even more quiet and withdrawn.

But on his Facebook page, Roof displayed the flags of defeated white-ruled regimes, posing with a Confederate flags plate on his car and wearing a jacket with stitched-on flag patches from apartheid-era South Africa and Rhodesia, which is now black-led Zimbabwe.

And when Meek asked what was troubling Roof, “he started talking about race,” the friend said.

Spilling blood inside “Mother Emanuel,” founded in 1816, evoked painful memories nationwide, a reminder that black churches so often have been the targets of racist violence.

A church founder, Denmark Vesey, was hanged after trying to organize a slave revolt in 1822, and white landowners burned the church in revenge, leaving parishioners to worship underground until after the Civil War. The congregation rebuilt the church and grew stronger. Martin Luther King Jr., brought the 1960s campaign for voting rights to its pulpit.

Its lead pastor, state Sen. Clementa Pinckney — among the dead — recalled his church’s history in a 2013 sermon, saying “we don’t see ourselves as just a place where we come to worship, but as a beacon and as a bearer of the culture.”

The other victims were Cynthia Hurd, 54; Tywanza Sanders, 26; Myra Thompson, 59; Ethel Lance, 70; Susie Jackson, 87; and the reverends DePayne Middleton Doctor, 49; Sharonda Singleton, 45; and Daniel Simmons Sr., 74.

U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said the attack would be investigated as a hate crime.

Meek said his friend had become an avowed racist.

“He said he wanted segregation between whites and blacks. I said, ‘that’s not the way it should be.’ But he kept talking about it,” Meek said.

Obama, who personally knew the slain pastor, was one of the few politicians to call for stricter gun control.

“I’ve had to make statements like this too many times,” the president said. “At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries.”

This shooting “should be a warning to us all that we do have a problem in our society,” said state Rep. Wendell Gilliard, a Democrat whose district includes the church. “There’s a race problem in our country. There’s a gun problem in our country. We need to act on them quickly.”

Flowers tied to a police barricade outside the church formed a growing memorial, two months after another memorial appeared at the scene in neighboring North Charleston where Walter Scott was shot in the back by a white police officer. That shooting of an unarmed black man prompted South Carolina to pass a law to equip police with body cameras statewide. Pinckney co-sponsored it.

WASHINGTON — Iran’s support for international terrorist groups remained undiminished last year and even expanded in some respects, the Obama administration said Friday, less than two weeks before the deadline for completing a nuclear deal that could provide Tehran with billions of dollars in relief from economic sanctions.

The assessment offered a worrying sign of even worse terror-related violence to come after a year in which extremists in the Middle East, Africa and Asia committed 35 percent more terrorist acts, killed nearly twice as many people and almost tripled the number of kidnappings worldwide. Statistics released by the State Department on Friday also pointed to a tenfold surge in the most lethal kinds of attacks.

Yet even as the Islamic State and the Taliban were blamed for most of the death and destruction in 2014, the department’s annual terrorism report underscored the ongoing threat posed by Iran and its proxies across the Islamic world and beyond.

Tehran increased its assistance to [filtered word]e militias fighting in Iraq and continued its long-standing military, intelligence and financial aid to Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Syrian President Bashar Assad’s embattled government and Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. While the 388-page study said Iran has lived up to interim nuclear deals with world powers thus far, it gave no prediction about how an Iran flush with cash from a final agreement would behave.

World powers and Iran are trying to conclude an accord by the end of the month, setting 15 years of restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for significant relief from the international sanctions that have crippled the Iranian economy.

The negotiations don’t involve Iran’s support for militant groups beyond its border. But Israel and the Sunni monarchies of the Persian Gulf, Iran’s regional rivals, fear a fresh wave of terrorism as a result of any pact. President Barack Obama, hoping to ease their fears, has said most of the money would go to Iran’s economic development.

America’s “grave concern about Iran’s support for terrorism remains unabated,” White House spokesman Eric Shultz said. “That is all the more reason that we need to make sure they don’t obtain a nuclear weapon.”

In total last year, nearly 33,000 people were killed in almost 13,500 terrorist attacks around the world, according to the figures that were compiled for the State Department by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland. That’s up from just over 18,000 deaths in nearly 10,000 attacks in 2013.

