Jan. 6 rioter charged with murder

A central Illinois man who pleaded guilty to felony charges for his role in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S Capitol was charged with first-degree murder Wednesday in the death of a woman killed in a wrong-way car collision on Nov. 8, Sangamon County officials said. According to the Sangamon County State’s Attorney’s office, Shane Jason Woods of Auburn was driving north in the southbound lanes on Interstate 55 in Springfield when his pickup truck slammed into a car driven by 35-year-old Lauren Wegner of Skokie, a village north of Chicago. Wegner died from injuries suffered in the crash, according to the county coroner’s office. Three other vehicles were hit and two occupants sustained “great bodily harm,” the county sheriff’s office said.

— The Associated Press

Shooting suspect appears in court

The University of Virginia senior charged with shooting five fellow students, three of whom were killed, appeared by video in a brief court hearing Wednesday morning, when he was ordered held without bail. On a screen in a corner of a courtroom in the Albemarle General District Court, Christopher Darnell Jones Jr. sat in a black-and-white jail uniform, answering several brief questions from the judge. Jones, who turns 23 today, has been charged with three counts of second-degree murder, two counts of malicious wounding and five counts of using a handgun in the commission of a felony.

UK sees myriad domestic threats

Iran has tried to kill or kidnap at least 10 critics based in Britain since the start of the year, the head of the British security service said Wednesday as he underscored perceived threats from a diverse range of sources, including Russia, China and Islamist and far-right terrorists at home. Giving an annual update of security risks to Britain, Ken McCallum, the director general of MI5, described Iran as the state actor that “most frequently crosses into terrorism,” and one willing to resort to violence to silence its opponents. The disclosure followed assertions 2 British-based TV journalists for , Iran International, had been informed by police of threats to their lives. That disclosure prompted an official warning from Britain’s foreign ministry to Iran’s most senior diplomat in London.

— The New York Times

UK inflation accelerates to 11.1%

Britain’s inflation rate rose to a 41-year high in October, fueling demands for the government to do more to ease the nation’s cost-of-living crisis when it releases new tax and spending plans. Consumer prices jumped 11.1% in the 12 months through October, compared with 10.1% in September, the Office for National Statistics said Wednesday. The new figure exceeded economists’ expectations of 10.7%.

House eyes Cherokee Nation delegate

The Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma moved a step closer on Wednesday to having a promise fulfilled from nearly 200 years ago that a delegate from the tribe be seated in Congress. Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin was among those who testified before the U.S. House Rules Committee, which is the first to examine the prospect of seating a Cherokee delegate in the U.S. House. The tribe’s right to a delegate is detailed in the Treaty of New Echota signed in 1835, which provided the legal basis for the forced removal of the Cherokee Nation from its ancestral homelands east of the Mississippi River and led to the Trail of Tears, but it has never been exercised.

Man who killed 6 gets life

A judge sentenced a man who killed six people and injured many others when he drove his SUV through a Christmas parade in suburban Milwaukee to life in prison with no chance of release Wednesday, rejecting arguments from him and his family that mental illness drove him to do it. Waukesha County Circuit Judge Jennifer Dorow sentenced Darrell Brooks Jr., 40, on 76 charges.

— The Associated Press

Spacey faces more charges in UK

Authorities in Britain have authorized seven new criminal charges against actor Kevin Spacey, including 3 counts of sexual assault, the country’s Crown Prosecution Service said. Rosemary Ainslie, who leads the service’s special crime division, said in a release that all the charges involved the same complainant and concerned incidents that were alleged to have occurred between 2001 and 2004. She had also authorized a charge against Spacey of “causing a person to engage in sexual activity without their consent,” the release said.

— The New York Times