AP News in Brief at 9:04 p.m. EDT

“This is a dark day for our state. It’s a tragic day for our nation," said Utah Gov. Spencer Cox. "I want to be very clear this is a political assassination.”

It wasn’t immediately clear late Wednesday whether any suspect was in custody or if the shooter was still at large as law enforcement provided evolving and difficult-to-reconcile information. FBI Director Kash Patel, who earlier in the day posted on social media that a “subject” had been taken into custody, later wrote that the person had been released after being questioned. Utah authorities had separately said a person of interest was in custody, but it wasn’t immediately clear if that was the same person Patel referenced as having been released.

Authorities did not immediately identify the person who had been in custody, a motive or any criminal charge.

But the circumstances of the shooting drew renewed attention to an escalating threat of political violence in the United States that in the last several years has cut across the ideological spectrum. The assassination drew bipartisan condemnation but a national reckoning over ways to prevent political grievances from manifesting as deadly violence seemed elusive.

Charlie Kirk, who helped build support for Trump among young people, dies after campus shooting

Charlie Kirk, who rose from a teenage conservative campus activist to a top podcaster, culture warrior and ally of President Donald Trump, was shot and killed Wednesday during one of his trademark public appearances at a college in Utah. He was 31.

Kirk died doing what made him a potent political force — rallying the right on a college campus, this time Utah Valley University. The event was kicking off a planned series of Kirk college appearances from Colorado to Virginia dubbed “The American Comeback Tour.”

His shooting was one of an escalating number of attacks on political figures, from the assassination of a Democratic state lawmaker and her husband in Minnesota to last summer's shooting of Trump, that have roiled the nation.

Trump announced Kirk's death on his social media site, Truth Social.

Kirk personified the pugnacious, populist conservatism that has taken over the Republican Party in the age of Trump. An unabashed Christian conservative who often made provocative statements about gender, race and politics, Kirk launched his organization, Turning Point USA, in 2012, targeting younger people and venturing onto liberal-leaning college campuses where many GOP activists were nervous to tread.

Politicians who have experienced violence directly react to Charlie Kirk shooting

WASHINGTON (AP) — The fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at an event in Utah had particular resonance for public figures who have experienced political violence themselves.

Kirk, who served as chief executive and cofounder of the youth organization Turning Point USA, made frequent appearances on college campuses and in other settings, engaging in political dialogue with students in public settings.

Several leaders who have survived public attacks or had family members victimized joined in bipartisan condemnation of the attack on Kirk.

The former House speaker's husband was seriously injured at their California home in 2022 by a man wielding a hammer, who authorities said was a believer in conspiracy theories.

Pelosi, a Democrat, posted that “the horrific shooting today at Utah Valley University is reprehensible. Political violence has absolutely no place in our nation.”

The Latest: Conservative activist Charlie Kirk is shot and killed while speaking at a Utah college

Conservative activist Charlie Kirk was killed by a single shot in a targeted attack during an outdoor event Wednesday at Utah Valley University, authorities said.

Kirk co-founded the conservative youth organization Turning Point USA and was a close ally of President Donald Trump.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether anyone was in custody or if the shooter was still at large as law enforcement provided evolving and difficult-to-reconcile information.

“This is a dark day for our state. It’s a tragic day for our nation,” said Utah Gov. Spencer Cox. “I want to be very clear this is a political assassination.”

The shooting comes amid a spike in attacks on political figures in the United States across all parts of the ideological spectrum.

3 teens wounded in shooting at suburban Denver high school, including suspected shooter

DENVER (AP) — Three teens were wounded Wednesday after one of them opened fire with a handgun at a high school in the foothills of suburban Denver, authorities said.

The shooting was reported around 12:30 p.m. at Evergreen High School in Evergreen, about 30 miles west of Denver, Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Jacki Kelley said.

It is not clear what led to the shooting or how the suspected shooter, believed to be a student at the school, was shot. None of the law enforcement officers who responded to the shooting fired any shots, Kelley said.

Shots were fired both inside and outside the school building, she said. Law enforcement officers who responded found the shooter within five minutes of arriving, she said.

All three teens taken to St. Anthony Hospital in Lakewood, Colorado, were shot, CEO Kevin Cullinan said.

South Korea says a charter plane carrying South Korean workers will leave Atlanta at Thursday noon

FOLKSTON, Ga. (AP) — A South Korean charter plane arrived in Atlanta on Wednesday to take home Korean workers detained in an immigration raid in Georgia last week. Its planned return the same day was canceled, and South Korea's Foreign Ministry later said the flight would take place Thursday at noon, without giving further details.

A total of 475 workers, more than 300 of them South Koreans, were rounded up in the Sept. 4 raid at the battery factory under construction at Hyundai’s sprawling auto plant. U.S. authorities released video showing some being shackled with chains around their hands, ankles and waists, causing shock and a sense of betrayal among many in South Korea, a key U.S. ally.