Twenty-four Americans were killed by extremists in 2014, the report said. And abductions soared to 9,428 in the calendar year from 3,137 in 2013.

The report attributes the rise in attacks to increased terror activity in Iraq, Afghanistan and Nigeria and the sharp spike in deaths to a growth in exceptionally lethal attacks in those countries and elsewhere.

There were 20 attacks that killed more than 100 people each in 2014, compared to just two a year earlier, the report said. Among those were December’s attack by the Pakistani Taliban on a school in Peshawar that killed at least 150 people and the June attack by Islamic State militants on a prison in Mosul, Iraq, in which 670 [filtered word]e prisoners died.

At the end of 2014, the prison attack was the deadliest terrorist operation in the world since Sept. 11, 2001, according to the report.

Despite all indications pointing toward increased violence, the State Department’s counterterrorism coordinator said the numbers didn’t reflect improvements by the U.S. and its partners in stamping out terrorism financing, improving information sharing, impeding foreign fighters and forming a coalition to fight the Islamic State. “We have made progress,” Ambassador Tina Kaidanow said.

Attacks occurred in 95 countries last year but were concentrated in the Mideast, South Asia and West Africa. Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India and Nigeria accounted for more than 60 percent of the attacks. Adding Syria, they comprised roughly 80 percent of the fatalities, the report found.

The rise in kidnappings is mainly attributable to the mass abductions by terrorist groups in Syria, notably the Islamic State and the al-Qaida-linked al-Nusra Front.

In Nigeria, Boko Haram was responsible for most, if not all, of the nearly 1,300 abductions, including several hundred girls from a school in Chibok. By contrast, the report cited fewer than 100 terror-related kidnappings reported in Nigeria in 2013.

The terrorism statistics are an annex to the State Department’s “Country Reports on Terrorism,” an annual survey of attacks and trends mandated by Congress.

Friday’s reports noted the “unprecedented seizure” of territory in Iraq and Syria by the Islamic State, its ability to recruit foreign fighters to join its cause and the emergence of self-proclaimed affiliates, notably in Libya, Egypt and Nigeria. It cited a rise in so-called lone wolf attacks in the West and terrorists employing more extreme methods of violence to repress and frighten communities under their control.

CENTENNIAL, Colo. — Prosecutors in the Colorado theater shooting trial rested Friday, concluding their argument that James Holmes methodically planned and executed the 2012 massacre in a case that relied heavily on victims’ recollections of the carnage he inflicted inside the darkened cinema.

Over the past eight weeks, prosecutors weaved experts’ testimony with survivors’ personal stories to try to convince jurors that Holmes was sane when he opened fire on a midnight showing of a Batman film. The former neuroscience student killed 12 people and wounded 70.

For its last witness, the prosecution called a survivor whose story was among the most heart-wrenching. Ashley Moser was paralyzed and suffered a miscarriage in the shooting, and her 6-year-old daughter, Veronica, was killed.

The soft-spoken Moser testified from her wheelchair, using a tissue to wipe away tears as she recalled the attack.

She said it started with an explosion and something spewing gas behind her, then bright lights flashed at the front of the room. Moser assumed pranksters were setting off fireworks, and she stood up to take her daughter’s hand and leave.

“Did her hand reach back?” District Attorney George Brauchler asked.

“It just slipped through my hand,” she replied.

Moser then felt a pain in her chest. She said she fell on top of her daughter and couldn’t move.

“I heard the movie still playing and people crying and screaming,” Moser said, vaguely recalling being carried out of the theater. She learned later that her daughter was dead.

As Moser testified just feet away, Holmes stared straight ahead, slightly swiveling in his chair.

Prosecutors rested their case after showing Veronica’s kindergarten graduation picture, the last of hundreds of images displayed for the jury on large-screen TVs. Jurors heard from more than 200 witnesses, including more than 70 shooting survivors.

Defense attorneys sought to limit victims’ testimony, concerned that gruesome details would unfairly bias the jury. Judge Carlos A. Samour Jr. has repeatedly reminded jurors not to let sympathy sway them.

Victims and family members filled the gallery Friday to observe. Several hugged and thanked prosecutors once the jury was dismissed for the day.

Defense lawyers soon will begin calling their own psychiatrists and presenting other evidence to argue Holmes was in the grips of a psychotic episode at the time of the shootings and should be found not guilty by reason of insanity. They plan to begin their case Thursday.

