HIGHLANDS RANCH, Colo. — When a gunman burst into his high school classroom, Kendrick Castillo did not hesitate. The 18-year-old immediately charged, pinning the attacker to the wall before Castillo was fatally shot protecting classmates, witnesses said. As he charged, so did two other students. One of them, Brendan Bialy, wrestled the gun from the shooter’s hand and the students subdued him. A second shooter was captured by an armed security guard. Authorities said these acts of bravery helped minimize the bloodshed from Tuesday’s attack, which also wounded eight people. “We’re going to hear about very heroic things that have taken place at the school,” Douglas County Sheriff Tony Spurlock said Wednesday. The attackers were identified by law enforcement officials as 18-year-old Devon Erickson and a 16-year-old who prosecutors identified as Maya McKinney but whose attorney said uses male pronouns and the name Alec. The two allegedly walked into the STEM School Highlands Ranch through an entrance without metal detectors and opened fire in two classrooms. Because the attack happened only miles from Columbine High School and just weeks after the shooting’s 20th anniversary, questions quickly arose about whether it was inspired by the 1999 massacre. But investigators offered no immediate motive. Castillo sprang into action against the shooter “and immediately was on top of him with complete disregard for his own safety,” said Bialy, a close friend of Castillo’s who has signed up to join the Marines. A member of the school’s robotics club and a relentless tinkerer, Castillo had an infectious smile and gentle sense of humor, according to friends. He worked part-time at a local manufacturing company that had offered him a job after an internship because he was such a standout employee. “To find he went down as a hero, I’m not surprised. That’s exactly who Kendrick was,” said Rachel Short, president of the company, Baccara.

Penguins hatched in San Diego

SAN DIEGO — The San Diego Zoo has two new arrivals: a pair of endangered African penguin chicks. The zoo announced Wednesday that the fluffy chicks, named Doug and Barbara, hatched two months ago. The eggs came from two breeding couples. The zoo says it’s the first time eggs laid by its adult penguins have hatched there. Staff has been working with the chicks to get them used to humans before they are introduced into the penguin colony in the next few weeks. African penguins are an endangered species. Their numbers have dropped by more than 60% in the past three decades and only 23,000 breeding pairs are known to exist.

No more ‘God bless America’

SPRINGFIELD, Pa. — A Pennsylvania school principal will no longer say “God bless America” after leading students in the Pledge of Allegiance. Peter Brigg’s practice at Sabold Elementary School in Springfield led at least one parent to complain to the Freedom From Religion Foundation, whose attorney contacted the district. The group claimed it violated the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition of government sponsoring religious messages. The district decided to cease the practice after consulting with its lawyer. In a statement, the district says it is not prohibiting students from reciting “God bless America” after the pledge on their own. The foundation says “young elementary school children don’t need to be coerced into affirming God’s name every morning.”

Denver decriminalizes shrooms

DENVER — Voters narrowly made Denver the first U.S. city to decriminalize psilocybin, the psychoactive ingredient in “magic mushrooms.” Decriminalization led by a slim 51%, according to preliminary figures on Tuesday’s election released by Denver’s Election Division. As many as 1,300 votes still remain to be counted, but that figure was not enough to swing the vote the other way, division spokesman Alton Dillard said. “I think today’s outcome really demonstrates that the conversation is going to continue, and the world is ready for it,” said Cindy Sovine, chief political strategist for the campaign to decriminalize the drug. “Psychedelics are already here. Now we can start to have the conversation about using them mindfully,” she added. Organizers turned to the same strategy that marijuana activists used to decriminalize pot possession in the city in 2005. That move was followed by statewide legalization in 2012.

Life for killing college student

LOCKHART, Texas — A Texas jury has sentenced a 28-year-old man to life imprisonment for the murder of a college student. The jury in Caldwell County in Central Texas sentenced Robert Fabian on Wednesday, one day after finding him guilty of murder and evidence tampering in the death of 21-year-old Zuzu Verk. She was a Fort Worth-area woman and a student at Sul Ross State University in the West Texas town of Alpine. She was dating Fabian at the time of her disappearance in October 2016. Her remains were found the following February in a remote shallow grave near Alpine and identified through dental records.

