Author: Wolf Blitzer
BALTIMORE (AP) — Arlando “Tray” Jones was a toddler when his dad was killed by Baltimore police during a robbery. His mom died several years later after battling alcoholism.His surviving relatives often struggled to provide for him. Sometimes the lights got turned off and the refrigerator was empty.Jones turned to a notorious neighborhood drug dealer, a sinister father figure whose lavish lifestyle demonstrated what could be achieved in the streets. Under the supervision of “Fat Larry,” Jones finally had stable housing and money in his pocket, but violence was all around him. He started carrying a gun and punishing anyone…
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — One by one, each of the more than 50 people seated on folding chairs at a public library explained why they were there. “I’m just really upset about our voting rights being taken away from us,” one woman said. “I’m mad, and I want to do something with my anger that protects my rights,” the next woman exclaimed. “I want to understand how the heck they can do this,” added another. The citizen activists, many of them heretofore strangers, had come together two days after the Missouri House passed legislation to overturn a voter-approved ballot…
SAN DIEGO (AP) — Lennon Tyler and her German fiancé often took road trips to Mexico when he vacationed in the United States since it was only a day’s drive from her home in Las Vegas, one of the perks of their long-distance relationship.But things went terribly wrong when they drove back from Tijuana last month. U.S. border agents handcuffed Tyler, a U.S. citizen, and chained her to a bench, while her fiancé, Lucas Sielaff, was accused of violating the rules of his 90-day U.S. tourist permit, the couple said. Authorities later handcuffed and shackled Sielaff and sent him to…
Until recently, it was a little-known program to help Black and Latino students pursue business degrees.But in January, conservative strategist Christopher Rufo flagged the program known as The PhD Project in social media posts that caught the attention of Republican politicians. The program is now at the center of a Trump administration campaign to root out diversity, equity and inclusion programs in higher education.The U.S. Education Department last week said it was investigating dozens of universities for alleged racial discrimination, citing ties to the nonprofit organization. That followed a warning a month earlier that schools could lose federal money over…
NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump has named a new acting director for the Institute of Museum and Library Services, one of seven independent government agencies cited in a recent executive order calling for their dismantling “to the maximum extent of the law.” Trump said that the order “continues the reduction in the elements of the Federal bureaucracy that the President has determined are unnecessary.”Since taking office, Trump has shuttered or drastically curtailed agencies, including the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau and the U.S. Agency for International Development. The Institute of Museum and Library of Services, or IMLS, is a…
DENVER (AP) — Two men escaped from a Denver area immigration detention center apparently after its back doors opened during a power outage, police said.Despite claims by immigration officials, police in Aurora said they weren’t notified until early Wednesday — about two hours after the men were discovered missing from the facility and over four hours after they were believed to have left, which they said was too late to help.In a statement sent to The Associated Press Thursday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the men, who had previously been held in Colorado jails on unspecified charges, were still…
A flurry of court documents filed this week in the case of Bryan Kohberger, the man charged in the killings of four University of Idaho students in late 2022, offers new details about how the case against him is shaping up.Kohberger, 30, is accused in the stabbing deaths of Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves at a rental home near campus in Moscow, Idaho. Autopsies showed the four were all likely asleep when they were attacked, some had defensive wounds and each was stabbed multiple times.Kohberger, then a criminal justice graduate student at Washington State University, was…
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Wildfires fueled by dry conditions and gusting winds burned in a few Southern states Thursday, forcing evacuations in Texas and prompting Florida officials to close part of a major highway with spring break in high gear.A wildfire in Sam Houston National Forest near Houston prompted the evacuation of about 900 homes and closed schools. The National Weather Service issued elevated fire warnings around the nation’s fourth-largest city.The fire, which started Wednesday, had burned about 3.1 square miles (8 square kilometers) and was only about 10% contained Thursday morning, the Texas A&M Forest Service said. There were…
WASHINGTON (AP) — An American man who was abducted more than two years ago while traveling through Afghanistan as a tourist has been released by the Taliban in a deal with the Trump administration that Qatari negotiators helped broker, the State Department said Thursday.George Glezmann, an airline mechanic from Atlanta, is the third American detainee to be released by the Taliban since January. He was seized by the Taliban’s intelligence services in December 2022 and was designated by the U.S. government as wrongfully detained the following year.In a statement, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Glezmann was on his way…
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — A Georgetown University researcher has been detained by immigration officials, prompting another high-profile legal fight over deportation proceedings against foreign-born visa holders who live in the U.S. Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral scholar at Georgetown University, was accused of “spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media” and determined to be deportable by the Secretary of State’s office, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said late Wednesday on X, formerly known as Twitter. The deportation effort comes amid legal fights over cases involving a Columbia University international affairs graduate student and a doctor from Lebanon.Politico,…