By MICHAEL CASEY

BROOKLINE, Mass. (AP) — Police intensified their search Wednesday for a suspect in the killing of professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, two days after he was shot to death at his home outside Boston.

Loureiro, a 47-year-old physicist and fusion scientist, was shot Monday night at his apartment in Brookline, Massachusetts. He died at a local hospital on Tuesday, the Norfolk District Attorney’s Office said in a statement.

The prosecutor’s office said the homicide investigation was “active and ongoing” as of early afternoon Wednesday and had no update — earlier they had said no suspects were in custody.

The investigation into the MIT professor’s killing comes as Brown University, another prestigious institution just 50 miles away in Providence, Rhode Island, is reeling from an unsolved shooting that killed two students and wounded nine others Saturday. Investigators provided no indication Tuesday that they were any closer to zeroing in on the gunman’s identity.

The FBI on Tuesday said it knew of no connection between the crimes.

Dozens of people gathered outside Louriero’s building Tuesday night, many with candles in hand, to honor the professor’s life and support his family. Neighbors received paper notices attached to their doors with tape to place candles in their windows in Louriero’s honor. Some people cried and held each other, but most attendees were silent, their breath visible in the bracing cold. A few children rode scooters from their nearby homes to the gathering.

The killing happened when most MIT students were on winter break, and more than a dozen of them on the Cambridge campus on Wednesday didn’t want to talk about it. Most said they didn’t know him.

A 22-year-old student at Boston University who lives near Loureiro’s apartment in Brookline told The Boston Globe she heard three loud noises Monday evening and feared it was gunfire. “I had never heard anything so loud, so I assumed they were gunshots,” Liv Schachner was quoted as saying. “It’s difficult to grasp. It just seems like it keeps happening.”

This undated photo provided by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in December 2025 shows Nuno Loureiro. (Jake Belcher/MIT via AP)

Loureiro, who was married, joined MIT in 2016 and was named last year to lead MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, where he worked to advance clean energy technology and other research. The center, one of the school’s largest labs, had more than 250 people working across seven buildings when he took the helm. He was a professor of physics and nuclear science and engineering.

He grew up in Viseu, in central Portugal, and studied in Lisbon before earning a doctorate in London, according to MIT. He was a researcher at an institute for nuclear fusion in Lisbon before joining MIT, the university said.

“He shone a bright light as a mentor, friend, teacher, colleague and leader, and was universally admired for his articulate, compassionate manner,” Dennis Whyte, an engineering professor who previously led MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, told a campus publication.

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The president of MIT, Sally Kornbluth, said in a statement that the killing was a “shocking loss.” The office of Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa also put out a condolence statement calling Loureiro’s death “an irreparable loss for science and for all those with whom he worked and lived.”

Loureiro had said he hoped his work would shape the future.

“It’s not hyperbole to say MIT is where you go to find solutions to humanity’s biggest problems,” Loureiro said when he was named to lead the plasma science lab last year. “Fusion energy will change the course of human history.”

Associated Press writers Leah Willingham in Boston; Mark Scolforo in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; and David Biller in Rome contributed.

St. Paul police officers will not be charged for fatally shooting a 36-year-old man who officers reported pointed a gun at them last year, the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office announced Wednesday.

A warrant was issued for Mychel Stowers’ arrest when prosecutors charged him Oct. 24, 2024, with the murder of his pregnant wife, Damara Kirkland.

As two officers approached Stowers in their police vehicle, they each reported they saw him pull a handgun from his waist area and point at them. Their statements were “consistent with and corroborated by” in-squad camera footage, according to a county attorney’s office memo of their review of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigation.

The BCA presented their findings to the county attorney’s office. Prosecutors concluded the use of deadly force by officers Matthew Foy and Eric Jaworski was legally justified under Minnesota law.

Officers received an anonymous report just after 1 p.m. on Nov. 9, 2024, that Stowers was on a bicycle at a laundromat in the 1100 block of West Seventh Street, police said last year.

Police monitored the business to determine if he was inside when the same person called again and reported that the man on a bike “in front of the business was in fact Stowers,” according to a statement from police at the time. “Officers established a perimeter in (an) attempt to contain Stowers from fleeing the area and set a plan to arrest him.”

The man rode the bike south on Bay Street to Watson Avenue “where uniformed officers in marked squad cars closed in on him,” police said.

