Biggest news you missed this weekend

Trump, Jeb Bush continue war of words over 9/11

Donald Trump and Jeb Bush took their verbal scrap over Trump's 9/11 comments - in which he seemingly blamed Jeb's brother George W. Bush for the attacks — to the Sunday talk shows. "Look, look, Jeb said we were safe with my brother — we were safe," the Republican front-runner Trump told Fox. "Well, the World Trade Center just fell down! Now, am I trying to blame him? I'm not blaming anybody. But the World Trade Center came down." Bush, who has called Trump's comments "pathetic," told CNN's State of the Union: "Look, my brother responded to a crisis, and he did it as you hope a president would do." Bush also said Trump's response reveals a weakness on foreign policy.

1 killed, 4 wounded at ZombiCon shooting in Florida

A manhunt was underway Sunday after a shooting rampage at a zombie-themed festival left one person dead and four wounded in downtown Fort Myers, Fla. The sound of When gunshots at 11:45 p.m. ET brought chaos at ZombiCon, an annual event that draws around 20,000. "We didn't know if it was real or fake," Haley Delmonte of Naples told WBBH-TV. "Heard gunshots right in front of me. Saw people running and my mind was everywhere. It was so scary."

Michigan State pulls off miracle win over rival Michigan

Fans who watched Saturday's Michigan-Michigan State contest won't ever forget it. Michigan State's Jalen Watts-Jackson grabbed a flubbed punt and ran it in for a touchdown on the game's final play to give the Spartans a 27-23 victory. The Wolverines were just seconds away from entering the national championship conversation. Instead, the Spartans remained unbeaten at 7-0, 3-0 in the Big Ten. "It's crazy," Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio said. "It's crazy."

Shark attacks wreak havoc in Hawaii

Could shark attacks close beach fun in Hawaii? Emergency officials were deciding Sunday whether to close beaches in Oahu, Hawaii, after a pair of weekend shark attacks sent two victims to the hospital with severe injuries. The attacks occurred within hours of one another and brought to seven the number of shark attacks off Hawaii's shores this year.

Amy Schumer goes for raunchy laughs on HBO

Comedian Amy Schumer (Trainwreck) headlined her first HBO stand-up special, Amy Schumer: Live at the Apollo, directed by Chris Rock. During the one-hour performance, taped in May at Harlem's legendary Apollo Theater, Schumer runs through a variety of topics, including body image, body parts, ignorance of the news, alcohol and casting differences between New York and Hollywood.

Palestinians pitch in to help wherever they can during upheaval

BETHLEHEM, West Bank — Red-faced men and women tumble into Mohammed Najar's home, choking on the tear gas that whitens the air outside.

Najar stands back while medics rush to treat them. He doesn't know any of the people involved in the chaos that erupted in his living room, but he cares for each one like family.

As clashes between young Palestinians and Israeli forces have become a daily occurrence, community members in the West Bank have banded together, with everyone playing a different part, from the women who brings fresh sandwiches to the woodworker crafting new slingshots.

"Our door is open to anyone that needs help," Najar, 52, who is retired, told USA TODAY. "Palestine needs all of us to do something to help keep each other safe."

Over the past month, nine Israelis were killed in Palestinian attacks, most of them stabbings, while 41 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire, including 20 labeled by Israel as attackers, and the rest in clashes with Israeli troops.

The outbreak was fueled by rumors that Israel was planning to take over Jerusalem's most sensitive holy site to both Jews and Muslims. Jews call it the Temple Mount, and the site is also home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third-holiest shrine and a key national symbol for the Palestinians.

Israel adamantly denies the allegations, saying it has no plans to change the status quo at the site, where Jews are allowed to visit but not pray. Israel accuses the Palestinians, including Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, of inciting violence through the false claims.

Donald Trump, Jeb Bush again dispute George W. Bush and 9/11

Donald Trump and Jeb Bush took their latest dust-up — this one over President George W. Bush and the 9/11 terrorist attacks — to the Sunday morning talk show circuit, saying it reflects fundamental differences over foreign policy.

Trump told Fox News Sunday  he doesn’t blame George W. Bush for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but does question Jeb Bush’s claim that his presidential brother kept the nation “safe” — using 9/11 as the prime example.

