2 who died after exchange of gunfire in St. Paul ID’d as 28-, 30-year-old men

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Officials on Monday identified two men who died in an apparent shoot-out with each other on Friday in St. Paul.

Lawrence A. Harris, 30, of St. Paul, was found shot in the street in the North End early Friday.

Meanwhile, someone drove Lasean T. Williams, 28, of St. Louis Park, to a nearby fire station. He and Harris, who police said knew each other, sustained multiple gunshot wounds.

St. Paul Fire Department medics took Williams to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead a short time later.

Harris died at the scene in the 400 block of Front Avenue. Officers responded to the shooting about 4:20 a.m. Friday.

Investigators were working to determine what led to the men exchanging gunfire.

Their homicides were the 10th and 11th of the year in St. Paul. There were 25 homicides as of the same time in the city last year.

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Rescuers race to save man trapped in partially collapsed medieval tower in Rome

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By DAVID BILLER and TRISHA THOMAS

ROME (AP) — Firefighters worked to rescue a worker trapped for hours beneath rubble in a medieval tower that partially collapsed during renovation work in the heart of Italy’s capital Monday, critically injuring another worker.

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Rescuers faced a complex task as they tried to use a first-floor window to get near the trapped worker, who officials said was alive. But they were forced to retreat on telescopic aerial ladders in a cloud of debris as the structure continued to give way. Another approach on two ladders was also aborted, and a drone sent up in their stead.

As dusk approached, firefighters lifted on a crane used giant tubes to suck rubble out of the second-floor window. They continued the work late into the night.

Rome Mayor Roberto Gualtieri told reporters Monday evening that the worker is speaking to rescuers and using an oxygen mask. He added that rescuers are working with extreme caution in “a very delicate extraction operation” to avoid further collapses.

Three workers were rescued unharmed after the initial midday collapse, said firefighter spokesperson Luca Cari. Another worker, age 64, was hospitalized in critical condition; RAI state TV reported he was conscious and had suffered a broken nose.

No firefighters were injured in the ongoing operation.

The Torre dei Conti was built in the 13th century by Pope Innocent III as a residence for his family. The tower was damaged in a 1349 earthquake and suffered subsequent collapses in the 17th century.

Hundreds of tourists had gathered to watch as firefighters used a mobile ladder to bring a stretcher to the upper level of the Torre dei Conti during the first rescue attempt. Suddenly, another part of the structure crumbled, sending up a cloud of debris and forcing firefighters to quickly descend on the ladder.

The first collapse struck the central buttress of the structure’s southern side, and caused an underlying sloped base to fall. The second damaged part of the stairwell and roof, cultural heritage officials said in a statement.

Queen Paglinawan, 27, was attending to a client in a gelato parlor next door when the tower first started coming apart.

“I was working and then I heard something falling, and then I saw the tower collapse in a diagonal way,″ Paglinawan, 27, told The Associated Press as yet more rubble crashed down.

The tower, which has been closed since 2007, is undergoing a 6.9 million euro (nearly $8 million) restoration, that includes conservations work, the installation of electrical, lighting and water systems and a new museum installation dedicated to the most recent phases of the Roman Imperial Forum, officials said.

Before the latest phase was started in June, structural surveys and load tests were carried out “to verify the stability of the structure, which confirmed the safety conditions necessary” to proceed with work, including asbestos removal, officials said. The current work, carried out at a cost of 400,000 euros ($460,000), was just about complete.

Italian prosecutors arrived at the scene as the rescue operation was underway, and were investigating possible charges for negligent disaster and negligent injuries, Italian media reported. It is common in Italy for investigations to begin while an event is ongoing and before possible suspects are identified.

German student Viktoria Braeu passed by the scene during the firefighters’ initial rescue attempt.

“We were just at the Colosseum … and we were just walking to get some food. … And then we were like, ‘It’s probably not long until it’s going to go down,’ and then it just started erupting,” said Braeu, 18.

Italy’s Premier Giorgia Meloni shared her hopes for a successful rescue on Monday evening.

“My thoughts and deepest sympathies go out to the person currently fighting for his life under the rubble and to his family, for whom I sincerely hope that this tragedy will have a positive outcome,” Meloni said in a statement.

“​I would like to thank all the law enforcement officers, firefighters, and rescue workers who are intervening with courage, professionalism, and dedication in this extremely difficult situation.”

