The St. Paul Police Department began a pilot program last week using pepperball pistols for safer arrests. With these pistols, an officer uses a launcher, which looks like a handgun to shoot a powder that has a similar effect as pepper spray.

Senior Commander Kurt Hallstrom said that this approach will provide officers with an alternative way to bring resolution to an issue without having to resort to a deadly force. Hallstrom also said that officers should use this method when they encounter someone who is armed with a weapon other than a gun.

Officers have begun training and within three months, 100 officers in St. Paul’s Central District will have access to pepperball.

Following President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, his call for a ban on late-term abortions is unlikely to prevail in congress, but Republican legislators in several states are pushing their own anti-abortion bills in hopes of coming to an agreement with the supreme court.

Two bills proposing to outlaw abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, advanced out of the House and Senate committees in the Mississippi Legislature this week. Efforts to pass similar bills are underway in Florida, Kentucky, Ohio, South Carolina and Tennessee.

Finally, an apartment building collapsed in Istanbul, Turkey Wednesday killing six and causing injury to many others. The 14-unit building was said to have housed 43 residents. The cause of the collapse is still under investigation, but authorities said that the top three floors were illegally built.

Ava Diaz can be reached at diaz7981@stthomas.edu.