Here are the top stories you need to know this morning:
- Who was Vester Flanagan II? That’s the puzzle police are trying to put together after Flanagan shot and killed two journalists from a CBS affiliate in Roanoke, Virginia on Wednesday. Flanagan, who was a former employee at the station, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to police.
- Univision anchor Jorge Ramos appeared on Fox News’ “The Kelly File” Wednesday to talk about his confrontation with Donald Trump at the Republican front-runner’s press conference earlier this week. Ramos said that Trump “tried to silence me, and in this country, you cannot do that.” Ramos went on to compare Trump’s actions to the sort of thing you see “in dictatorships, not in the United States of America.”
- The big question of the summer: Will Vice President Joe Biden run for president? Biden spoke candidly about whether he has “the emotional fuel” to mount a 2016 presidential run in a call with members of the DNC that was supposed to focus on the Iran nuclear deal. “I’ve given this a lot of thought and dealing internally in the family about how to do this,” Biden added.
- A man shot and killed a Sunset, Louisiana, police officer Wednesday and stabbed three women, one of them fatally — including two sisters of the mayor of neighboring Grand Coteau — before smashing his car into a convenience store, where he barricaded himself against police, authorities said.
- An abandoned truck “full of bodies” was found in Eastern Austria on Thursday morning. Investigators say the dead are thought to be migrants, and have not yet confirmed the exact number of victims in the truck. Some local media suggest there were as many as 50 bodies.
In case you missed it:
Don’t get too excited about the “McWhopper” — McDonald’s has declined Burger King’s offer to collaborate on a sandwich. (msnbc)
Justin Bieber will perform at the VMAs on Sunday night. (MTV)
The 13-year-old star of “Girl Meets World” just delivered an epic essay about feminism on Instagram. (Buzzfeed) Watch Taylor Swift and Lisa Kudrow, a.ka. Phoebe Buffay, sing “Smelly Cat” onstage. (TIME)
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