“Look, look, Jeb said we were safe with my brother — we were safe,” the Republican front-runner told Fox. “Well, the World Trade Center just fell down! Now, am I trying to blame him? I’m not blaming anybody. But the World Trade Center came down.”

Bush, who has called Trump’s comments “pathetic,” told CNN’s State of the Union: “Look, my brother responded to a crisis, and he did it as you hope a president would do.”

The former Florida governor — who has fallen far behind Trump in GOP presidential polls — said his brother united the country after 9/11, organized a response to the attack, and “he kept us safe,”

Bush told CNN that Trump’s response shows a fundamental lack of seriousness about foreign policy, whether it’s terrorism or the current conflict in Syria.

“Across the spectrum of foreign policy, Mr. Trump talks about things as though he’s still on ‘The Apprentice,'” Bush said, referring to the businessman’s television series.

Trump, who first made his 9/11 comments in an interview with Bloomberg Television, toldFox News Sunday that his immigration policy could have blocked the 2001 attacks because “I doubt that those people would have been in the country” in the first place.

“With that being said, I’m not blaming George Bush,” Trump said. “But I don’t want Jeb Bush to say my brother kept us safe because September 11 was one of the worst days in the history of this country.”

Violence unabated, Kerry to meet with Netanyahu, Abbas

Secretary of State John Kerry said he will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas this week as a wave of deadly violence intensified Sunday across Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Kerry, speaking in Paris, said he will meet with Netanyahu in Germany and then with Abbas and Jordan's King Abdullah in Jordan. Hours later, three people died and several were wounded in an attack at the central bus station in the southern Israeli town of Beersheba.

The attacker killed an Israeli soldier and took his semiautomatic assault rifle, firing it into a group of police officers and others, the Israeli news website Arutz Sheva said, citing police. The shooter was killed; another man also was shot and killed by officers, although police later said he may not have been involved in the attack, the website said.

The slain soldier was identified as 19-year-old Omri Levy, a corporal in the Israeli Defense Forces.

About 40 Palestinians and nine Israelis have died in the month-long surge in violence. Many Israelis have been victims of knife attacks.

The latest attack came as 300 soldiers were deployed Sunday to help police patrol public transportation stations, buses and major traffic arteries in Jerusalem. Other recent security measures include concrete barriers separating Jewish and Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and random checkpoints near some Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem.

The leader of Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah group, Hassan Nasrallah, on Sunday called the unrest a “renewed intifada," or uprising, carried out by a new generation of Palestinians who believe in resistance.

Thomas Jefferson's lost chemistry lab found

(NEWSER) – A worker renovating the Rotunda at the University of Virginia made an unexpected discovery when he crawled through a hole in the wall: part of a chemistry lab partly designed by Thomas Jefferson nearly 200 years ago, the Charlottesville Newsplex reports.

The brick chemical hearth — one of the only remaining in the world — had been accidentally preserved since being walled off in the 1840s.

"Just because of luck and geometry of the building, because it was bricked up, it survived the major fire in 1895," project manager Matt Schiedt says. "It survived the major renovation in the 1970s, mostly because people didn't know it was there."

According to the Christian Science Monitor, the hearth could give new insight into how chemistry was taught when it was built in the 1820s.

One University of Virginia official thinks Jefferson, who founded the school, built the lab for John Emmet, its first professor of natural history, the Dispatch Tribunal reports. According to the Monitor, Jefferson specified the size and location of the lab and worked with Emmet to equip it.

The main chemical hearth had two fireboxes, one for wood and one for coal, where the professor would do his demonstrations. Students would work at five stations cut into stone countertops, the Dispatch Tribunal reports.

"For the professor of chemistry, such experiments as require the use of furnaces, cannot be exhibited in his ordinary lecturing room," Jefferson wrote in an 1823 letter. "We therefore prepare the rooms ... for furnaces, stoves, etc."

The hearth will be preserved in the university's visitor center.

U.S., Japanese naval forces stage show of strength

SAGAMI BAY, Japan — Japan and the United States staged a naval show of strength off Tokyo Bay on Sunday as they flashed a pair of powerful, flat-deck warships perhaps just days before the U.S. Navyplans to challenge disputed Chinese claims to territory in the nearby South China Sea.

The aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and the JS Izumo, the largest warship Japan has built since World War II, highlighted a seagoing review by Japan’s Maritime Self Defense Force that included 36 warships and dozens of military aircraft.