R. Kelly judgment withdrawn

CHICAGO — R. Kelly spent much of Wednesday in court, with his lawyer explaining to one judge that the singer didn’t respond to a lawsuit brought by one of his sexual abuse accusers because he is illiterate and with Kelly paying $62,000 in back child support during a second hearing. At the first hearing, Judge Moira Johnson vacated a default judgment she made against Kelly after the singer failed to respond to a lawsuit brought by one of the four women he’s charged with sexually abusing. Johnson reinstated the lawsuit after one of Kelly’s attorneys explained that the singer was in jail when he was served with the lawsuit documents and that Kelly didn’t respond because he can’t read. The second hearing, which pertained to child support, came weeks after the judge in that case ordered Kelly to jail after finding him in contempt of court for failing to pay $161,000 in back child support to his ex-wife, who is the mother of his three children. Kelly remained locked up for three days until he raised the back child support. “He’s not a deadbeat dad,” Kelly’s attorney Lisa Damico told reporters after Wednesday’s hearing, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. “All he wants to do is do right by his kids.”

Three Mile Island to close

HARRISBURG, Pa. — Three Mile Island, site of the United States’ worst nuclear power accident, will begin a planned shutdown starting June 1 now that it is clear that it will not get a financial rescue from Pennsylvania, its owner said Wednesday. Exelon Corp.’s statement comes two years after the Chicago-based energy giant threatened to close the money-losing plant without what critics have called a bailout. The fight over Three Mile Island and Pennsylvania’s four other nuclear power plants invigorated a debate over the “zero carbon emissions” characteristics of nuclear power in the age of global warming and in one of the nation’s largest fossil fuel-producing states. Three Mile Island’s Unit 1 is licensed to operate through 2034, and shutting it down will cut its life short by 15 years. Power from the plant along the Susquehanna River is expected to be replaced by electricity from coal and natural gas-fired power plants that run below capacity in a saturated market. It will go offline by Sept. 30, Exelon said. In a statement, Kathleen Barren, an Exelon senior vice president, said the company doesn’t see “a path forward for policy changes before the June 1 fuel purchasing deadline for TMI.” A roughly $500 million package for Three Mile Island and Pennsylvania’s four other nuclear power plants has stalled without a vote in the Legislature, and Wednesday was the state Senate’s last scheduled session day of May.

Uber, Lyft drivers protest

NEW YORK — Some drivers for ride-hailing giants Uber and Lyft turned off their apps Wednesday to protest what they say are declining wages at a time when both companies are raking in billions of dollars from investors. Demonstrations took place in 10 U.S. cities, including Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Washington, as well as some European locations like London. But they did not seem to cause much disruption and many riders were still able to hail a car with ease. The protests arrive just ahead of Uber’s initial public stock offering Friday. Uber hopes to raise $9 billion, putting the company’s valuation in excess of $91 billion. It’s not the first time drivers for ride-hailing apps have staged protests. Strikes were planned in several cities ahead of Lyft’s IPO last month, although the disruption to riders appeared to be minimal then, too. More cities are participating in Wednesday’s protest. “Drivers built these billion dollar companies and it is just plain wrong that so many continue to be paid poverty wages while Silicon Valley investors get rich off their labor,” said Brendan Sexton, executive director of the Independent Drivers Guild. “All drivers deserve fair pay.”

Panel votes Barr in contempt

WASHINGTON — The House Judiciary Committee voted Wednesday to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress, escalating the Democrats’ extraordinary legal battle with the Trump administration over access to special counsel Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia report. The vote capped a day of ever-deepening dispute between congressional Democrats and President Donald Trump, who for the first time invoked the principle of executive privilege, claiming the right to block lawmakers from the full report on Mueller’s probe of Russian interference to help Trump in the 2016 election. Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler of New York declared the action by Trump’s Justice Department a clear new sign of the president’s “blanket defiance” of Congress’ constitutional rights to conduct oversight. “We did not relish doing this, but we have no choice,” Nadler said after the vote. The White House’s blockade, he said, “is an attack on the ability of the American people to know what the executive branch is doing.” He said, “This cannot be.”

More evacuations in Midwest

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Rain swamping the nation’s midsection forced people from their homes in Kansas, stranded dozens of Texas children at school overnight and strained levees along the surging Mississippi River in Illinois, Missouri and elsewhere Wednesday prompting yet more flash flood concerns. The flooding began in earnest in March, causing billions of dollars of damage to farmland, homes and businesses across the Midwest. Rivers in many communities have been above flood stage for more than six weeks following waves of heavy rain. Some parts of Kansas received up to 10 inches from Tuesday through Wednesday morning, said Kelly Butler, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Wichita. She described that as a “ridiculous amount of water” on top of grounds that already were saturated by days of rains. Several Kansas districts canceled classes, and numerous water rescues were reported. Emergency management officials began evacuating people from their homes near the Kansas college town of Manhattan around 5 a.m. Wednesday as Wildcat Creek overflowed its banks. The Cottonwood River spilled over in Marion County, prompting more evacuations and the surging Slate Creek also forced people from their homes in Wellington and closed a stretch of the Kansas Turnpike near the Oklahoma border. “It seemed like our poor fire department folks were going out constantly overnight, whether it was sandbagging, barricading streets or assisting citizens,” said Keri Korthals, the emergency management director in Butler County, where crews rescued around a dozen people from vehicles stuck in rising water from the Walnut and Whitewater rivers.

