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NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Newly released surveillance video shows what may have precipitated the shooting death of Saints defensive end Will Smith: Moments earlier, what appears to be his Mercedes SUV can be seen bumping the rear of a Hummer that stopped on a busy street.
The Hummer then pulls over, but rather than stop to inspect for any damage, the Mercedes pulls around it and drives away.
The lawyer for the Hummer-driving Cardell Hayes has said his client was the victim of a hit-and-run just before the shooting. The videotaped encounter happened several blocks from the spot where police say Hayes, now following Smith, hit his Mercedes from behind hard enough to push it into another car carrying Smith's acquaintances.
Smith and Hayes — who himself played defense in a semi-pro football league — then confronted each other. Witnesses heard a few angry words, quickly followed by gunfire. Smith died with his door open, slumped over the driver's seat. His wife, Racquel, was wounded in the leg.
The surveillance video from Magazine Street, where the Smiths had eaten dinner at a Japanese restaurant earlier Saturday night — throws another twist into the beloved athlete's shocking death.
Defense attorney John Fuller has said Hayes called 911 while following the vehicle that hit him, and was trying to read the license plate number moments before their confrontation.
Hayes, 28, is being held on $1 million bond after police arrested him on a charge of second-degree murder. Police plan to add a charge accusing Hayes of shooting Smith's wife, spokesman Tyler Gamble said Monday.
Gamble would not comment on the new video Tuesday, saying: "We continue to canvass the area to obtain and review video surveillance."
Gamble has said the investigation prevents him from saying whether Hayes called 911 to report a hit-and-run accident.
Fuller insisted outside court Monday that Hayes will be vindicated once the full story emerges. Someone "besides my client" was behaving in a threatening manner, he said, though he wouldn't say who. "My client has been pilloried, convicted and tried" in the news and on social media, he added.
Questions remain about what exactly happened that night. Police haven't released the accounts of Racquel Smith, the passengers in the other cars, nor any other witnesses.
The news was hard on Smith's many fans. The native of Queens, New York, came to New Orleans from Ohio State where he was on the 2002 national championship team, and quickly became a team leader. After retirement, he chose to stay in his adopted community, showing his commitment to the city as it recovered from Hurricane Katrina and supporting a foundation that helped women and children.(backslash)
Smith created his share of football highlights, particularly in the 2009 run to the Super Bowl, when he had 13 regular-season sacks — fifth best in the NFL that year. His postseason play included an interception of a Kurt Warner pass in a Saints playoff victory over the Arizona Cardinals.
Funeral arrangements have not yet been made public.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Facebook says people who use its Messenger chat service will soon be able to order flowers, shop for shoes and talk with a variety of businesses by sending them direct text messages.
At its annual conference for software developers Tuesday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook is releasing new tools that businesses can use to build "chatbots," or programs that can talk to customers in conversational language.
"We think you should just be able to message a business the same way that you message a friend," Zuckerberg said, noting many people hate the experience of calling businesses on the phone.
Facebook is trying to encourage people to spend more time and do more things on its social network and related apps. This at a time when some reports indicate people may be sharing less personal information on the social network — either because of privacy concerns or the growing appeal of competing apps.
That underscores the importance for Facebook of adding more features to its Messenger and WhatsApp chat services: It needs to keep people engaged — and continue to learn about their interests for advertising purposes, said analyst Ben Bajarin of the Creative Strategies research firm.
Facebook is also putting a high priority on creating new video features, both as a way to hold people's interest and to show them ads.
It's been making it easier for celebrities and media outlets, as well as individual users, to stream live video on the social network. Now it's releasing software that it hopes developers will use to build apps for streaming video from drones and other gadgets.
Facebook has also developed its own camera — a special device designed to take "immersive" 360-degree video that can be shared on the social network. Chief Product Officer Chris Cox said Facebook doesn't plan to sell the camera to consumers but will share its design to encourage other firms to find new uses for 360-degree video.
The new video push is part of Facebook's effort to compete against Twitter, SnapChat, YouTube and others working on new ways to serve video-hungry viewers. While it doesn't sell ads for live video streams — not yet, anyway — analysts say Facebook has seen early success with other types of video commercials.
Facebook, meanwhile, is adding new uses for Messenger at a time when more people are embracing the Internet chat service, and its competitors, as way to communicate with friends as well as businesses. Facebook Inc. announced last week that Messenger has 900 million active users, while WhatsApp, another messaging service owned by Facebook, claims 1 billion.
"More and more of our mobile time is spent within messaging," said Ken Sena, an investment analyst at Evercore ISI, who examined the apps in a recent report. He's one of several analysts who believe consumers would prefer talking to a business within the messaging app they're already using, rather than download a separate app and create another user name and password for each business.
