GLOUCESTER — Merlin Hunt Jr. went out of his way to help others, whether it was part of his Tally’s towing business or just wanting to assist someone in need.
A Marine Corps veteran from Gloucester, he spent six years serving his country during the Vietnam War, likely changing him in ways that most people cannot fathom.
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BOSTON — State Auditor Diana DiZoglio said she plans to sue the agency that oversees Logan International Airport, accusing officials of withholding details of settlements with state employees her office was seeking for a required audit.
DiZoglio released an audit on Wednesday that found the Massachusetts Port Authority entered into a $1.37 million settlement agreement in 2022 which her office says took advantage of nondisclosure laws to conceal allegations that included gender- and disability-based discrimination as well as unequal pay.
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An Indiana state court judge and his wife were in stable condition Monday as authorities continued to search for suspects who shot the couple the day before at their Lafayette home.Steven Meyer, a Tippecanoe Superior Court judge, suffered an injury to his arm, and his wife, Kimberly Meyer, had a hip injury from the attack, authorities said.Officers responded Sunday afternoon to a report of a shooting in the residential area about 60 miles northwest of Indianapolis to find the couple injured. They were treated for their wounds, and officers recovered shell casings from the scene.Lafayette Police said the investigation remains active and involves local, state and federal agencies. They have not released a motive or suspect description.Mayor Tony Roswarski assured the community that every available resource was being used to apprehend the person or people responsible for what he called “this senseless, unacceptable act of violence.”Kimberly Meyer said in a statement Monday that she has “great confidence” in investigators and is grateful to the officers and medical professionals who helped her and her husband.The shooting had other Indiana judges worried for their safety, with state Supreme Court Chief Justice Loretta H. Rush urging them to “please remain vigilant in your own security.”“I worry about the safety of all our judges,” she wrote in a letter to the state’s judges. “As you work to peacefully resolve more than 1 million cases a year, you must not only feel safe, you must also be safe. Any violence against a judge or a judge’s family is completely unacceptable.”
LAFAYETTE, Ind. —
An Indiana state court judge and his wife were in stable condition Monday as authorities continued to search for suspects who shot the couple the day before at their Lafayette home.
Steven Meyer, a Tippecanoe Superior Court judge, suffered an injury to his arm, and his wife, Kimberly Meyer, had a hip injury from the attack, authorities said.
Officers responded Sunday afternoon to a report of a shooting in the residential area about 60 miles northwest of Indianapolis to find the couple injured. They were treated for their wounds, and officers recovered shell casings from the scene.
Lafayette Police said the investigation remains active and involves local, state and federal agencies. They have not released a motive or suspect description.
Mayor Tony Roswarski assured the community that every available resource was being used to apprehend the person or people responsible for what he called “this senseless, unacceptable act of violence.”
Kimberly Meyer said in a statement Monday that she has “great confidence” in investigators and is grateful to the officers and medical professionals who helped her and her husband.
The shooting had other Indiana judges worried for their safety, with state Supreme Court Chief Justice Loretta H. Rush urging them to “please remain vigilant in your own security.”
“I worry about the safety of all our judges,” she wrote in a letter to the state’s judges. “As you work to peacefully resolve more than 1 million cases a year, you must not only feel safe, you must also be safe. Any violence against a judge or a judge’s family is completely unacceptable.”
MEXICO CITY — Adrián Ramírez hadn’t been to his hometown in western Mexico for more than two decades. When he finally returned there early last year after being deported from the United States, he found the place transformed.
Ramírez remembered the town as vibrant. But the discotheque where he used to dance through the night in his 20s was gone. The bustling evening market, where locals gather for tacos, now empties out early. After 10 p.m., cartel members wielding military-grade weapons take control of the streets.
“It is no longer the same Mexico of my childhood,” said Ramírez, 45, who asked to be identified by his middle and last name for security reasons. “There was more joy, more freedom. But that’s not the case anymore.”
Anyone returning to their hometown after decades away will note changes — old businesses close and new ones open, some people move away and others die. Adjusting to such shifts has long been part of the Mexican migrant experience.
But many of the tens of thousands of people who have been deported to Mexico by the Trump administration have spent decades in the U.S. and are discovering that their country has also changed in more profound ways.
Criminal groups, better armed and better organized than in the past, now control about a third of Mexican territory, according to an analysis by the U.S. military. Gangs have branched out beyond drug trafficking to extort money from small businesses and dominate entire industries, such as the avocado and lime trade. In some regions, criminals charge taxes on just about anything — tortillas and chicken, cigarettes and beer.
Military forces provide security during a meeting about the Michoacan Plan for Peace and Justice, at the facilities of the Morelos barracks in the XXI Military Zone in Morelia, Micoacan, Mexico, in November.
(Enrique Castro / AFP via Getty Images)
Parts of Michoacán, the state where Ramírez is from, now resemble an actual battlefield, with criminal groups fighting each other with grenade launchers, drones rigged with explosives and improvised land mines.
Returning migrants are vulnerable to violence because they stand out. Many speak Spanglish. Their stylish haircuts, often with fades on the sides, set them apart in rural communities. So does their gringo-style attire, like baggy pants and T-shirts touting their favorite sports teams — Dodgers, Raiders, Dallas Cowboys. Ramírez said that even his mannerisms, which had changed from years up north, quickly identified him as an outsider.
