Cops seek man, 19, in La. shootings

NEW ORLEANS

- Police have identified a suspect in the shooting of 19 people during a Mother's Day parade in New Orleans.

Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas said last night that they were looking for 19-year-old Akein Scott. He said multiple people identified Scott as the shooter.

Three gunshot victims remained in critical condition yesterday, though their wounds didn't appear to be life-threatening. Most of the injured had been released from the hospital.

Video released earlier in the day shows a crowd gathered for a boisterous second-line parade Sunday suddenly scattering in all directions, with some falling to the ground.

ST. PAUL, Minn. - Minnesota is set to become the 12th state where gay couples can get married, after a final legislative vote yesterday that will let the weddings start Aug. 1.

Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton has pledged to sign the bill, and scheduled a ceremony at 5 p.m. today on the front steps of the Capitol in St. Paul to do so.

Minnesota is now the first state in the Midwest to legalize gay marriage by legislative vote, and the third nationwide in just 10 days, joining Rhode Island and Delaware.

Thousands of gay-marriage supporters thronging the Capitol erupted into deafening cheers after the Senate's 37-30 vote; the House passed it last week on a 75-59 vote.

TRIPOLI, Libya

- A deadly car bomb exploded yesterday near a hospital in a busy area packed with civilians in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, destroying part of the facility, officials said.

Officials gave conflicting casualty figures, with death tolls ranging from three to 10 in the chaotic aftermath of the attack.

Benghazi, which was the birthplace of the revolution that led to the ouster of dictator Moammar Gadhafi, has suffered a series of assassinations and other attacks, including the Sept. 11 assaults on the U.S. diplomatic mission that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

WASHINGTON

- The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for the Associated Press in what the news cooperative's top executive called a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how news organizations gather the news.

In all, the government seized the records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown, but more than 100 journalists work in the offices where phone records were targeted, on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.

In a letter of protest sent to Attorney General Eric Holder yesterday, AP president and chief executive Gary Pruitt said the government sought and obtained information far beyond anything that could be justified by any specific investigation.

SAVAR, Bangladesh - Several of the biggest Western retailers embraced a plan that would require them to help pay for factory improvements in Bangladesh as the nearly three-week search for victims of the worst garment-industry disaster in history ended yesterday with the death toll at a staggering 1,127.

Bangladesh's government also agreed to allow garment workers to form unions without permission from factory owners.

WASHINGTON

- President Obama tried to swat down a pair of brewing controversies yesterday, denouncing as "outrageous" the targeting of conservative political groups by the federal IRS but angrily denying any administration cover-up after last year's deadly attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

Simultaneous investigations - and demands by Republicans for more - have put the White House on the defensive, emboldened GOP lawmakers and threatened to overtake a second-term Obama agenda already off to a rocky start.

During a joint news conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron, the normally even-keeled Obama appeared agitated over the resurgent investigation into the September attack at a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi. He dismissed the Republican-driven effort as a "sideshow" that dishonors the four Americans who were killed, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

-Daily News wire services