U.S./World category, Page 1077
Amid clergy abuse, survivors of color remain in shadows
The Samples were a black Chicago family, with six children and few resources. The priest helped them with tuition, clothes, bills. He offered the promise of opportunities — a better life. He also abused all the children. They told no one. They were afraid of not being believed and of...
Man left drugs, gun in designer bags at Louisiana convenience store
GALLIANO, La. — Louisiana authorities are perplexed over why a man left apparent designer bags holding drugs, a gun, cash and a digital scale in a convenience store. The man went into the store early Thursday and put the Louis Vuitton and Gucci bags on a chair, according to a...
Man leaps off Atlanta bridge in mistaken belief cops are chasing himVideo
ATLANTA — A driver who mistakenly thought Atlanta police were chasing him as they pursued a different speeding motorist crashed his car and jumped 40 feet (12 meters) off a highway bridge to escape. The driver survived the jump early Thursday and ran into a wooded area. On Friday, Davaughn...
Ethan Couch released from jail after ‘weak positive’ drug test result
DALLAS — Ethan Couch was released from jail Friday afternoon, one day after Tarrant County authorities said he violated the terms of his probation by failing a drug test. Couch, the 22-year-old “affluenza teen,” spent nearly two years behind bars after he killed four people in a June 15, 2013,...
Court grants order to keep Texas baby on life support
FORT WORTH, Texas — A Texas appeals court on Friday agreed to delay a judge’s ruling that would have allowed a hospital to end life-sustaining treatment for an 11-month-old girl who doctors say is in pain and will not get better. The Second Court of Appeals in Fort Worth ordered...
United Methodist Church negotiates a likely split over LGBTQ issues
The United Methodist Church has long been riven by bitter divisions between its U.S. and international congregations over whether to allow same-sex marriage and ordain gay clergy. Now it appears the church — whose 7 million U.S. members make it the nation’s second-largest Protestant denomination — is heading for a...
Carnival cruise ship dumped 5,900 gallons of gray water into the ocean at Port Canaveral
MIAMI — Carnival Corporation again has found itself in the spotlight for pollution, this time for discharging untreated gray water into the ocean while at Port Canaveral. On Thursday morning, while the company’s Carnival Elation cruise ship was docked, a gray water valve “failed and unintentionally discharged gray water from...
Mississippi prison chief says 4 of 5 killings done by gangs
Mississippi’s outgoing prisons chief said Friday that at least some of the five killings of inmates since Sunday stem from gang violence, as guards struggle to maintain control of restive inmates. “These are trying times for the Mississippi Department of Corrections,” Commissioner Pelicia Hall said in a statement hours after...
Q&A: How climate change, other factors stoke Australia fires
Australia’s unprecedented wildfires are supercharged thanks to climate change, the type of trees catching fire and weather, experts say. And these fires are so extreme that they are triggering their own thunderstorms. Here are a few questions and answers about the science behind the Australian wildfires that so far have...
U.S. long watched Soleimani, but feared risks of a strike
WASHINGTON — In 2007, U.S. commandos watched as a convoy carrying a powerful Iranian military leader made its way to northern Iraq. It was a prime opportunity to take out Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who had been accused of aiding Shiite forces that killed thousands of American troops in Iraq. But...
California skeleton ID’d as Japanese internee
LOS ANGELES — A skeleton found by hikers this fall near California’s second-highest peak was identified Friday as a Japanese American artist who had left the Manzanar internment camp to paint in the mountains in the waning days of World War II. The Inyo County sheriff used DNA to identify...
Soleimani’s death ratchets up tensions and raises questions about U.S. long game
Gen. Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran’s powerful Quds Force, wasn’t a name known to most Americans before a U.S. drone strike early Friday near Baghdad killed him. But he’s been front and center among serious considerations for Iran watchers for years, said Julia Santucci, a senior lecturer in intelligence studies...