Cartels single out returning migrants for kidnapping or extortion because they are perceived to have money, said Israel Concha, who runs Nuevo Comienzos, or New Beginnings, a nonprofit with offices in Las Vegas and Mexico City that supports deportees. Returnees often don’t know how to navigate cartel-run checkpoints or local rules set by criminal groups.
“We’re an easy target,” Concha said.
Concha said he was abducted and tortured by cartel members in 2014 after he was deported to Mexico. He said 16 migrants from his organization’s support group have been assassinated or disappeared since he founded his organization.
Ten of those cases happened in the last year.
In May, a recently returned man vanished after leaving his job at a hotel in the central state of Querétaro, Concha said. His parents, giving up hope of finding him alive, held a funeral and a Mass for him in October.
Ramírez left his town in Michoacán state for the United States when he was 21, hoping to save money so he could come back home and build a house of his own.
But life happened — Ramírez got married and had three children — and he stayed. He was washing cars and driving for Uber in Nashville before he was deported.
Returning to Michoacán was bittersweet. He cried with happiness as he hugged his mother and siblings for the first time in years. But shortly after, he was interrogated by a cartel member on the street who wanted to know his name and what he did for a living. Another cartel member photographed him while he strolled the town plaza.
His town had once been famous for its cheese production. Now its most dominant industry is fuel theft, a booming multimillion-dollar enterprise in Mexico. Criminals with the Jalisco New Generation cartel recently burned down the town’s two gas stations and killed the owner to assert their control over the pueblo, Ramírez said. They then set up their own illegal stations, leaving locals no choice but to buy from them.
The authorities were no help.
Ramírez learned from his family that the mayor had been handpicked by the cartel. The police are also in cahoots with criminals. After a relative suffered an accident, the cops who responded ended up extorting money from him, Ramírez said.
Ramírez began to fear for his life. He wondered whether it might be time to leave, and if so, where he would go.
A growing number of Mexicans are being forced to flee their communities because of violence, data show. The conflict-ridden states of Michoacán, Chiapas and Zacatecas have seen particularly high levels of displacement.
Israel Ibarra, a migration expert at the College of the Northern Border, said migrants returning to war-torn communities often end up having to leave again.
“They are not only becoming deported people,” he said. “They will experience double-forced displacement.”
That is what happened to a man who returned to a town few hours away from where Ramírez grew up, in the mountains of Michoacán. A local rancher hired the migrant to manage his herd of cattle.
Contracting outsiders requires vetting and approval by the regional faction of the cartel, which the rancher had not done. No locals had dared help the rancher repair his fence and care for his herd because of the cartel requisites, leaving the rancher with a limited employment pool.
The migrant, who declined to provide his name because he feared for his life, didn’t fully recognize the power wielded by cartels and took the job. The rancher also paid better than others, to the consternation of the Jalisco cartel, which controls wages in the area.
One morning, sicarios arrived at the migrant’s home and fired round after round of bullets into the building. The worker fled out the back door as gunmen stormed in.
“They left me in ruin,” he said. “They took everything.” He went into hiding in Michoacán’s capital.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum touts data showing that homicides fell during her first year in office. But the number of people being disappeared has surged across the country, particularly in cartel-controlled regions. And shocking acts of violence continue to make headlines.
“For people who left a long time ago, many of them are coming back to communities that are much more violent than they were when they left,” said Andrew Selee of the Washington, D.C.-based Migration Policy Institute.
In Michocán in the fall, the Jalisco cartel is accused of assassinating a prominent mayor who had vowed to hold criminals accountable. In December the group detonated a car bomb in a municipality located along a top cocaine-trafficking route, killing four police officers.
Deportations to Mexico were fewer last year than either of the two previous years, according to data from the country’s National Migration Institute. But President Trump’s hard-line deportation campaign means fewer migrants who were returned to Mexico are attempting to cross back into the the U.S., experts said.
Sheinbaum’s government launched a reintegration program called México te Abraza, or Mexico welcomes you with open arms, that has provided limited support to those returning, according to migrant advocates.
Under the program, migrants are supposed to be given around $100 and a bus ticket to their hometown. But Concha said that some don’t receive the money and that migrants need much more help. “The program doesn’t work,” Concha said. “We need something more comprehensive that also supports emotional and mental health.”
Ramírez wants to return to the U.S. to be with his family but is afraid of ending up in detention there.
He misses his children, and dreams of buying them plane tickets so they can visit. But he is afraid of exposing them to Mexico’s violence. “It’s a very different kind of life here,” he said. “It hurts me what’s happening.”
He decided to leave his pueblo a few months ago. The town where he is now living seems more tranquil, although it is also controlled by the Jalisco cartel. After he got a job at a tortilleria, his new employer warned him: Cartel members may stop by to ask him where he’s from.
This article was co-published with Puente News Collaborative, a bilingual nonprofit newsroom that covers stories from Mexico and the U.S.-Mexico border.
PORTLAND, OR – Portland police arrested two suspects Jan. 13 in connection with separate violent incidents that occurred last November, marking the resolution of both cases after extensive investigations by the bureau’s Major Crimes Unit.
According to the Portland Police Bureau, tactical teams safely apprehended the suspects without incident during coordinated operations involving the Special Emergency Reaction Team and the Crisis Negotiation Team.
