First Run News

Charles Manson, who died on Sunday at 83, has loomed large in American culture ever since a brutal killing spree by his gang of followers, called the Manson family, claimed the lives of the actress Sharon Tate and eight others in the su

Over two nights in August 1969, Charles Manson’s followers savagely murdered seven people through a frenzied combination of shooting, stabbing, beating and hanging. Their most famous victim was the actress Sharon Tate, the wife of the film director Roman Polanski. She was killed at her house along with four guests.

Charles Manson, one of the most notorious murderers of the 20th century, who was very likely the most culturally persistent and perhaps also the most inscrutable, died on Sunday in Kern County, Calif. He was 83 and had been behind bars for most of his life. He died of natural causes in a hospital, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said in a news release. Mr.

Mel Tillis, whose career as a country singer and the writer of enduring hit songs like “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town” earned him a place in the Country Music Hall of Fame and a National Medal of Arts — but who was equally well known for the stutter he employed to humorous and self-deprecating effect onstage — died on Sunday in Ocala, Fla. He was 85. Mr. Tillis “battled intestinal issues since early 2016 and never fully recovered,” his publicist, Don Murry Grubbs, said in a statement.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — It was billed as a celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Clintons’ ascension to the White House, held in some of the same haunts of the Arkansas capital where it all began. Yet the election that Bill and Hillary Clinton were most eager to revisit here was not Mr. Clinton’s triumph of a quarter-century ago.

SOUTH THOMASTON, Me. — A former mayor of Poway, a small city in Southern California, wrote a column in August in his local newspaper with this headline: “A gun to my head.” He was upset about how a state law had forced Poway to redo its voting districts so Latinos would have a better chance of winning elections. Reading the piece on his computer 3,000 miles away, Edward Blum knew he had found his newest case. Seeing one of his bêtes noires — racial gerrymandering — at work, Mr.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — It was a trying week for the people of Alabama, a week of dueling pastoral statements, sinful allegations and claims of religious persecution. And so, on the seventh day, their preachers gave it a rest. The pastor at the Freedom Church in Gadsden, Ala., who has been friends with the embattled Senate candidate Roy S. Moore for more than 20 years, spoke to his congregation about how God can use one who has failed.

HELENA, Ala. — It was unusual enough for Keith Dorsey to open his door in this heavily Republican Birmingham suburb and be greeted by a Democratic canvasser, a sight normally as rare here as a Clemson fan. But these are unusual times. “This is our only opportunity,” Mr. Dorsey, a Democratic-leaning engineer, said, referring to the tight Senate contest between the increasingly embattled Republican Roy S. Moore and the Democrat Doug Jones. “We need to seize it.” Even the most optimistic Democrat knows it’s not at all clear the party can. Mr.

The House Republicans’ tax overhaul bill calls for reducing the tax burden on people who own small businesses like Steve’s Bike Shop — not giving breaks to professional athletes like Stephen Curry, the N.B.A. All-Star. The rewrite of the tax code, which the House passed on Thursday, proposed a 25 percent tax rate for small businesses for owners who report their profits as income on their tax returns.