South Korea’s government later said it reached an agreement with the U.S. for the release of the workers.

South Korean TV footage showed the charter plane, a Boeing 747-8i from Korean Air, taking off at Incheon International Airport, just west of Seoul, and it landed in Atlanta on Wednesday morning.

The Foreign Ministry said the plane was not able to depart from the U.S. the same day, as South Korea wished, due to an unspecified reason involving the U.S. side.

Previous charges, delayed mental health evaluation were missed opportunities in Charlotte stabbing

After Decarlos Brown Jr. was arrested for the fatal stabbing of a Ukrainian refugee aboard a North Carolina commuter train, he was quickly sent to a state mental hospital for an evaluation. It was a sharp contrast from a January misdemeanor arrest, where it took more than six months for a court to order a mental evaluation after Brown told officers that he had been given a human-made substance that controlled when he ate, talked or walked.

The Justice Department on Tuesday charged Brown, 34, with causing death on a mass transportation system last month when he allegedly killed 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska in what has become the latest flashpoint for the White House's efforts to paint Democratic-led cities as havens for violent criminals.

The January arrest was just one of the missed opportunities in Brown's criminal history, according to experts. He had cycled through the criminal justice system for more than a decade, court records show.

“I think there are multiple failed opportunities here, in the mental health space and in the criminal justice space,” said Kenneth Corey, a former department chief for the New York City Police Department who now teaches at the University of Chicago Crime Lab’s Policing Leadership Academy.

Court records show Brown was initially charged in 2014 with being a felon in possession of a firearm, which is sometimes used by federal prosecutors to pull cases into the federal system where there are often stiffer penalties. Federal prosecutors did not take the case, and the state charge was dropped in exchange for a guilty plea on a charge of robbery using a deadly weapon, court records show.

NATO scrambles jets to shoot down Russian drones in Poland, raising fears of war spillover

WOHYN, Poland (AP) — Multiple Russian drones crossed into Poland in what European officials described Wednesday as a deliberate provocation, causing NATO to send fighter jets to shoot them down. A NATO spokesman said it was the first time the alliance confronted a potential threat in its airspace.

The incursion, which occurred during a wave of strikes by the Kremlin on Ukraine, and the NATO response swiftly raised fears that the war could spill over — a fear that has been growing in Europe as Russia steps up its attacks and peace efforts go nowhere.

Poland requested an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on the drone incursion. South Korea's U.N. Mission, which holds the council presidency this month, said the time was being discussed.

Russia's Defense Ministry said it did not target Poland, while Belarus, a close ally of Moscow, said it tracked some drones that “lost their course” because they were jammed.

However, several European leaders said they believed the incursion amounted to an intentional expansion of Russia's assault against Ukraine.

Israeli airstrikes on Yemen kill at least 35, Houthi officials say

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel launched another round of heavy airstrikes in Yemen on Wednesday, killing dozens just days after Houthi rebels carried out a drone attack that struck an Israeli airport.

The strikes killed at least 35 people and wounded more than 130 others, the Houthi-run health ministry said. Search crews were continuing to dig through the rubble.

Most of those killed were in Sanaa, the capital, where a military headquarters and a fuel station were among the sites hit, the health ministry said.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, meanwhile, said she would seek sanctions and a partial trade suspension against Israel over the war in the Gaza Strip. The move adds to Israel’s already unprecedented global isolation as it grapples with the fallout from its strike targeting Hamas leaders in U.S.-allied Qatar on Tuesday.

Al-Masirah, a Houthi-controlled satellite news channel, said one of the strikes on Yemen hit a military headquarters building in central Sanaa. Neighboring houses were also damaged, it reported.

Over 40% of arrests in Trump's DC law enforcement surge relate to immigration, AP analysis finds

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has portrayed his federal law enforcement surge in Washington as focused on tackling crime. But data from the federal operation, analyzed by The Associated Press, shows that more than 40% of the arrests made over the monthlong operation were in fact related to immigration.

The finding highlights that in the nation’s capital, the administration continued to advance its hardline immigration agenda.

The Trump administration has claimed success in the federal takeover in D.C., saying it has led to more than 2,300 arrests, including more than a dozen homicide suspects, 20 alleged gang members and hundreds of people accused of drug and gun crimes. More than 220 illegal guns have been taken off the street, including in one case from a teen who made a concerning social media post about a school, officials said.

Yet the prominence of immigration arrests — more than 940 people — has fueled criticism that the true purpose of the operation may have been to expand deportations.

“The federal takeover has been a cover to do federal immigration enforcement,” said Austin Rose, a managing attorney at Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, an advocacy group. “It became pretty clear early on that this was a major campaign of immigration enforcement.”