That's already a popular model in some Asian countries, where people use China's WeChat, Japan's Line and other texting services to schedule doctor's appointments, pay for meals, order merchandise or send gifts to their friends.
MILWAUKEE (AP) — After Donald Trump's toughest stretch of the campaign, he and Ted Cruz made spirited final pitches Monday to Wisconsin voters, who will cast ballots Tuesday in a Republican primary that both consider a key step in the race for president.
After Tuesday, there's a two-week lull before the next important voting, in New York.
Trump is facing pressure on multiple fronts following a difficult week marked by his controversial comments, reversals and rare moments of contrition. While his past remarks on topics like Mexican immigrants have drawn a backlash, even he appeared to recognize the damage caused by a series of missteps in the lead-up to Wisconsin.
Those included re-tweeting an unflattering photo of Cruz's wife and a series of contradictory comments on abortion that managed to draw condemnation from both abortion rights activists and opponents.
While Trump is the only Republican with a realistic path to clinching the nomination ahead of the Republican convention, a big loss in Wisconsin would greatly reduce his chances of reaching the needed 1,237 delegates before then. A big win for Trump would give him more room for error down the stretch.
Friendlier pastures lie ahead in New York and other Northeast states. But for now, he's facing a tough challenge in Cruz, whom polls show with a lead in Wisconsin.
Trump is facing pressure on two fronts.
In Wisconsin, he has been battered by negative ads. The state's top Republican advertiser has been Our Principles PAC, which pumped almost $1.3 million into anti-Trump ads. The Club for Growth, which has endorsed Cruz, is spending $800,000 on ads that promote voting for Cruz — not John Kasich — as the best way to ensure a Trump defeat.
Also, the state's Republican establishment, including Gov. Scott Walker and some of its most influential conservative talk radio hosts, have lined up to support Cruz.
At the same time, Trump's campaign has been outmaneuvered by Cruz in some early states where the campaigns are working to ensure that the delegates who attend the convention this summer are loyal to them. Trump acknowledged his frustrations on CBS Sunday in discussing a meeting with members of the Republican National Committee.
"And I did look at my people. I said, 'Well, wait a minute, folks. You know, we should've maybe done better,'" he said. "Except I also said, 'I won the state.' And I think there's a real legal consequence to winning a state and not getting as many delegates."
The billionaire businessman began his final day of campaigning in LaCrosse, a city of about 50,000 on Wisconsin's western border.
Saturday morning, he had been on the defensive, complaining about the coverage he's received and suggesting that his message wasn't getting through to voters.
But as he's moved from rally to rally in the state — many featuring crowds in the thousands — he's grown more optimistic, moving from thinking he "could surprise" to all but guaranteeing victory.
"I really believe tomorrow we're going to have a very, very big victory," he told the crowd, imploring them to vote.
"If we do well here, folks, it's over. If we don't win here, it's not over, but wouldn't you like to take the credit in Wisconsin?" he asked.
Meanwhile, Cruz's confidence was growing, too. He predicted a "terrific victory" during the taping of a town hall in Madison that was to be broadcast Monday night on Fox News. Cruz also discounted any possibility of someone other than Trump or him winning the nomination.
"This fevered pipe dream of Washington that at the convention they will parachute in some white knight who will save the Washington establishment, it is nothing less than a pipe dream," Cruz told reporters. "It ain't going to happen. If it did, the people would quite rightly revolt."
He got in a dig at Trump, too.
"The last two weeks Donald Trump has gotten his rear end whipped, over and over and over again," Cruz said.
On Monday, the Democratic rivals appealed to union members and showed their next-primary hopes by their locations: Bernie Sanders in Wisconsin, where polls show him ahead, and Hillary Clinton in New York, which votes in two weeks and is a must-win state for her.
At a UAW headquarters in Janesville, Sanders criticized Gov. Walker as being anti-union and said, "In a sense what this campaign is about is building on what the union movement has done." In New York City, Clinton campaigned alongside Gov. Andrew Cuomo, praising union-led efforts that helped raise the state's minimum wage to $15 an hour and predicting that that higher level would "sweep" the nation.
As for Trump's difficult recent stretch, it's not unusual for candidates to go through such periods, and they often rebound better prepared.
President Obama, for instance, was dogged in the 2008 Democratic primaries by controversial comments his pastor had made in church sermons. In a move that foreshadowed how he would respond to difficult moments in his presidency, Obama delivered a well-received speech on race in which he disavowed Pastor Jeremiah Wright's comments but also sought to explain them through the prism of the nation's tortured history on race.
When Wright resurfaced later in the campaign with more questionable comments, Obama moved swiftly to put the controversy to rest, cutting his ties to Wright's Chicago church.