AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EST

Capital One to buy Discover for $35 billion in deal that combines major US credit card companies

NEW YORK (AP) — Capital One Financial said it will buy Discover Financial Services for $35 billion, in a deal that would bring together two of the nation’s credit card companies as well as potentially shake up the payments industry, which is largely dominated by Visa and Mastercard.

Under the terms of the all-stock transaction, Discover Financial shareholders will receive Capital One shares valued at nearly $140. That’s a significant premium to the $110.49 that Discover shares closed at Friday.

The deal marries two of the largest credit card companies that aren’t banks first, like JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, with the notable exception of American Express. It also brings together two companies whose customers are largely similar: often Americans who are looking for cash back or modest travel rewards, compared to the premium credit cards dominated by AmEx, Citi and Chase.

“This marketplace that’s dominated by the big players is going to shrink a little bit more now,” said Matt Schulz, chief credit card analyst at LendingTree.

It also will give Discover’s payment network a major credit card partner in a way that could make the payment network a major competitor once again. The U.S. credit card industry is dominated by the Visa-Mastercard duopoly with AmEx being a distance third place and Discover an even more distant fourth place.

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Minnesota man who shot 2 officers and a firefighter wasn’t allowed to have guns

A man who died after fatally shooting two police officers and a firefighter in a wooded Minneapolis-area neighborhood wasn’t legally allowed to have guns after a previous assault conviction and was entangled in a yearslong dispute over the custody and financial support of his three oldest children, court records show.

Authorities on Monday identified Shannon Gooden, 38, as the man who opened fire on police in the affluent suburb of Burnsville after they responded to a domestic disturbance call early Sunday. The unidentified caller reported that Gooden had barricaded himself in his home with family members, including seven children aged 2 to 15. He was found dead inside the home hours later.

Authorities said Gooden killed Officers Paul Elmstrand and Matthew Ruge, both 27, and Adam Finseth, 40, a firefighter and paramedic who was assigned to the city’s SWAT team. Another officer, Sgt. Adam Medlicott, was shot and wounded.

Gooden’s standoff with police came only two days before a scheduled district court hearing over his ongoing legal disputes with the mother of his three oldest children. The attorney representing Gooden in that dispute, Robert Manson, did not return a telephone message seeking comment. There was no answer Monday evening at a phone listing for a woman described in court records as Gooden’s girlfriend.

Court records show the state barred Gooden from possessing guns after he pleaded guilty in 2008, aged 22, to second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon. Prosecutors said he threw rocks and pulled a knife on a man in a Burnsville shopping mall parking lot.

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William Byron launches Hendrick Motorsports’ 40th anniversary season with win in Daytona 500

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — The goal was obvious to William Byron: put the No. 24 Chevrolet in victory lane in the 2024 Daytona 500 to launch Hendrick Motorsports’ 40th anniversary season.

Mission accomplished, even if Byron had to complete an agonizing final lap under caution around Daytona International Speedway awaiting the winner to be declared.

“Did we win it? Did we win it?” Byron kept asking over his radio.

The emotion he heard over his radio from crew chief Rudy Fugle confirmed Byon had just won the biggest race of his career.

“Well, no one told me. And Rudy was crying on the radio, so I was like ‘Dude, I hope he’s crying for good reason,’” Byron said. “I guess he was a ball of emotion there, and so I was like ‘Did we actually win or not?’”

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Widow, ex-prime minister and former police chief indicted in 2021 assassination of Haiti’s president

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — A judge in Haiti responsible for investigating the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse has indicted his widow, Martine Moïse, ex-prime minister Claude Joseph and the former chief of Haiti’s National Police, Léon Charles, among others, according to a report obtained Monday.

The indictments are expected to further destabilize Haiti as it struggles with a surge in gang violence and recovers from a spate of violent protests demanding the resignation of current Prime Minister Ariel Henry.

Dozens of suspects were indicted in the 122-page report issued by Walther Wesser Voltaire, who is the fifth judge to lead the investigation after previous ones stepped down for various reasons, including fear of being killed.

Charles, who was police chief when Moïse was killed and now serves as Haiti’s permanent representative to the Organization of the American States, faces the most serious charges: murder; attempted murder; possession and illegal carrying of weapons; conspiracy against the internal security of the state; and criminal association.

Meanwhile, Joseph and Martine Moïse, who was injured in the attack, are accused of complicity and criminal association.

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More than 29,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel-Hamas war, Gaza Health Ministry says

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel’s assault in Gaza has killed more than 29,000 Palestinians since Oct. 7, the territory’s Health Ministry said Monday, marking another grim milestone in one of the deadliest and most destructive military campaigns in recent history.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to continue the offensive until “total victory” against Hamas after the militants’ Oct. 7 attack on Israeli communities. He and the military have said troops will move soon into the southernmost town of Rafah on the Egyptian border, where over half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have sought refuge from fighting elsewhere.

The United States, Israel’s top ally, says it is still working with mediators Egypt and Qatar to try to broker another cease-fire and hostage release agreement. But those efforts appear to have stalled in recent days, and Netanyahu angered Qatar by calling on it to pressure Hamas and suggesting it funds the militant group.

The conflict has also brought near daily exchanges of fire between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group that frequently threaten to escalate.