“Before officers could confirm his identity, the man, now identified as Stowers, produced a handgun and pointed it at the officers,” according to a statement last year from the BCA. Foy fired a handgun and Jaworski a rifle, the BCA said.

Excerpts of body-camera footage released by police last year showed Foy was driving and Jaworski fired through the windshield from the passenger seat.

Stowers was charged in the fatal shooting of Kirkland, 35, in her apartment in St. Paul’s North End on Oct. 19, 2024. An autopsy found she was eight to nine weeks pregnant, and one of the murder charges was for the death of her unborn child. Stowers was also charged with shooting a man in the leg as he allegedly carjacked him and fled the area.

Stowers was released from prison in March 2024 in the 2008 killing of a man in St. Paul. He was on work release, and the Minnesota Department of Corrections said he was under supervision by their agency and a halfway house.

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The 2025 MLS Goalkeeper of the Year is moving on to the reigning MLS Cup champions.

Minnesota United offered Dayne St. Clair a contract with an annual salary in excess of $1 million, more than any other MLS club could offer, but the Canadian international turned it down, a source told the Pioneer Press on Wednesday.

And St. Clair is nearing a deal with Inter Miami, according to The Athletic.

For MNUFC last year, St. Clair allowed only 30 goals in 30 games in 2025, helping lead Minnesota United to the Western Conference semifinals for a second straight season.

Coming out of Maryland, St. Clair was selected by the Loons seventh overall in the 2019 MLS and made more than 140 league appearance for the club.

“I’ll cherish the moments we created well beyond my career,” St. Clair said on Instagram. “I wish you all the best moving forward.”

This story will be updated.

By MATT BROWN and BILL BARROW

WASHINGTON (AP) — Months after President Donald Trump refashioned a West Wing walkway into what he calls the Presidential Walk of Fame, he has added partisan and subjective plaques to the display, deepening his fingerprints on the White House’s aesthetic and continuing his effort to bend the telling of history to his liking.

From “Sleepy Joe” Biden references to painting Republican icon Ronald Reagan as a fan of a young Trump, the plaques include bombastic language written in Trumpian style. The installation is the Republican president’s latest move to shape the White House in his image, an effort that has spanned from adorning the Oval Office to razing the East Wing in preparation for a massive ballroom addition.

New plaques of explanatory text are seen beneath a framed portrait in the space for former President Joe Biden on the Presidential Walk of Fame on the Colonnade of the White House, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

An introductory plaque tells passersby that the Presidential Walk of Fame was “conceived, built, and dedicated by President Donald J. Trump as a tribute to past Presidents, good, bad, and somewhere in the middle.”

Biden’s plaque repeats false claims that the 46th president, a Democrat, took office “as a result of the most corrupt election ever,” when, in fact, he defeated Trump in 2020 in both the popular vote and the Electoral College. Biden is also described as “by far, the worst president in American history.”

Another Democrat, Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president and Trump’s first presidential predecessor, is labeled “one of the most divisive political figures in American history.”

The plaque below former President George W. Bush’s portrait appears to approve of the Republican’s creation of the Department of Homeland Security but decries that he “started wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which should not have happened.”

New plaques of explanatory text have been placed underneath presidential portraits on the Colonnade at the White House, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the texts are “eloquently written descriptions of each president” and that “many were written directly by the President himself.”

Biden had no comment on his plaque. There were no immediate responses to emails sent to aides for Obama and several other former presidents.

New plaques of explanatory text have been placed underneath presidential portraits on the Colonnade at the White House, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Trump in September refashioned the colonnade that runs from the West Wing to the White House residence with gilded portraits of all former presidents, except for Biden. Trump instead chose an autopen, reflecting his mockery of Biden’s age and assertions that Biden was not up to the job.

The display runs on the wall of the colonnade between the White House residence and the president’s usual entrance to the Oval Office, meaning Trump can take any of his preferred guests — foreign dignitaries included — on a tour of the exhibit with his framing of his predecessors.

New plaques of explanatory text have been placed underneath presidential portraits on the Colonnade at the White House, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

The introductory plaque also presumes that Trump’s addition will stay intact once he is no longer president: “The Presidential Walk of Fame will long live as a testament and tribute to the Greatness of America.”

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