Theater Shooting: A 58-year old man opened fire inside a crowded movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana, last night, killing two people and wounding nine before shooting himself. It happened at about 7 pm during a showing of the movie “Trainwreck.”

Coincidentally, USA Today has done a study of mass killings in the US, finding that murders of four or more people occur about every two weeks. While public killings like the Newtown school shooting grab the headlines, there’s a steady stream of smaller mass killings. Just in the past week four bodies were found in a Chicago home and two teenagers in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma were arrested in the stabbing deaths of five family members.

Most of the killings are motivated by breakups, estrangements, and family arguments, the paper reports.

Dealbook: The giant health insurer Anthem has agreed to buy Cigna in a $54.2 billion deal that would create a health company insuring 53 million people. Coming just weeks after Aetna agreed to buy Humana, the number of major health insurers would shrink to just three.

The health companies are trying to reduce costs and adjust to the new world under Obamacare.

Permawar: Turkey will allow the US to use the Incirlik air base near the border to launch air strikes against the Islamic State inside Syria. Turkey was resisting US requests to use the base, but recent ISIS attacks in Turkey seemed to have changed the government’s mind. Launching manned and unmanned attacks from Incirlik will allow the US to quickly hit targets before they move.

Nukedeal: The Iran nuclear agreement and Secy. of State John Kerry met open Republican hostility in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday with presidential candidate Marco Rubio describing the deal as “fundamentally flawed.” Committee chairman Bob Corker of Tennessee told Kerry he’d been “fleeced” by Iran.

Iran has agreed to dump 98% of its enriched uranium, dismantle two-thirds of its centrifuges, and fill the core of a heavy water reactor with concrete while ceasing to make or buy enriched uranium and weapons-grade plutonium for at least 15 years

Kerry told the committee that any suggestion of a “better deal, some sort of unicorn arrangement involving Iran’s complete capitulation” was “fantasy, plain and simple”. He said, “The choice we face is between an agreement that will ensure Iran’s nuclear program is limited, rigorously scrutinized and wholly peaceful, or no deal at all.”

Nation: The autopsy of Sandra Bland, who died by hanging with a plastic trash bag in a Texas jailhouse, is consistent with suicide, according to the local coroner. The 28-year-old Bland had been arrested after a traffic stop for failure to signal a lane change and died during her third day in jail. She had as many as 30 cuts on her left forearm, some that had healed to scars and a few that were scabbed, indicating she had previously cut herself. The county’s first assistant district attorney said, “I have not seen any evidence that this is a homicide.”

But questions remain about the traffic stop that led to Bland being slammed in jail. A white state trooper quickly escalated his actions when Bland refused to put out her cigarette.

Are we alone?: A planet much like earth with the potential for life has been discovered by the Kepler space telescope, according to NASA. The planet named Kepler 452b is in what’s known as the “habitable zone,” a distance from a sun at which there might be liquid water on the planet surface. Kepler has discovered other habitable planets, but Kepler 452b is the most similar to earth so far. It’s 1,400 light years from earth. A NASA scientist said, “This exciting result brings us one step closer to finding an Earth 2.0.”

Political Theater: Presidential candidate Donald Trump yesterday said he was putting himself in “great danger” by visiting close to the border across from the violent Mexican city of Nuevo Laredo. But, he said, “I have to do it. I have to do it.” He survived.

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