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U.S. Attorney's Office/TNS/TNS

Federal judge grants Kansas man's motion to delay Capitol riot trial until Trump takes office

Current News / News & Features /

A federal judge on Thursday granted a Kansas man’s motion to continue his Capitol riot trial until after President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.

U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras said going ahead with William Pope’s trial, which is scheduled to start Dec. 2, would waste time and resources on a case that could be tossed out if ...Read more

John Monk/jmonk@thestate.com/The State/TNS

Murdaugh friend Russell Laffitte's bank fraud conviction overturned by appeals court

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COLUMBIA, S.C. — The federal conviction and sentence of Alex Murdaugh’s alleged fraud accomplice and banker Russell Laffitte have been reversed by the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The 37-page unanimous ruling overturning the verdict in Laffitte’s three-week trial in Charleston in November 2022 was handed down by a three-judge panel ...Read more

Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune/TNS

Jurors hear call where ex-Illinois Speaker Michael Madigan talks about getting job for state rep's wife

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CHICAGO — Jurors in the corruption trial of former House Speaker Michael Madigan on Thursday heard a series of never-before-played wiretapped calls showing how the speaker helped find a job for the wife of state Rep. Jaime Andrade.

The episode is being held up by prosecutors as more evidence of the power and influence wielded by Madigan and, ...Read more

Southern California priest supported political candidates, apparently violating federal law: 'I won't stop'

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LOS ANGELES — A week before the general elections, worshipers at the St. Gertrude the Great Catholic Church in Bell Gardens were listening to the parish announcements when Father Nabor Rios introduced a political candidate.

"I'm not saying to vote for her," he told people, pausing. "Well, I am saying to vote for her, but Isabel is gonna run�...Read more

Dreamstime/Dreamstime/TNS

'Tread lightly': Woman threatened to kill congresswoman if Trump didn't win, feds say

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Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, a woman hurled death threats at a federal judge, Democratic congresswoman and the LGBTQ+ community, saying they would be in danger if now-President-elect Donald Trump did not win on Nov. 5, according to federal officials.

Abigail J. Shry, who lives in Alvin, Texas, has now pleaded guilty to transmission ...Read more

Brendan Smialowski/AFP/GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/TNS

Show us the Gaetz ethics report, Durbin and others urge

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WASHINGTON — A growing chorus of voices are calling for the release of a much-hyped House Ethics report on Rep. Matt Gaetz, who resigned Wednesday shortly after earning President-elect Donald Trump’s nod for attorney general.

House Ethics had been investigating the Florida Republican for sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, among other ...Read more

Joe Buglewicz/Getty Images North America/TNS

The Onion buys Alex Jones' Infowars with backing from Sandy Hook families

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The entity behind the satirical news site The Onion, along with families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims, are on tap to purchase right-wing provocateur Alex Jones’ Infowars website.

A joint bid by Global Tetrahedron LLC and some of the families was chosen as the successful bid for the Infowars intellectual property, ...Read more

Handout/National Hurricane Center/TNS

Tropical Storm Sara forms in Caribbean, could threaten Florida next week

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ORLANDO, Fla. — The National Hurricane Center said Tropical Storm Sara formed in the Caribbean on Thursday and long-term forecast models show it could enter the Gulf of Mexico and turn toward Florida’s Gulf Coast.

As of the NHC’s 1 p.m. EST advisory, Sara was located about 205 miles east of Isla Guanaja, Honduras and 50 miles northeast of...Read more

Man who met teen through 'furry' subculture convicted in her parents' deaths

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LOS ANGELES — A Sun Valley man was convicted Tuesday for his role in the killings of the mother and stepfather of a 17-year-old girl whom he met through the "furry" subculture, officials said.

Frank Sato Felix was 25 years old when he and then-21-year-old Joshua Charles Acosta, an Army mechanic, met the girl. The subculture includes "furries,...Read more

Alex Wong/Getty Images North America/TNS

Analysis: White House touts 'norms' and 'institutions' it long warned Trump would obliterate

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WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden and senior White House aides have pivoted from their dire warnings about fascism, talking up the same “norms” and “institutions” they warned would be destroyed if Donald Trump returned to power.

