Ronald W. Walters, one of the country’s leading scholars of the politics of race, who was a longtime professor at Howard University and the University of Maryland, died Friday of cancer at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda. He was 72.

DETROIT (AP) — A 29-year-old Detroit man who once told police “I kill people for money” pleaded guilty Monday to eight murders, including the contract killing of a police officer’s wife.