‘Millions of sparks’: Weather raises Australia’s fire danger
SYDNEY — Wildfires raging across Australia have prompted one of the largest evacuations in the country’s history as what is already the worst season on record is likely to become even more devastating due to hot weather and strong winds. More than 200 fires were burning, and warnings of extreme...
Teen charged with murder in death of pregnant woman, fetus
BROWNSVILLE, Tenn. — A Tennessee teenager was arrested in connection to a shooting that killed a pregnant woman and her fetus, paralyzed her 8-year-old daughter and wounded another adult family member, authorities said. A 17-year-old boy was arrested Thursday and charged with two counts of first-degree murder and two counts...
U.S. sending 3,000 more troops to Mideast as reinforcements
WASHINGTON — The United States said Friday it is sending nearly 3,000 more Army troops to the Mideast in the volatile aftermath of the killing of an Iranian general in a strike ordered by President Donald Trump. Defense officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a decision not...
Trump says Iranian should have been ‘taken out’ years ago
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Friday that he ordered the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani because he was “plotting to kill” many Americans. In his first comments since the strike against the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force early Friday, Trump said Soleimani was also responsible for killing...
Police shoot man dead after fatal stabbings in Paris park
PARIS — A man armed with a knife rampaged through a Paris park attacking passersby seemingly at random Friday, killing one person and injuring two others before police shot him dead, officials said. The afternoon attack took place in Villejuif in the southern suburbs of Paris. The man’s motives weren’t...
5th inmate killed in more violence in Mississippi prisons
A fifth inmate has died violently in a Mississippi prison, raising further questions about security as clashes between prisoners continue. Sunflower County Coroner Heather Burton told local news outlets that 36-year-old Dennoris Howell was stabbed to death before dawn Friday at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. Howell is the...
1 dead, 3 hurt in stabbing in downtown Austin
AUSTIN, Texas — One person was killed and three others hurt in a reported “stabbing incident” Friday morning in downtown Austin and a suspect was in custody, police and emergency officials said. Austin-Travis County EMS said a man in his 20s was pronounced dead and a man in his 50s...
2 workers die, 17 hurt in Cambodian building collapse
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — A building under construction in southern Cambodia collapsed Friday, killing at least two workers and trapping others inside, police said. The seven-story building in the coastal province of Kep collapsed while about 20 workers were inside. By nightfall, 17 injured workers had been rescued, said Nguon...
Fallout, reactions mixed to U.S. killing of Iranian generalVideo
Global powers are warning that the world has become a more dangerous place after President Donald Trump ordered the targeted killing of Iran’s top general and are urging restraint on all sides. China, Russia and France, all permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, took a dim view of the...
Soleimani: A general who became Iran icon by targeting U.S.Video
TEHRAN, Iran — For Iranians whose icons since the Islamic Revolution have been stern-faced clergy, Gen. Qassem Soleimani widely represented a figure of national resilience in the face of four decades of U.S. pressure. For the U.S. and Israel, he was a shadowy figure in command of Iran’s proxy forces,...
Iran vows ‘harsh’ response to U.S. killing of top generalVideo
BAGHDAD — Iran vowed “harsh retaliation” for a U.S. airstrike near Baghdad’s airport that killed a top Iranian general who had been the architect of its interventions across the Middle East, and the United States announced Friday it was sending more troops to the region as tensions soared in the...
Indonesia capital floods leave 43 dead, 397,000 displaced
JAKARTA, Indonesia — The death toll from floods in Indonesia’s capital rose to 43 on Friday as rescuers found more bodies amid receding floodwaters, disaster officials said. Monsoon rains and rising rivers submerged at least 182 neighborhoods in greater Jakarta and caused landslides in the Bogor and Depok districts on...
Women win $13M in lawsuit against porn site in California
SAN DIEGO — The owners and operators of a San Diego-based porn website must pay $12.7 million after a judge found them liable for fraud and breach of contract for lying to women about how their explicit videos would be distributed, according to a court ruling Thursday. The site, GirlsDoPorn,...
