Denver

Police capture serial rape suspect

A convicted rapist who is a suspect in a series of rapes, committed after he allegedly confessed to an earlier attack but was released, was returned to Denver on Saturday after being arrested while driving a car believed to have been taken from another rape victim.

Brent J. Brents was arrested late Friday in Glenwood Springs, about 150 miles west of Denver, after a high-speed pursuit, Denver Police Chief Gerry Whitman said. He was being held in lieu of $25 million bail.

Brents, 35, is suspected in sexual assaults on five women and girls earlier this month in one Denver neighborhood.

Those attacks came nearly three months after police in Aurora let him go on Nov. 23 after questioning him about claims that he inappropriately touched a former girlfriend’s 8-year-old son.

Aurora police said he told officers the boy was telling the truth, but no arrest warrant was issued until Jan. 26.

Connecticut

USS Jimmy Carter commissioned

The USS Jimmy Carter entered the Navy’s fleet Saturday as the most heavily armed submarine ever built, and as the last of the Seawolf class of attack subs that the Pentagon ordered during the Cold War’s final years.

The $3.2 billion Jimmy Carter was commissioned Saturday, the first submarine named after a living ex-president. Carter, himself a submariner during his time in the Navy, was on hand for the ceremony signaling the end of an era in submarining.

“The most deeply appreciated and emotional honor I’ve ever had is to have this great ship bear my name,” Carter said in remarks prepared for the ceremony at the Naval Submarine Base New London.

Carter was joined by his wife, Rosalynn, former Vice President Walter Mondale and his wife, Joan, and Stansfield Turner, CIA director in the Carter administration.

Michigan

Fired worker shoots co-workers, police say

A man who had just been fired from his job at a paper plant returned to his workplace with a handgun and shot two colleagues, killing one of them, authorities said.

The suspect, identified only as a 31-year-old Detroit man, was expected to be arraigned Sunday, police Lt. Frank Canning said.

Police said the shootings occurred Friday at the International Paper Co. plant in Taylor after the gunman had been dismissed because the company wasn’t satisfied with his performance.

The shooter got a handgun from his vehicle, returned to the building and shot the supervisor who fired him. He then shot a woman who tried to intervene, police said.

The woman who tried to intervene died during surgery, Canning said. Police said the wounded supervisor was stable.

California

Koko’s fired caretakers sue for breast request

Two fired caretakers for Koko, the world-famous sign-language-speaking gorilla, have sued their former bosses, claiming they were pressured to expose their breasts as a way of bonding with the 300-pound simian.

Nancy Alperin and Kendra Keller, both of San Francisco, claim they were subjected to sexual discrimination and then wrongfully terminated after reporting health and safety violations at Koko’s home in Woodside.

The lawsuit against the Gorilla Foundation and its president, Francine “Penny” Patterson, the longtime trainer of the well-known gorilla, was filed this week in San Mateo County Superior Court. It seeks damages totaling more than $1 million.

The suit claims Patterson pressured the two women on several occasions to expose their breasts to Koko, a 33-year-old female.