Corruption, jobs are big issues

JOHANNESBURG — South Africans voted Wednesday in presidential and parliamentary elections, with signs of a relatively low turnout and voters saying they were disillusioned by widespread corruption and unemployment. Despite the demise of apartheid 25 years ago, South Africa remains divided by economic inequality . The African National Congress, the party of Nelson Mandela that has been in power since 1994, is likely to win a majority but it will face a difficult challenge to match the 62% of the vote it got five years ago. The party has been tarnished by corruption scandals and a national unemployment rate of 27%. President Cyril Ramaphosa, who leads the ANC, has campaigned on promises to clean up his party, an acknowledgment of the problems that forced out his predecessor last year. “Corruption got into the way,” Ramaphosa said after voting, saying graft has prevented his party from serving the people.

Sex ed guidance overhauled

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California has overhauled its sex education guidance for public school teachers, encouraging them to talk about gender identity with kindergartners and give advice to LGBT teenagers for navigating relationships and having safe sex. LGBT advocates praised the new recommendations for giving attention to a community that is often left out of sex education policies. But some parents and conservative groups assailed the more than 700-page document as an assault on parental rights, arguing it exposes children to ideas about sexuality and gender that should be taught at home. The guidance approved by the California State Board of Education does not require educators to teach anything. It is designed as a guide for teachers to meet state standards on health education, such as nutrition, physical activity and combating alcohol and drug abuse. But it’s the parts about sex that got the most attention during a public hearing on Wednesday. The framework tells teachers that students in kindergarten can identify as transgender and offers tips for how to talk about that, adding “the goal is not to cause confusion about the gender of the child but to develop an awareness that other expressions exist.”

Walmart ups tobacco age to 21

NEW YORK — Walmart said Wednesday that it will raise the minimum age to buy tobacco products and e-cigarettes at its U.S. stores to 21 amid growing pressure from regulators to cut tobacco sales and use among minors. The world’s largest retailer also said it will also stop selling fruit and dessert flavored e-cigarettes, which critics say can hook teenagers on vaping. The new rules will take effect in July at all its 5,300 U.S. stores, including its Sam’s Club warehouse locations. Previously, Walmart’s minimum purchase age was 18, aside from a number of states where the legal age is 21. Earlier this year, the Food and Drug Administration put Walmart and 14 other retailers on notice for selling tobacco products to kids. Another retailer on the list, drugstore operator Walgreens, said last month that it would increase its minimum age for tobacco sales to 21 in September.

Boy, 9, charged in mom’s death

FAWN RIVER TOWNSHIP, Mich. — A 9-year-old boy has been charged with murder in the fatal shooting of his mother in their southern Michigan home, according to court documents. The woman was found early Monday morning in Fawn River Township. The boy also is charged with using a firearm during the commission of a felony. Documents filed Tuesday in St. Joseph County Circuit Court show the woman was shot with a rifle. Authorities have not released the circumstances of the killing or details of why the child was charged.

Spears gets restraining order

LOS ANGELES — Britney Spears was granted a temporary restraining order Wednesday against a former confidante who she says has been harassing her family again. A judge ordered 44-year-old Sam Lutfi, who has been in legal fights with the Spears family for a decade, to stay at least 200 yards from her, her parents and her two sons, who are 12 and 13. The judge also ordered that he not contact or disparage anyone from the family. The restraining order petition alleges Lutfi has been sending harassing and threatening texts to Spears’ family and disparaging them on social media. In January, Spears put her career on indefinite hiatus and delayed the start of a Las Vegas residency so she could focus on her ailing father. Lutfi said he had not made contact with Spears since 2009, when a previous restraining order against him was granted to Spears. Lutfi was a major presence in Spears’ life at the height of her fame, and had claimed he was her manager in the years leading up to a public meltdown in 2008. Her troubles led to the establishment of a court-ordered conservatorship, which allowed her father, Jamie, and attorneys to run her affairs and remains in effect a decade later.