One arrest stems from a confrontation and shooting reported Nov. 10, 2025, in East Portland. Officers responded to the area of East Burnside Street and Southeast 117th Avenue after learning a woman had been threatened with a firearm outside a business in the 11900 block of Northeast Glisan Street. Police said three individuals were involved, and one displayed a gun and threatened to shoot the woman.
A male acquaintance later confronted the suspects near Southeast 117th Avenue and East Ankeny Street, where shots were fired. No injuries were reported, and the suspects fled.
The Portland Police Bureau’s tactical teams safely apprehended two suspects connected to separate violent incidents that occurred in November 2025. Image courtesy PPB.
On Jan. 13, police arrested 38-year-old Raymond Diggs in the 11700 block of East Burnside Street. Officers seized a firearm during the arrest. Diggs was lodged at the Multnomah County Detention Center on charges including unlawful use of a weapon, felon in possession of a restricted weapon, menacing, two counts of first-degree robbery and two counts of second-degree robbery. Police said Diggs’ arrest means all three suspects connected to the case are now in custody.
The second arrest is linked to a stabbing reported Nov. 18, 2025, in the 1200 block of Southwest Park Avenue. Officers found an adult male suffering from serious stab wounds. He was transported to a hospital for treatment, and the suspect fled before police arrived.
On Jan. 13, officers took 33-year-old Katelynn Spacal into custody near Southwest Broadway and Southwest Main Street. Police said the arrest was made without incident. Spacal was lodged at the Multnomah County Detention Center on charges of attempted first-degree murder and unlawful use of a weapon.
“These arrests are the result of outstanding investigative work by our Major Crimes Unit and the professionalism of our tactical and negotiation teams,” Chief Bob Day said in a statement. “Their coordinated efforts helped bring these cases to a safe conclusion and hold those responsible accountable.”
NEW YORK — A New York City judge on Wednesday ordered a mental health evaluation for a Massachusetts woman charged in the unprovoked stabbing of a tourist changing her baby’s diaper in a bathroom of Macy’s flagship store in midtown Manhattan around the holidays.
Kerri Aherne, 43, of Tewksbury, will be examined by mental health professionals to determine whether she’s fit to stand trial, according to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office.
She pleaded not guilty to attempted murder, assault, endangering the welfare of a child and other charges during her arraignment Wednesday in Manhattan court.
Aherne’s lawyer Kevin Sylvan didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment but told the Daily News that his client’s mental state is “the only relevant issue right now.”
The newspaper reports that Aherne had been released from a New York psychiatric hospital the morning of the attack and had previously been a patient at a mental health facility in Massachusetts.
Prosecutors say that on Dec. 11, Aherne purchased a knife at the Macy’s store in Herald Square, went up to a seventh-floor bathroom and began stabbing a woman who was changing her child’s diaper.
The victim, a California resident, eventually managed to grab the knife and toss it away. Aherne was restrained by the victim’s partner and store security until police arrived.
The victim was stabbed in the back, arm and hand. Her 10-month-old baby, who fell from the changing table onto the floor during the attack, was not injured.
Macy’s issued a statement at the time saying it was “deeply saddened” by the attack.
“The thousands of families that visit Manhattan during the holiday season deserve to be safe while shopping and celebrating with their loved ones,” Bragg added in a statement Wednesday.
Ahern remains in custody. Her next court date is Feb. 11.
JERUSALEM (AP) — A car-ramming and stabbing attack by a Palestinian man left two people dead in northern Israel on Friday, police said.
Police said the attacker first crashed his vehicle into people in the northern city of Beit Shean, killing one man, and then sped onto a highway, where he fatally stabbed a young woman. Police said that the attacker was heading toward the nearby city of Afula when a civilian bystander intervened and the attacker was shot.
Both of the victims were pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics, Israel’s rescue services said. A teenage boy was hospitalized with minor wounds sustained in the car-ramming, according to bystanders.
Police said that the attacker, who was hospitalized with injuries, came from the West Bank.
The war in Gaza has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and sparked a surge of violence in Israel and the occupied West Bank, with a rise in attacks by Palestinian militants as well as Israeli settler violence against Palestinians.
In September, Palestinian attackers opened fire at a bus stop during the morning rush hour in Jerusalem, killing six people and wounding another 12, according to Israeli officials.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
In Washington, D.C., a gun cannot be legally owned unless it is registered, and it cannot be registered if it qualifies as an “assault weapon” under D.C. law. That policy, the U.S. Justice Department argues in a lawsuit it filed this week in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, violates the Second Amendment by arbitrarily banning guns that are commonly used for lawful purposes.
The lawsuit, which seems to be the first case pursued by a new Second Amendment Section within the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, “underscores our ironclad commitment to protecting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Monday. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who runs the Civil Rights Division, said she is determined to “defend American citizens from unconstitutional restrictions [on] commonly used firearms.”
The statutory basis for the lawsuit, which names the District of Columbia, the Metropolitan Police Department, and D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith as defendants, is 34 USC 12601, which prohibits any law enforcement “pattern or practice” that “deprives persons of rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.” That statute authorizes the attorney general to address such abuses by filing civil actions seeking “appropriate equitable and declaratory relief.”
In this case, Dhillon alleges a pattern or practice that deprives D.C. residents of the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. That right, the Supreme Court said in the landmark Second Amendment case District of Columbia v. Heller, encompasses ownership of firearms “in common use” for “lawful purposes like self-defense.” Since handguns are “the quintessential self-defense weapon,” the Court said, they clearly fall into that category, which made D.C.’s ban on them unconstitutional.