AP reporters Colleen Barry in Milan and Silvia Stellaci in Rome contributed

St. Paul’s mayoral race to be decided by ranked-choice vote — on Election Night

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Voters in St. Paul’s mayoral election can rank all five candidates on Tuesday in order of preference and expect to learn the winner before they go to bed Tuesday night.

After the votes come in for the mayor’s race, Ramsey County Elections will use ballot reallocation software for the first time since the capital city first implemented ranked-choice voting in 2011, guaranteeing same-night results.

“We could not be more excited about this improvement,” said Jeanne Massey, executive director of FairVote Minnesota. “It’s been in use around the country for several years, and had not been approved for use in Minnesota until St. Paul did it first.”

In the past, for certain city council races in which no candidate received 50% of the vote after the first ballot count, the public would have to wait two or three days to learn the outcome as officials gathered on the Thursday after the election to begin a manual ballot count and reallocation process.

In that process, elections workers would eliminate the weakest vote-getter in the race — the candidate with the fewest votes — and physically move their ballots onto stacks of ballots pertaining to the other candidates, based on second-choice picks. After redistribution, they would then do a fresh count to see if anyone had broken 50% of the vote.

The hand count and ballot reallocation process sometimes continued in that fashion for hours and resumed the next day. No St. Paul mayoral election to date has triggered a hand count, but several multi-candidate council races have required reallocation in that manner because no candidate surpassed 50% of the vote on the first ballot.

This year will be different. Ramsey County Elections will use “RCTab” software to reallocate votes Tuesday night, thereby determining an unofficial winner on the same night. The open source software was available free to St. Paul and Ramsey County.

Every ballot generates an electronic cast vote record, or “cvr” digital image, within the machine system, which is then imported into the software. The software creates an auditable report after each round of reallocation, and paper ballots are also preserved and available for audits and recounts.

The cvr data will also be available for review on the Ramsey County Elections website on Election Night.

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Ramsey County Elections held a demonstration and accuracy test of the new software on Oct. 23, and “it was so fast,” said Massey, who published a video of the count on her social media feed.

It’s “a big departure from before, a big improvement,” Massey said. “Now it will all be automated, and we should see results on Election Night.”

Bloomington, Minneapolis, Minnetonka and St. Louis Park also will use ranked-choice voting on Election Day. In those cities, if no candidate meets the threshold based on first-choice ballots, tabulation will resume the next day using a manual spreadsheet method. “It goes very fast, but it’s not automated,” Massey said.

Donna Jean Godchaux-MacKay, Grateful Dead singer, dies at 78

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NEW YORK (AP) — Donna Jean Godchaux-MacKay, a soulful mezzo-soprano who provided backing vocals on such 1960s classics as “Suspicious Minds” and “When a Man Loves a Woman” and was a featured singer with the Grateful Dead for much of the 1970s, has died at 78.

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A spokesperson for Godchaux-MacKay confirmed that she died Sunday at Alive Hospice in Nashville after having cancer. Godchaux-McKay and other Grateful Dead members were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

Born Donna Jean Thatcher in Florence, Alabama, she had yet to turn 20 when she became a session performer in nearby Muscle Shoals, where many soul and rhythm and blues hits were recorded, and also was on hand for numerous sessions at the Memphis-based American Sound Studio. Her credits included Elvis Presley’s “Suspicious Minds,” Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman” and songs with Neil Diamond, Boz Scaggs and Cher.

In the early 1970s, she and pianist/then-husband Keith Godchaux joined the Grateful Dead and remained with them for several tours and albums, including “Terrapin Station,” “Shakedown Street” and “From the Mars Hotel.” Godchaux appeared on numerous songs, whether joining with Jerry Garcia on “Scarlet Begonias” or writing and taking the lead on “From the Heart of Me.”

The Godchauxs left the Dead in 1979, with hopes of forming their own group, but Keith Godchaux died the following year from injuries sustained in an automobile accident. Donna, who married bassist David MacKay in 1981, continued to tour and record over the following decades.

Her albums include “Back Around” and “Donna Jean and the Tricksters.” In the 1970s, she and Keith Godchaux released “Keith & Donna.”

In addition to David MacKay, survivors include sons Kinsman MacKay and Zion Godchaux and two siblings, Gogi Clark and Ivan Thatcher.