Laurel Wamsley

Updated at 5:15 p.m. ET

When disaster strikes, stories often emerge about people who go above and beyond to serve others. People like Mattress Mack, the Houston business owner who invited Hurricane Harvey evacuees into his two giant furniture stores, even sending out trucks to pick up people who couldn't get there.

A German police investigation has found evidence that a former nurse murdered at least 86 people in his care.

"The realization of what we were able to learn is horrifying," Johan Kühme, chief of police in the northern German city of Oldenburg told news outlets, including the The New York Times. "It defies any scope of the imagination."

Updated Friday, September 1, at 6:30 p.m. ET

After Hurricane Harvey made landfall and dropped more than 2 feet of rain, thousands of people in Houston and along the Gulf Coast have been displaced. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott activated the entire Texas National Guard.

The Justice Department is dropping the most controversial part of its demand for records relating to a website used to coordinate protests during the presidential inauguration.

In court filings submitted yesterday, ahead of a hearing Thursday in D.C. Superior Court, the government suggests modifications to the warrant it attained for files from web hosting company DreamHost, which hosted the website DisruptJ20.org.

The city of Charlottesville has shrouded two of its Confederate monuments in a show of mourning for the woman killed in the violent white nationalist protest there earlier this month.

Last year, the Southern Poverty Law Center conducted a study on public symbols of the Confederacy. The center found more than 700 Confederate monuments on public land in the U.S. — with nearly 300 in Georgia, Virginia and North Carolina alone.

An Ohio judge traded gunfire with an assailant who shot him outside a county courthouse Monday, before the suspect was killed by a probation officer.

Judge Joseph Bruzzese Jr. was walking to his car outside the Jefferson County Courthouse along what's known as Courthouse Alley in Steubenville, Ohio, when he was shot, The Associated Press reports.

Prosecutors say the gunman was the father of one of the two Steubenville High School football players convicted of rape in 2012.

Zimbabwean first lady Grace Mugabe returned home to Harare on Sunday after being granted diplomatic immunity by South Africa, where she is accused of assaulting a young model with an extension cord.

South Africa's foreign minister, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, signed the notice granting diplomatic immunity, saying she was "acting in the interest" of South Africa in recognizing "the immunities and privileges" of Mugabe.

After representing the organizer of a far-right rally that became a brutal melee, the ACLU says it will consider the potential for violence when evaluating potential clients — including whether protesters plan to carry guns.

Work crews took down a statue of former Chief Justice of the United States Roger Taney overnight in Annapolis, Md., where it had stood since 1872.

The former president's message after the violence in Charlottesville, Va., was brief, but it hit the right note for many.

"No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion ... ," Barack Obama tweeted, accompanied by a photo of himself, jacket slung over his shoulder, smiling at four young children gathered at a windowsill.

At the intersection where protections against unreasonable search and seizure meet the rights to free speech and association, there is now a web hosting company called DreamHost.

The California-based company is resisting a Department of Justice warrant that demands it hand over all files related to DisruptJ20.org, a website created by one of its customers to plan and announce actions intended to interrupt President Trump's inauguration.

"How do you reconcile public safety and the First Amendment?" That's the question Charlottesville, Va., Mayor Mike Signer asked in an interview on Sunday.

And it's a question city and state governments are likely grappling with after the weekend's violence in Charlottesville.

Uber knowingly leased unsafe cars to its drivers in Singapore, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

One of those cars, a recalled Honda Vezel with an Uber driver at the wheel, spouted flames from its dashboard in January, melting the car's interior and cracking its windshield. The driver had just dropped off a passenger when he began smelling the smoke.