Chelsea Manning

[naviga:h3]Manning denies being a traitor[/naviga:h3]

NANTUCKET, Mass. — Chelsea Manning told a crowd at a “creative thinkers” conference in Nantucket on Sunday that she’s not an “American traitor” as her critics have claimed and she did what she thought was the right thing to do.

Manning attended the annual conference for The Nantucket Project in Massachusetts. The Nantucket Project is a venture founded to bring together creative thinkers to uncover the ideas that matter most. Organizers say about 600 people attended.

This was one of Manning’s first public appearances since being released from a military prison in May.

“I believe I did the best I could in my circumstances to make an ethical decision,” she told the crowd when asked by the moderator if she was a traitor.

The 29-year-old Manning is a transgender woman who was known as Bradley Manning when she was convicted in 2013 of leaking a trove of classified documents. She was released from a military prison in May after serving seven years of a 35-year sentence, which was commuted by President Barack Obama in his final days in office.

[naviga:h3]Clown-masked dad arrested in Ohio[/naviga:h3]

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — An Ohio man has been charged after chasing his 6-year-old daughter around a neighborhood while wearing a clown mask and another man is charged for firing a gun.

Police say the girl first jumped into a stranger’s car and then ran into a stranger’s apartment while screaming that a clown was chasing her in Boardman Township on Saturday night.

Police say a man in the apartment building came outside and fired a gunshot into the ground.

The father told police he chased his daughter to discipline her for behavioral issues instead of spanking her. He’s been charged with child endangering and inducing panic.

Police say the man who fired the gunshot has been charged with using weapons while intoxicated.

[naviga:h3]Student with knife killed by police[/naviga:h3]

ATLANTA — Campus police shot and killed a Georgia Tech student who they say was advancing on officers with a knife.

Scout Schultz, 21, refused to put down a knife and kept moving toward the officers early Sunday outside a dormitory, according to a statement from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation , using the given name, Scott.

Officers tried repeatedly to get Schultz to drop the knife, but he refused to do so, according to the GBI.

The fourth-year computer engineering student used the name Scout and preferred the pronouns “they” and “them” rather than “him” or “her” because Schultz identified as neither male nor female, his mother said.

Lynne Schultz told the newspaper that her oldest child was a brilliant student despite numerous medical issues including depression, and had twice attempted suicide.