Midday Roundup: Actor, Sen. Fred Thompson dies of cancer

In memory. Fred Thompson, the former U.S. senator, presidential candidate, and actor, has died of lymphoma in his home state of Tennessee. He was 73. Thompson served as minority counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee during the investigation of the scandal that brought down the administration of President Richard Nixon. He acted in several films in the 1990s, including Die Hard 2 and In the Line of Fire, then was elected in 1994 to fill Al Gore’s Senate seat, which he held until 2002. He played his best-known screen role in the 2000s as District Attorney Arthur Branch on TV’s Law & Order and also ran a short-lived campaign for president in 2008.

Another day in court. A Kentucky print shop owner who won the right to refuse to make T-shirts supporting a gay-pride festival has to go back to court to defend his beliefs. The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Human Rights Commission tried in 2012 to force Blaine Adamson, who owns the store Hands on Originals, to print the T-shirts and attend diversity training. A Kentucky Circuit Court judge ruled the commission’s actions violated the First Amendment and the state’s religious freedom act. The commission put Adamson on the defense again last week by appealing the case to the Kentucky Court of Appeals. Several LGBT business owners have publicly supported Adamson, including New Jersey’s BMT T-shirts, a gay-pride T-shirt company. “No one should be forced to do something against what they believe in,” said Diane DiGeloromo, co-owner of the company. “This isn’t a gay or straight issue. This is a human issue.”

Debate drama. The Republican National Committee (RNC) is suspending its relationship with NBC after what it considered a disastrous presidential debate last week on the CNBC cable network. “The questions were argumentative, petty put-downs in many cases, purposely pitting candidates against each other,” RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said. Priebus acknowledged NBC News does not exercise editorial control over CNBC, but said, “The network is an arm of your organization, and we need to ensure there is not a repeat performance.” NBC and Telemundo were slated to sponsor a GOP debate in February. As of now, that’s no longer the plan.

Apprehended. St. Louis police have arrested a suspect in a series of church arsons that contributed to racial tensions in the city. David Lopez Jackson, 35, has been charged with two counts of arson and is a suspect in five other fires set in October at church entrances. Most of the fires caused minimal damage. Because the fires were set at predominantly African-American churches, many in the area suspected they were racially motivated hate crimes. But Jackson is African-American, and since his arrest, police have not commented on a possible motive for the arsons.

Taking the crown. The Kansas City Royals closed out the World Series on Sunday night the way they started it—by winning a high-drama game in extra innings. The Royals went into the ninth inning at Citi Field in New York trailing the Mets 2-0. But just as in Game 1, they found a way to tie the game and birth a win, thanks to a solid bullpen and some Mets missteps. It’s been 29 years since the Mets won a World Series, but perhaps they will take cues from Kansas City for next year. The Royals lost last year’s World Series but came back this year for a win on the 30th anniversary of their last championship.

WORLD Radio’s Kent Covington contributed to this report.