The Court’s 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which overturned New York’s restrictions on carrying handguns in public for self-defense, reiterated that point. “Whatever the likelihood that handguns were considered ‘dangerous and unusual’ during the colonial period, they are indisputably in ‘common use’ for self-defense today,” the majority said. Colonial laws that “prohibited the carrying of handguns,” the Court concluded, “provide no justification for laws restricting the public carry of weapons that are unquestionably in common use today.”
The guns banned by D.C.’s “assault weapon” law likewise are “unquestionably in common use today.” The law covers a long list of firearm models, including AR-15 rifles, along with guns that meet specified criteria. Any semi-automatic rifle that accepts detachable magazines, for example, is considered an “assault weapon” if it has a pistol grip, a thumbhole stock, a folding or adjustable stock, or a flash suppressor.
Since 1990, more than 30 million “modern sporting rifles” have been sold in the United States, and as many as 24 million Americans have owned AR-15s or similar rifles for lawful purposes such as self-defense, hunting, and recreational target shooting. “The AR–15 is the most popular rifle in the country,” the Supreme Court noted in a recent decision.
Under Bruen, a restriction on conduct covered by the “plain text” of the Second Amendment is constitutional only if the government can show it is “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” Yet as Dhillon notes, there is no “historically analogous” precedent for a “broad ban” on firearms “commonly used” by “law-abiding citizens” for “lawful purposes” such as “self-defense inside the home”—the right recognized in Heller.
Dhillon notes that D.C.’s “assault weapon” ban, like other laws of this sort, “is based on little more than cosmetics, appearance, or the ability to attach accessories.” More to the point, it “fails to take into account whether the prohibited weapon is ‘in common use today’” or whether “law-abiding citizens may use these weapons for lawful purposes protected by the Second Amendment.”
Although the Justice Department’s nine-page complaint is skimpy, federal judges have elaborated on these points. Like the law at issue in Heller, U.S. District Judge Peter Sheridan noted last year, New Jersey’s AR-15 ban amounts to “the total prohibition [of] a commonly used firearm for self-defense…within the home.” And under Heller, “a categorical ban on a class of weapons commonly used for self-defense is unlawful.”
Sheridan highlighted testimony showing that “AR-15s are well-adapted for self-defense.” When it upheld Maryland’s AR-15 ban a week later, by contrast, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit declared that such rifles are “ill-suited and disproportionate to the need for self-defense.”
That conclusion, Judge Julius Richardson noted in a dissent joined by four of his colleagues, ignored the self-defense advantages of AR-15s, including better accuracy, greater recoil absorption, and more stopping power than handguns. While handguns also have certain advantages, Richardson said, the appeals court had no business second-guessing gun owners’ weighing of these rifles’ pros and cons, thereby “replac[ing] Americans’ opinions of their utility with its own.”
Where Richardson saw self-defense advantages, the majority saw features that make AR-15s especially deadly in mass shootings. These clashing perspectives illustrate the folly of trying to draw a legal distinction between guns that are suitable for legitimate purposes and guns that supposedly are good for nothing but killing innocent people.
Also last year, a federal judge in Illinois issued a permanent injunction against that state’s “assault weapon” ban, deeming it “an unconstitutional affront to the Second Amendment.” In his 168-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Stephen P. McGlynn explained why that law did not pass the Bruen test, which requires the government to cite historical analogs that are “relevantly similar” in motivation and scope.
Considering the purported historical analogs on which Illinois relied, McGlynn noted that “only 4% (9 out of 225) of the cited statutes entirely restricted the sale and/or possession of entire classes of weapons.” The government “relies predominantly and overwhelmingly on concealed carry statutes, statutes restricting the discharge of firearms, and statutes proscribing brandishing or causing terror,” he wrote.
Those laws, like the Illinois ban, were aimed at “preventing death or injury from firearms,” McGlynn conceded. But they were not similar in scope. He concluded that the state “clearly cannot demonstrate” that its law “follows any historical tradition of sweeping prohibitions on the sale, transfer, and possession of vast swaths of firearms.”
The District of Columbia will face similar challenges in defending its “assault weapon” ban under Bruen. And assuming the Supreme Court eventually agrees to hear this case or a similar one, at least four justices seem inclined to be skeptical of the constitutional justification for such laws. In addition to Brett Kavanaugh, who as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit dissented from a 2011 decision upholding the D.C. ban, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch have indicated their receptiveness to the arguments sketched by Dillon.
Last June, when the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of the 4th Circuit decision upholding Maryland’s “assault weapon” ban, Kavanaugh emphasized the importance of addressing those arguments. “Given that millions of Americans own AR–15s and that a significant majority of the States allow possession of those rifles, petitioners have a strong argument that AR–15s are in ‘common use’ by law-abiding citizens and therefore are protected by the Second Amendment under Heller,” he wrote, highlighting the difficulty of “distinguish[ing] the AR–15s at issue here from the handguns at issue in Heller.”
While “AR–15s are semi-automatic,” Kavanaugh noted, “so too are most handguns.” Both kinds of weapons are used “for a variety of lawful purposes, including self-defense in the home,” he added. “For their part, criminals use both AR–15s and handguns, as well as a variety of other lawful weapons and products, in unlawful ways that threaten public safety. But handguns can be more easily carried and concealed than rifles, and handguns—not rifles—are used in the vast majority of murders and other violent crimes that individuals commit with guns in America.”