Israeli warplanes on Monday carried out at least two strikes near the southern port city of Sidon in one of the largest attacks near a major city, wounding 14 people, Lebanese state media said. The Israeli military said it attacked Hezbollah arms depots near Sidon in retaliation for a drone that exploded in an open field near the northern Israeli city of Tiberias earlier Monday.

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Navalny’s widow vows to continue his fight against the Kremlin and punish Putin for his death

The widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny vowed on Monday to continue his fight against the Kremlin, while authorities denied his mother access to a morgue where his body is believed to be held after his death last week in an Arctic penal colony.

With her voice cracking at times in a video posted on social media, Yulia Navalnaya accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of killing her husband in the remote prison and alleged that officials’ refusal to hand over the body to her mother-in-law was part of a cover-up.

Russian authorities said that the cause of Navalny’s death Friday at age 47 is still unknown — and the results of any investigation are likely to be questioned abroad. Many Western leaders have already said they hold Putin responsible for the death.

Navalny’s death has deprived the Russian opposition of its most well-known and inspiring politician less than a month before an election that is all but certain to give Putin another six years in power. It dealt a devastating blow to many Russians, who had seen Navalny as a rare hope for political change amid Putin’s unrelenting crackdown on the opposition.

Navalny had been imprisoned since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow after recuperating in Germany from a nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin. He received three prison terms since his arrest, on a number of charges he has rejected as politically motivated.

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Wet winter storm hits California, closing regional airport and trapping people in swollen rivers

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Another wet winter storm swamped California with heavy rainfall on Monday, flooding the runways at a regional airport and leading to several rescues on swollen rivers and creeks.

The Santa Barbara airport, on the state’s central coast, closed Monday after as much as 10 inches (25 centimeters) of rain had fallen in the area by noon, covering the runways with water.

“Commercial flights have been canceled, general aviation operations are paused, and the Terminal is closed,” airport officials said in a statement posted on social media. “For info about specific flights, please contact your airline directly.”

The National Weather Service had warned that California’s central coast was at risk of “significant flooding,” with up to 5 inches (12 cm) of rain predicted for many areas and isolated rain totals of 10 inches (25 cm) possible in the Santa Lucia and Santa Ynez mountain ranges as the storm headed toward greater Los Angeles.

The storm is expected to move through quicker than the devastating atmospheric river that parked itself over Southern California earlier this month, turning roads into rivers, causing hundreds of landslides and killing at least nine people.

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Wisconsin’s Democratic governor signs his new legislative maps into law after Republicans pass them

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin Democratic Gov. Tony Evers signed new legislative district maps into law on Monday that he proposed and that the Republicans who control the Legislature passed to avoid having the liberal-controlled state Supreme Court draw the lines.

Democrats hailed the signing as a major political victory in the swing state where the Legislature has been firmly under Republican control for more than a decade, even as Democrats have won 14 of the past 17 statewide elections.

“When I promised I wanted fair maps — not maps that are better for one party or another, including my own — I damn well meant it,” Evers said prior to signing the maps into law at the state Capitol. “Wisconsin is not a red state or a blue state — we’re a purple state, and I believe our maps should reflect that basic fact.

Democrats are almost certain to gain seats in the state Assembly and state Senate under the new maps, which will be in place for the November election. Republicans have been operating since 2011 under maps they drew that were recognized as among the most gerrymandered in the country.

Democrats tried unsuccessfully for more than a decade to overturn the Republican-drawn maps. But it wasn’t until control of the state Supreme Court flipped in August after the election of liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz that Democrats found a winning formula.

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Presidents Day: From George Washington’s modest birthdays to big sales and 3-day weekends

NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — Like the other Founding Fathers, George Washington was uneasy about the idea of publicly celebrating his life. He was the first leader of a new republic — not a tyrant.

And yet the nation once again commemorated the first U.S. president on Monday, 292 years after he was born.

The meaning of Presidents Day has changed dramatically, from being mostly unremarkable and filled with work for Washington in the 1700s to the consumerism bonanza it has become today. For some historians the holiday has lost all discernible meaning.

Historian Alexis Coe, author of “You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George of Washington,” said she thinks about Presidents Day in much the same way as the towering monument in D.C. that bears his name.

“It’s supposed to be about Washington, but can you really point to anything that looks or sounds like him?” she said. “Jefferson and Lincoln are presented as people with limbs and noses and words associated with their memorials. And he’s just a giant, granite point. He has been sanded down to have absolutely no identifiable features.”

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Astronomers find what may be the universe’s brightest object with a black hole devouring a sun a day

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Astronomers have discovered what may be the brightest object in the universe, a quasar with a black hole at its heart growing so fast that it swallows the equivalent of a sun a day.

The record-breaking quasar shines 500 trillion times brighter than our sun. The black hole powering this distant quasar is more than 17 billion times more immense than our sun, an Australian-led team reported Monday in the journal Nature Astronomy.

While the quasar resembles a mere dot in images, scientists envision a ferocious place.

The rotating disk around the quasar’s black hole — the luminous swirling gas and other matter from gobbled-up stars — is like a cosmic hurricane.

“This quasar is the most violent place that we know in the universe,” lead author Christian Wolf of Australian National University said in an email.