Holmes’ attorneys said his mental illness rendered him unable to tell right from wrong, a key factor the jury must consider in determining if he was sane. They say Holmes should be committed to the state mental hospital.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

Holmes abandoned a prestigious graduate program at the University of Colorado-Denver before he opened fire at the suburban Denver theater where more than 400 people were watching “The Dark Knight Rises.”

Prosecutors showed jurors nearly 21 hours of Holmes’ videotaped interviews with a state-appointed psychiatrist who concluded Holmes was seriously mentally ill but legally sane at the time of the shooting.

On the video, Holmes said he felt nothing as he took aim at fleeing moviegoers. Halting and awkward, he blurted out that he feared being stopped from committing what he acknowledged was a crime.

Prosecutors also played for jurors an investigator’s video of the shooting’s aftermath. It showed bodies wedged between rows of seats and sprawled throughout aisles amid spent ammunition, spilled popcorn and blood.

Holmes’ classmates, a former girlfriend and two psychiatrists who treated him all testified they knew nothing of his plan or that he was assembling an arsenal of weapons and enough chemicals to rig his apartment into a potentially lethal booby trap.

On Friday, classmate Hillary Allen testified that Holmes’ sent her text messages days before the attack, telling her to avoid him because he was “bad news bears.”

Prosecutors showed Holmes’ spiral notebook, which included detailed drawings of the theater complex along with pros and cons of attacking different auditoriums. He wrote about an “obsession to kill” he held since childhood.

Hours before the attack, Holmes mailed the journal to Dr. Lynne Fenton, a university psychiatrist who had treated him. Fenton testified she had too little evidence to have him detained, but she was so concerned after he confessed his homicidal thoughts that she violated his health care privacy and called his mother.

Trial began April 27 after three months of jury selection that produced 12 jurors and 12 alternates.

Five of those jurors have been dismissed — three amid concern they were exposed to news of the proceedings, one after her brother-in-law was wounded in a Denver ATM robbery, and one because she recognized a witness. That left 19 jurors, including seven alternates.

___

Sadie Gurman can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/sgurman

WASHINGTON — Repealing President Barack Obama’s signature health care law would modestly increase the budget deficit even as it boosts the economy, according to a nonpartisan government study released Friday.

The Congressional Budget Office report says that completely repealing the law would, on average, increase the economy by 0.7 percent a year when economic effects have had a chance to kick in at the start of the ‘20s. That’s mostly because more people would enter the workforce or work more hours to make up for the lack of government health care subsidies.

But repealing the law’s spending cuts and tax increases would add $137 billion to the federal deficit over the coming decade, CBO says, even as almost $1.7 trillion in coverage costs would disappear. Repeal would reduce deficits in the first few years but increase them by steadily rising amounts as time goes on.

The study comes as Washington awaits a decision from the Supreme Court on whether to nullify coverage subsidies in more than 30 states. In a twist, the budget office says that if the subsidies are curtailed, it would reduce estimates of savings generated by repealing the Affordable Care Act.

Conservatives who brought the lawsuit say the law’s literal wording prevents the federal government from subsidizing private health insurance premiums in states that failed to set up their own insurance markets. Most have not done so, reflecting continued political opposition to the program. The administration argues that the law intended subsidies to be available in all states.

The Supreme Court is expected to issue their decision by the end of June.

Republicans in control of the House and Senate have said that if the court strikes down subsidies in the mostly GOP-held states that would be affected, they would advance legislation to ease the immediate effect on people who would lose coverage.

The CBO provides lawmakers with nonpartisan budget and economic analysis, and Republicans controlling Congress have increasingly given the office a mandate to incorporate the economic effects of major legislation its work. CBO analysts always caution that their studies of legislation can be uncertain, especially over many years.

Under its traditional model deficits would increase by $353 billion over the coming decade. Adding the economic factors cuts the repeal’s effect on the deficit by more than half over 10 years, the report says.

The budget scorekeepers also offered a cautionary note to Congress: Obama’s law by now is so enmeshed with the health care system that uprooting it would create its own issues.

“Implementing a repeal of the ACA would present major challenges,” the report said. “In the five years since its enactment, nearly every key provision of the law has taken effect and has been incorporated into final rules and other administrative actions. Undoing the ACA would thus be quite complicated.”

