Indian journalist’s killing provokes outrage, anguish

The killing of an Indian journalist provoked outrage and anguish across the country on Wednesday, with thousands protesting what they saw as an effort to silence a critic of India’s ruling Hindu nationalist party.

Even as police promise to hunt down the assailants who gunned down Gauri Lankesh outside her Bangalore home Tuesday night, many said they feared the perpetrators of the attack - like so many others - would get away with impunity.

Spontaneous rallies erupted in cities and towns across India on Wednesday. Protesters demanded the government do more to protect free speech in the secular, South Asian democracy.

Indian journalist gunned down outside her home

An Indian journalist was fatally shot outside her home the southern city of Bangalore, the latest in a string of deadly attacks targeting journalists or outspoken critics of religious superstition and extreme Hindu politics.

The assailants fled on a motorcycle after spraying bullets at Gauri Lankesh on Tuesday night as she was leaving her car outside her home in the Karnataka state capital.

Police said they were searching for leads, but that it was too early to say who killed her. Top police officer R.K. Dutta said he had met Lankesh recently, but that she did not mention any threat to her life.

Reutersward, Swedish sculptor of twisted gun barrel, dies

Carl Fredrik Reutersward, one of Sweden's best-known modern artists and the creator of the iconic statue of a revolver barrel tied in a knot, has died at the age of 81.

The artist, who was a major influence in the modern Swedish art scene, died in a hospital in Helsingborg, southwestern Sweden, on Tuesday evening, Thomas Millroth, from the Carl Fredrik Reutersward Art Foundation, said. He gave no cause of death, but Reutersward, who suffered a stroke in 1980, was known to have been unwell for some time.