Shortly after the ceremony, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe became the first serving Japanese leader to board a U.S. aircraft carrier when he flew to the Ronald Reagan by helicopter.

Although the Japanese fleet review is held every three years, it held added significance this year because of mounting tensions over artificial islands China has built in the South China Sea, as well as new defense legislation in Japan that eases decades-long restrictions on Japan’s military.

The Ronald Reagan arrived this month at its new homeport in Yokosuka, Japan. The ship recently completed a year-long modernization program and is considered one of the most powerful ships in the U.S. Navy. Its recent transfer to Japan is part of the U.S. “rebalance” to focus more on Asia.

The Izumo was commissioned this year. Although designed primarily to host helicopters for anti-submarine warfare and other duties, the Izumo’s long flat deck and overall design have led many to believe that Japan eventually could use the ship to carry fixed-wing aircraft.

Japanese officials have emphatically denied that.

Nonetheless, Abe last month succeeded in a long-sought goal to allow Japan’s military — including its maritime self-defense force — to aid U.S. or friendly forces when they come under attack.  That previously was  forbidden under Japan’s pacifist Constitution.

Japan currently is embroiled in a tense dispute with China over ownership of a tiny group of islands in the East China Sea. And Abe has supported U.S. demands that China halt its island-building program in the South China Sea.

U.S. officials have said in recent weeks that they plan to send U.S. warships within the presumed 12-mile territorial limit around the new islands. The patrols would be intended to demonstrate U.S. commitment to “freedom of navigation” in the region.

Bedlam, death rock Florida ZombiCon fest

FORT MYERS, Fla. — A manhunt was underway Sunday after a shooting rampage at a zombie-themed festival left one person dead, five wounded and pandemonium on downtown streets.

The wounded victims at ZombiCon on Saturday night were hospitalized with non-life threatening injuries,according to police Lt. Victor Medico.

The shooting was the second instance of gunfire downtown within a week.

ZombiCon, an annual event in its ninth year, was expected to draw more than 20,000 people.

There were "a lot of witnesses down here, there were a lot of people taking pictures, videos with their cellphone," Medico said. "Anything that could help with this investigation would be greatly appreciated."

The shots began at 11:45 p.m., he said. Chaos reigned as crowds from ZombiCon raced through De Leon Plaza.

Jill Stancel, who works at a downtown barbershop, was selling water to Zombicon attendees when she heard the shots and saw people running.

"I was right here," she said. "A mass of people ran screaming and trying to get in the shop."

Stancel said she and others pulled her husband and another relative into the store, ran to the back of the shop and locked the door. They let eight to 10 people in. "They were standing in the back shaking and crying."

"We didn't know if it was real or fake," Haley Delmonte of Naples told WBBH-TV. "Heard gunshots right in front of me. Saw people running and my mind was everywhere. It was so scary. We ran, then we were like wait ... was that real?"

Killed was Expavious Tyrell Taylor, 20, of Okeechobee.

Pushing DaiZies, Inc., organizers of the event, published a statement on Facebook expressing sadness for "what happened within the footprint" of their festival.

"We take the safety of our patrons very seriously and take precautions in hiring security and police officers," the statement said. "Our prayers go out to the family members and individuals involved in the incident."

Skye Tobias commented on the post, saying she was near the gunfire.

"Heard gunshots right in front of me," Tobias said. "Saw people running and my mind was everywhere. It was so scary."

Some patrons of the event questioned the security measures.

"They patted me down and weren't going to let me bring fake handcuffs in but they let some guy walk in with a gun?! Just stupid," commented Joelle Faith Filippone-Greaves.

Minutes after the shooting, police strung crime scene tape across the entrance to the plaza and started clearing bars and downtown streets. Officers with rifles patrolled the streets around the crime scene and ordered people milling around to clear the area.

The Lee County Sheriff's Office set up a command center nearby and deputies assisted Fort Myers police officers in dispersing the ZombiCon crowd.

Fort Myers Mayor Randall Henderson said Saturday's shooting would speed up plans to install video surveillance cameras downtown. "Sadly, we're moving in that direction. We need to be way more vigilant to keep citizens safe," he said.

Plans were already underway, Henderson said. "This will speed up the progress."