That echoes recent comments by the president in a speech to an association of Catholic hospitals. Obama said his law “is now part of the fabric of how we care for one another.”

Shooting puts spotlight on Confederate flag

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Tensions over the Confederate flag flying in the shadow of South Carolina’s Capitol rose this week in the wake of the killings of nine people at a black church in Charleston. The symbolism was rendered more raw because the suspected gunman briefly escaped in a car bearing Confederate insignia.

South Carolina was the last state to fly the Confederate battle flag from its Capitol dome until a 2000 compromise moved it to a 30-foot flagpole elsewhere on statehouse grounds.

The flag was hoisted above the statehouse in 1962. Some saw it then as a symbol of Southern heritage. Others called it a defiant sign against the civil rights movement and a bitter reminder of slavery.

Gov. Nikki Haley says renewed discussions about the flag should wait.

Gun rights still trumping gun controls

WASHINGTON — They offered prayers and moments of silence. They sought to comfort.

Yet less than 48 hours after nine people were shot to death in a South Carolina church, the nation’s political leaders, from President Barack Obama to those Republicans who seek to replace him, as well as those in Congress, either did not call for a closer look at gun violence in America or said they didn’t see one coming soon.

There was little doubt that the gun lobby’s dominance would continue in U.S. politics no matter the calamity. Even the most passionate advocates of stronger gun controls expected no different.

“I’d like to say these shootings in Charleston will be a turning point, enough for Congress to fight back against the gun lobby and take some serious action about gun laws,” said Chelsea Parsons, who oversees gun policy for the liberal Center for American Progress. “But I don’t want to be naive.”

Courting evangelical voters in Washington, a succession of Republican presidential hopefuls stood to express their horror at Wednesday’s attack, yet none suggested gun control be addressed.

“Laws can’t change” such attacks, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference. “Only the good will and love of the American people can let those folks know that that act is unacceptable, disgraceful.”

Conservative favorite Ben Carson, the only African-American candidate in the field, addressed racial tensions, not gun laws: “If we don’t pay close attention to the hatred and division that’s going on in our nation, this is just a harbinger of what we can expect.”

And another GOP rival, Carly Fiorina said: “We ought not to start immediately rushing to policy prescriptions or engaging in the blame game.”

The response from across the political spectrum illustrates the profound lack of attention gun control has garnered so far in a 2016 campaign that offers sharp differences between the political parties. It also highlights the dominant position the National Rifle Association continues to hold in national politics.

NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said the organization would not make a statement about the South Carolina shooting “until all the facts are known.” He declined to talk about the politics of the gun debate but has previously said that political leaders have learned that “it’s bad politics to be on the wrong side of the gun issue.”

Police arrested 21-year-old Dylann Storm Roof in the Wednesday shooting deaths of nine people at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston. Officials consider the murders a racially motivated hate crime. The victims were black; the suspect, white.

On Thursday, Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton said “hard truths” must be faced about guns and race. Despite her words, many Democrats see gun control as a losing issue and don’t want to touch it.

Obama pointed to lax gun controls in his response but glumly acknowledged there was no way he could prod Congress to take action on gun violence.

“The politics in this town foreclose a lot of those avenues right now,” he said flatly.

But former Texas Gov. Rick Perry said it was inappropriate for Obama to use a tragedy to promote gun control. “This is the m.o. of this administration anytime there is an accident like this,” the GOP presidential candidate said. His spokesman later clarified that Perry meant to say “incident.”

While a large majority of Americans have consistently supported universal background checks for gun owners, a Gallup poll conducted in January found only 31 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with current gun laws and want to make them stricter.

There were no indications Friday that the Charleston shootings had weakened Congress’ resistance against strengthening gun restrictions. If anything, the odds of congressional action seemed slimmer with both the House and Senate controlled by Republicans, who traditionally have been less sympathetic to such curbs.

“I’m skeptical it’s going to change peoples’ minds who weren’t converted by Newtown,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn. Murphy was part of the Senate’s failed efforts to strengthen background checks following the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

The gun-control group Everytown for Gun Safety wants to make sure the issue isn’t forgotten in the election.

“Anybody who wants to be our next president must be willing to take on the national gun violence crisis,” said Erica Soto Lamb, speaking for the group.