Seated in beige chairs Wednesday in the Oval Office — a fire raging behind them and portraits of former ...Read more

Long Island man charged with terrorism for trying to bomb government building

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NEW YORK — A Long Island man was charged with terrorism after authorities said he tried to blow up a Nassau County government building in a “terroristic revenge plot.”

James Luca, 46, North Merrick, tried to bomb the Nassau County Department of Social Services building in September, according to police. The upgraded terrorism charge was ...Read more

Handout/National Hurricane Center/TNS

Tropical Storm Sara forms in Caribbean, could threaten Florida next week

Current News / News & Features /

ORLANDO, Fla. — The National Hurricane Center said Tropical Storm Sara formed in the Caribbean on Thursday, and long-term forecast models show it could enter the Gulf of Mexico and turn toward Florida’s Gulf Coast.

As of the NHC’s 10 a.m. advisory, Sara was located about 205 miles east of Isla Guanaja, Honduras and 50 miles northeast of ...Read more

Mario Tama/Getty Images North America/TNS

Matt Gaetz faces rising questions after Trump picks him as attorney general

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NEW YORK — Ex-Rep. Matt Gaetz faced rising skepticism on Thursday about his nomination to be President-elect Donald Trump’s attorney general as a congressional ethics report reportedly was set to accuse him of drug use and sexual misconduct.

Republican lawmakers suggested Gaetz, who abruptly resigned from his House seat Wednesday, would ...Read more

Joe Raedle/Getty Images North America/TNS

Justice Department finds “abhorrent, unconstitutional” conditions at Atlanta's Fulton jail

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ATLANTA — Fulton County is violating the civil rights of the people housed at the county jail by allowing “abhorrent, unconstitutional” conditions at the Rice Street facility in Atlanta, according to a U.S. Department of Justice investigation.

Federal officials who spent the last 16 months studying the conditions there said authorities ...Read more

Lea County Sheriff’s Office/Lea County Sheriff’s Office/TNS

20 skulls found on New Mexico property may be linked to missing woman

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Evidence of as many as 20 human skulls was located in New Mexico property after a witness gave a ride to had an “unsettling encounter” with a man he offered a ride.

Lea County Sheriff’s Office said while the witness drove Cecil Villanueva to his destination last week, the man “made alarming statements and discarded objects” that ...Read more

Dreamstime/Dreamstime/TNS

NYC '5zzly Crew' gang members face carjack charges after leaving trail of evidence, feds say

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NEW YORK — Two Bronx gang members busted in a takedown last year now face federal charges for carjacking a man at gun and knifepoint — and they may be responsible for a string of similar robberies, federal prosecutors allege.

Abdoul Azika, 20, and Jaquell Blackwell, 19, both members of the “5zzly Crew,” an offshoot of the Blood Hound ...Read more

Pedro Portal/Miami Herald/TNS

Mixed record on Haiti raises doubts about what Rubio would take on as secretary of state

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Haiti was in the throes of political chaos. Opponents of President Jovenel Moïse were marching through the streets of Port-au-Prince demanding his removal from office. U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, who had been railing against Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro at a Coral Gables conference, was asked about the deepening crisis.

The United States, he ...Read more

Matt Stone/Boston Herald/TNS

Alleged Boston sex buyers lose bid to keep names secret

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A group of allegedly powerful men implicated in a Greater Boston and in the DC suburbs of Virginia sex-trade case lost their appeal to the state’s highest court to keep their names secret.

The Supreme Judicial Court rejected the johns’ latest appeal to keep the proceedings and records at Cambridge District Court under wraps in a decision ...Read more

Analysis: Trump's transition moves raise fears of a politicized military

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WASHINGTON — Critics of President-elect Donald Trump have long contended that he aspires to use the U.S. military — a nonpartisan force, by rule and tradition — as an instrument of the MAGA agenda that propelled his latest election victory.

Now, in the eyes of some, those concerns are being supercharged.

The relationship of the ...Read more

Charleroi, Pennsylvania, where Haitian immigrants were attacked by Trump, faces uncertainty following his victory: 'I leave it to God'

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PHILADELPHIA — Augusta "Queen" Goll, a Liberian immigrant and the owner of Queen's Market in Charleroi, Pa., felt her excitement about President-elect Donald Trump wane when she heard him disparaging Haitian immigrants on the presidential debate stage in September. He soon after targeted Haitians in her small town — her primary clientele. As...Read more