The denial of review in the Maryland case “does not mean that the Court agrees” with the 4th Circuit’s decision “or that the issue is not worthy of review,” Kavanaugh emphasized. “The AR–15 issue was recently decided by the First Circuit and is currently being considered by several other Courts of Appeals. Opinions from other Courts of Appeals should assist this Court’s ultimate decisionmaking on the AR–15 issue. Additional petitions for certiorari will likely be before this Court shortly and, in my view, this Court should and presumably will address the AR–15 issue soon, in the next Term or two.”
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled against President Trump on Tuesday and said he did not have legal authority to deploy the National Guard in Chicago to protect federal immigration agents.
Acting on a 6-3 vote, the justices denied Trump’s appeal and upheld orders from a federal district judge and the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals that said the president had exaggerated the threat and overstepped his authority.
The decision is a major defeat for Trump and his broad claim that he had the power to deploy militia troops in U.S. cities.
In an unsigned order, the court said the Militia Act allows the president to deploy the National Guard only if the regular U.S. armed forces were unable to quell violence.
The law dating to 1903 says the president may call up and deploy the National Guard if he faces the threat of an invasion or a rebellion or is “unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.”
That phrase turned out to be crucial.
Trump’s lawyers assumed it referred to the police and federal agents. But after taking a close look, the justices concluded it referred to the regular U.S. military, not civilian law enforcement or the National Guard.
“To call the Guard into active federal service under the [Militia Act], the President must be ‘unable’ with the regular military ‘to execute the laws of the United States,’” the court said in Trump vs. Illinois.
That standard will rarely be met, the court added.
“Under the Posse Comitatus Act, the military is prohibited from execut[ing] the laws except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress,” the court said. “So before the President can federalize the Guard … he likely must have statutory or constitutional authority to execute the laws with the regular military and must be ‘unable’ with those forces to perform that function.
“At this preliminary stage, the Government has failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois,” the court said.
Although the court was acting on an emergency appeal, its decision is a significant defeat for Trump and is not likely to be reversed on appeal. Often, the court issues one-sentence emergency orders. But in this case, the justices wrote a three-page opinion to spell out the law and limit the president’s authority.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who oversees appeals from Illinois, and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. cast the deciding votes. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh agreed with the outcome, but said he preferred a narrow and more limited ruling.
Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch dissented.
Alito, in dissent, said the “court fails to explain why the President’s inherent constitutional authority to protect federal officers and property is not sufficient to justify the use of National Guard members in the relevant area for precisely that purpose.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta filed a brief in the Chicago case that warned of the danger of the president using the military in American cities.
“Today, Americans can breathe a huge sigh of relief,” Bonta said Tuesday. “While this is not necessarily the end of the road, it is a significant, deeply gratifying step in the right direction. We plan to ask the lower courts to reach the same result in our cases — and we are hopeful they will do so quickly.”
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals had allowed the deployments in Los Angeles and Portland, Ore., after ruling that judges must defer to the president.
But U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer ruled Dec. 10 that the federalized National Guard troops in Los Angeles must be returned to Newsom’s control.
Trump’s lawyers had not claimed in their appeal that the president had the authority to deploy the military for ordinary law enforcement in the city. Instead, they said the Guard troops would be deployed “to protect federal officers and federal property.”
The two sides in the Chicago case, like in Portland, told dramatically different stories about the circumstances leading to Trump’s order.
Democratic officials in Illinois said small groups of protesters objected to the aggressive enforcement tactics used by federal immigration agents. They said police were able to contain the protests, clear the entrances and prevent violence.
By contrast, administration officials described repeated instances of disruption, confrontation and violence in Chicago. They said immigration agents were harassed and blocked from doing their jobs, and they needed the protection the National Guard could supply.
Trump Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer said the president had the authority to deploy the Guard if agents could not enforce the immigration laws.
“Confronted with intolerable risks of harm to federal agents and coordinated, violent opposition to the enforcement of federal law,” Trump called up the National Guard “to defend federal personnel, property, and functions in the face of ongoing violence,” Sauer told the court in an emergency appeal filed in mid-October.
Illinois state lawyers disputed the administration’s account.
“The evidence shows that federal facilities in Illinois remain open, the individuals who have violated the law by attacking federal authorities have been arrested, and enforcement of immigration law in Illinois has only increased in recent weeks,” state Solicitor Gen. Jane Elinor Notz said in response to the administration’s appeal.
The Constitution gives Congress the power “to provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions.”
But on Oct. 29, the justices asked both sides to explain what the law meant when it referred to the “regular forces.”
Until then, both sides had assumed it referred to federal agents and police, not the standing U.S. armed forces.
A few days before, Georgetown law professor and former Justice Department lawyer Martin Lederman had filed a friend-of-the-court brief asserting that the “regular forces” cited in the 1903 law were the standing U.S. Army.
His brief prompted the court to ask both sides to explain their view of the disputed provision.
Trump’s lawyers stuck to their position. They said the law referred to the “civilian forces that regularly execute the laws,” not the standing army.
If those civilians cannot enforce the law, “there is a strong tradition in this country of favoring the use” of the National Guard, not the standing military, to quell domestic disturbances, they said.
State attorneys for Illinois said the “regular forces” are the “full-time, professional military.” And they said the president could not “even plausibly argue” that the U.S. Guard members were needed to enforce the law in Chicago.
BEVERLY — A 78-year-old woman was cited for causing damage to six vehicles at a Dollar Tree, one of which hit the building, and injuring three people Monday morning.
Beverly police responded to the incident at the store, at 48 Dodge St., at about 10:20 a.m., Beverly police Officer Michael Boccuzzi said.
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SALEM. N.H. — Described by the FBI as a “highly dangerous individual capable of extreme violence,” Claudio Manuel Neves-Valente was found dead in a storage facility Thursday night.
Neves-Valente, 48, was a Portuguese national and former Brown University physics Ph.D. student. He was wanted in two states for fatal shootings at Brown University and of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor.
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BOSTON — Gov. Maura Healey is vowing that her administration will move quickly to implement recommendations in a new report on antisemitism in Massachusetts, which found an “alarming” increase in hate crimes and discrimination targeting Jewish people over the past year.
The report by the Special Commission on Combatting Antisemitism, released earlier this month, said hate crimes against Jewish students in the state have risen dramatically while gaps in anti-bias training and a lack of centralized reporting in public schools mean many incidents of antisemitism go unaddressed.
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MONGKOL BOREY, Cambodia — Heavy combat between Thailand and Cambodia entered a second week on Monday, with Phnom Penh claiming that Thai bombing is hitting deeper into its territory, coming close to shelters for people who had already fled dangerous areas along the border.
According to Cambodia’s defense and information ministries, shortly after 10 a.m. local time on Monday, Thai F-16 fighter jets dropped two bombs near camps for displaced people in the Chong Kal district in the Oddar Meanchey province and the Srei Snam district in the Siem Reap province.
The bombing in Srei Snam, located more than 70 kilometers (43 miles) inside Cambodian territory, targeted a bridge, said the Cambodian authorities.
Siem Reap is home to Cambodia’s world-famous Angkor Wat temple complex, a UNESCO World Heritage site and the country’s biggest tourist attraction.
There was no immediate comment from Thai officials.
Access to the combat zone and nearby areas is limited, so few claims by either side can be independently verified.
The two sides are battling over longstanding competing claims to patches of frontier land, some of which contain centuries-old temple ruins.
More than two dozen people on both sides of the border have officially been reported killed in the past week’s fighting, while more than half a million have been displaced, according to officials.
At a news conference on Monday morning, Thai officials issued an estimate of what damage has been inflicted on Cambodia’s military since a skirmish on Dec. 7 that wounded two Thai soldiers ignited large-scale fighting the day after.
They said Cambodian losses included 12 tanks, 10 armored vehicles, four anti-aircraft artillery systems, 7 artillery pieces or mortars, five anti-drone systems, 175 drones, five communication hubs, and one BM-21 mobile rocket launcher.
Thailand says Cambodia has fired thousands of rockets from the truck-mounted BM-21 launchers, which have a range of 30-40 kilometers (19-25 miles) and can fire up to 40 projectiles at a time.
Thailand’s government announced on Sunday that a rocket attack from Cambodia had killed a 63-year-old villager, its first civilian death reported as a direct result of combat.
Col. Ritcha Suksuwanon, a Thai army deputy spokesperson, said on Sunday an intact Chinese GAM-102LR guided anti-tank missile system was seized. Thailand estimates among Cambodia’s losses some 82 military positions and 505 Cambodian military personnel reportedly killed.
Cambodia has dismissed as disinformation previous Thai estimates of its military death toll but has not released its own figures. Thailand acknowledges the deaths of 16 of its troops.
Phnom Penh said Monday that 15 civilians have been killed and 73 wounded.
Thai officials also said they were trying to cut off the supply of fuel and weapons to Cambodia, but denied reports that a full-scale naval blockade would be mounted. Capt. Nara Khunkothom, assistant spokesperson for the Thai Navy, said only Thai-registered vessels would be subject to their controls in what they have officially designated a “high-risk area” in the Gulf of Thailand.
Officials also said fuel and weapons would no longer be allowed to go through a major land checkpoint to neighboring Laos that is close to Cambodian territory, declaring that military supplies and logistical support must be cut off.
In a surprise admission, Thai officials implicitly acknowledged that attacks had damaged centuries-old Ta Kwai temple — known to Cambodians as Ta Krabey — in a disputed area, but blamed Cambodia for allegedly using it as a military stronghold.
Phnombootra Chandrajoti, director-general of Thailand’s Fine Arts Department, said that historical sites should not be used as bases for military operations and that the most important priority is that Thailand must secure and preserve the area.
The new fighting derailed a ceasefire promoted by U.S. President Donald Trump that ended five days of earlier combat in July. It had been brokered by Malaysia and pushed through by pressure from Trump, who threatened to withhold trade privileges unless Thailand and Cambodia agreed. It was formalized in more detail in October at a regional meeting in Malaysia that Trump attended.
Trump announced this past Friday that the two countries had agreed at his urging to renew the ceasefire, but Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul denied making any commitment and Cambodia announced it was continuing to fight in what it said is self-defense.
—
Associated Press writers Grant Peck and Wasamon Audjarint in Bangkok contributed to this report.
“Well, a gun can hurt people, so we want to be far away from that.”
“Can you think why he would do that?” V. asked.
I said, “Well, sometimes people aren’t O.K. in the head, and they want to hurt other people.”
“So he’ll hurt other people because he’s not O.K. in the head and then his head will feel better,” V. said.
I tried to change the subject.
When I got to my friend’s house, he was dressed spiffily for our “festive attire” party, wearing salmon pants, a long brown-leather jacket, and a checked shirt, and was refreshing social media on his phone, looking for updates.
It seemed that twenty people had been injured. (The figure was later revised down to nine.) We expressed our shock and sadness, but none of it was hard to believe. This is America.
Then we got an alert informing us that a suspect was in custody. My friend and I discussed whether we should go ahead with the party and decided that, if the threat had been neutralized, we may as well be together. Our daughters would be at his house with a babysitter.
I went home, but when I arrived, I got another alert, saying the first alert had been false, and no one had been apprehended. My phone swelled with messages from friends who were unsure about whether to come to the party. “Will streets be shut down?” one asked. With my apparent faith in small-town America, I assured him they wouldn’t. “Hey unfortunately our babysitter just canceled because of the active shooter,” another friend texted.
From there, the night unfolded stutteringly. After we debated the appropriate language, my wife and I sent out a mass e-mail cancelling the party (“We obviously don’t want anyone to unnecessarily venture out today”) but welcoming anyone who was already en route and wished to hunker down with us. An architect friend of mine who teaches at RISD was hiding out in his home on Governor Street, where another shooting incident was said to have occurred—this was later revealed to be false—and had told his wife and two young kids not to come home. We heard helicopters ripping overhead and police cars from up the hill. It was a pitch-black winter night. The shooter was still at large.
Surrounded by bottles of undrunk Campari and vermouth, we put blinds up on our front windows, which look onto a major street near campus, and tuned into the fire department’s live radio feed. As friends e-mailed and texted, I was struck by the frequent and unself-conscious invocation of the phrase “shelter in place,” the shelters of the nuclear era having given way to something equally queasy but more domestic. A grad student who’d been planning to attend the party messaged me from an open-to-the-public arts building on campus, where she was hidden in a tech closet. She wasn’t sure how she would make it home to the campus-adjacent Fox Point neighborhood, and asked if she could come to my place when she got out. I said yes, of course, though eventually she was escorted to her home by police, around 1:10 A.M. Later, I was shocked to learn that the student had also been in a lockdown thirteen years ago, as a fifteen-year-old, during Sandy Hook, in a neighboring town. “I had been telling people it was a matter of time,” she told me, sounding distraught.
Slowly, as the night went on, a picture of the shooting emerged: a teaching assistant and Brown senior had been leading a review session for Principles of Economics, an introductory course that many students take, often in their first year. Around sixty students, eager to do well in their exams, took notes in the tiered amphitheatre-like classroom. As the session ended, around 4 P.M., shots and screaming were heard in the hallway. A gunman dressed in black and wearing a face mask opened the door in the back, shouted something incomprehensible, and started firing a rifle. Students surged toward the front of the class; some escaped out the side doors. At the end of it, two students were dead, and seven others were injured. According to one student, it was only when the gunman fled the room that the students began screaming. The T.A., Joseph Oduro, held the hand of a first-year who had been shot twice in the leg as they waited for help to arrive.
NEW YORK — A California woman changing her infant daughter’s diaper in the bathroom of the Macy’s Herald Square store in New York City was stabbed and injured by another woman in an unprovoked attack, police said.
The attack occurred Thursday afternoon at the store in Manhattan. The 38-year-old victim was stabbed in the back and arm and was being treated at a hospital for cuts and lacerations. She was expected to fully recover. Her 10-month-old baby was not injured.
A 43-year-old Tewksbury, Massachusetts woman was charged with attempted murder in connection with the attack and was due to make her initial court appearance on Friday. It was not known Friday if she had retained a lawyer.
Macy’s issued a statement saying it was “deeply saddened” by the attack.
LAWRENCE — The suspect in a stabbing Sunday morning was captured after police officers with specialized SWAT team training were deployed to a Kent Street home, police said.
Police Chief Maurice Aguiler said a man suspected of stabbing another man in the vicinity of South Union and Kent streets was taken into custody by Lawrence Police Department entry team members at 2:30 p.m. Sunday.
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In Algeria, water shortages left faucets dry, prompting protesters to riot and set tires ablaze.
In Gaza, as people waited for water at a community tap, an Israeli drone fired on them, killing eight.
In Ukraine, Russian rockets slammed into the country’s largest dam, unleashing a plume of fire over the hydroelectric plant and causing widespread blackouts.
These are some of the 420 water-related conflicts researchers documented for 2024 in the latest update of the Pacific Institute’s Water Conflict Chronology, a global database of water-related violence.
The year featured a record number of violent incidents over water around the world, far surpassing the 355 in 2023, continuing a steeply rising trend. The violence more than quadrupled in the last five years.
In 2024, there were 420 water-related conflicts globally
The majority of incidents were in the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Eastern Europe.
Russia and Ukraine
51 conflicts
Russia and Ukraine
51 conflicts
Pacific Institute
Sean Greene LOS ANGELES TIMES
The new data from the Oakland-based water think tank show also that drinking water wells, pipes and dams are increasingly coming under attack.
“In almost every region of the world, there is more and more violence being reported over water,” said Peter Gleick, the Pacific Institute’s co-founder and senior fellow, and it “underscores the urgent need for international attention.”
The researchers collect information from news reports and other sources and accounts. They classify it into three categories: instances in which water was a trigger of violence, water systems were targeted and water was a “casualty” of violence, for example when shell fragments hit a water tank.
Not every case involves injuries or deaths but many do.
The region with the most violent incidents was the Middle East, with 138 reported. That included 66 in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, both in Gaza and the West Bank.
In the West Bank there were numerous reports of Israeli settlers destroying water pipelines and tanks and attacking Palestinian farmers.
Gleick noted that when the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders last year, accusing them of crimes against humanity, the charges mentioned Israeli military attacks on Gaza water systems.
“It is an acknowledgment that these attacks are violations of international law,” he said. “There ought to be more enforcement of international laws protecting water systems from attacks.”
Water systems also were targeted frequently in the Russia-Ukraine war, in which the researchers tallied 51 violent incidents.
Residents collect water in bottles in Pokrovsk, Ukraine, where repeated Russian shelling has left civilians without functioning infrastructure.
(George Ivanchenko / Associated Press)
Russian strikes disrupted water service in Ukrainian cities, and oil spilled into a river after Russian forces attacked an oil depot.
“These aren’t water wars. These are wars in which water is being used as a weapon or is a casualty of the conflict,” Gleick said.
The researchers also found water scarcity and drought are prompting a growing number of violent conflicts.
“Climate change is making those problems worse,” Gleick said.
Many conflicts were in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.
In India, residents angry about water shortages assaulted a city worker.
In Jammu, India, a woman carries a container of drinking water filled from leaking water pipes in March.
(Channi Anand / Associated Press)
In Cameroon, rice farmers clashed with fishers, leaving one dead and three injured.
At a refugee camp in Kenya, three people died in a fight over drinking water.
There’s an increase in conflicts over irrigation, disputes pitting farmers against cities, and violence arising in places where only some water is safe to drink.
A man carries jugs to fetch water from a hole in the sandy riverbed in Makueni County, Kenya in February 2024.
(Brian Inganga / Associated Press)
Gleick, who has been studying water-related violence for more than three decades, said the purpose of the list is to raise awareness and encourage policymakers to act to reduce fighting, bloodshed and turmoil.
“The failure to do that is inexcusable and it contributes to a lot of misery,” Gleick said. “It contributes to ill health, cholera, dysentery, typhoid, water-related diseases, and it contributes to conflicts over water.”
In Latin America, there were dozens of violent incidents involving water last year.
In the Mexican state of Veracruz, protesters were blocking a road to denounce a pork processing plant, which they accused of using too much water and spewing pollution, when police opened fire, killing two men.
In Honduras, environmental activist Juan López, who had spoken up to protect rivers from mining, was gunned down as he left church. He was the fourth member of his group to be murdered.
A man fills containers with water because of a shortage caused by high temperatures and drought in Veracruz, Mexico in June 2024.
(Felix Marquez / Associated Press)
“There needs to be more attention on this issue, especially at the international level, but at the national level as well,” said Morgan Shimabuku, a senior researcher with the Pacific Institute. “It is getting worse, and we need to turn that tide.”
For 2024, there were few events in the U.S., but among them were cyberattacks on water utilities in Texas and Indiana.
In one, Russian hackers claimed responsibility for tampering with an Indiana wastewater treatment plant. Authorities said the attack caused minimal disruption. In another, a pro-Russian hacktivist group manipulated systems at water facilities in small Texas towns, causing water to overflow.
The Pacific Institute’s database now lists more than 2,750 conflicts. Most have occurred since 2000. The researchers are adding incidents from 2025 as well as previous years.
During extreme drought in Iran worsened by climate change, farmers were desperate enough to go up against security forces, demanding access to river water. Iran’s water crisis, compounded by decades of excessive groundwater pumping, has grown so severe that the president said Tehran no longer can remain the capital and the government will have to move it to another city.
Tensions also have been growing between Iran and Afghanistan over the Helmand River, with Iranian leaders accusing their upstream neighbor of not letting enough water flow into the country.
Gleick said if the drought persists and the Iranian government doesn’t improve how it manages water, “I would expect to see more violence.”
BOSTON — Beacon Hill lawmakers are moving to increase protections for health care workers in response to skyrocketing acts of violence against nurses and other hospital staff in recent years.
A proposal approved by the state House of Representatives last week would set new criminal charges specifically for violence and intimidation against health care workers and require hospitals and state public health officials to establish new standards for dealing with security risks at medical facilities.
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MEXICO CITY (AP) — Hundreds of women marched through Mexico City’s streets Tuesday to protest violence against women in a country where gender violence remains pervasive.
Among the hundreds of marchers clad in purple or with green bandanas, some beat drums and others carried signs. One read: “Today I am the voice of those who are asking for help.”
“I am here for my grandmother, for my mother, for all of the women who aren’t here anymore, for all the women who report (violence) and aren’t supported,” said Alin Rocha, a 41-year-old teacher, who marched on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
Gender violence and equality have received more attention since President Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s first female leader, took office last year. But even Sheinbaum was groped by a drunken man as she walked in the capital’s historic center earlier this month.
On Tuesday, she gathered governors from Mexico’s 32 states to report on progress to make sexual harassment a crime in every state. “Changing the laws is not enough, but it is necessary,” she said.
Miriam González, a 41-year-old doctor, said that even though a woman had made it to the presidency, “nothing has changed.”
Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography said in 2021, 70% of Mexican women and girls older than 15 reported they had experienced some kind of violence – nearly half of it sexual in nature.
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