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Mississippi prosecutor who excluded Black jurors is resigning after more than 30 years

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:20:57 GMT

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A white Mississippi district attorney has resigned after more than 30 years on the job, during which he prosecuted a Black man six times in the shooting deaths of four people and excluded Black people from juries in a practice that led the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the man’s conviction and death sentence.Doug Evans is stepping down Friday, six months before his term ends. He did not immediately return a phone call Thursday seeking comment.He unsuccessfully ran for a judgeship in 2022 and was not seeking reelection as district attorney this year in a north-central Mississippi district that covers seven counties.Evans has been in office since 1992, and his jury selection tactics were scrutinized for years. His exclusion of Black jurors caused the Supreme Court to overturn the final conviction of Curtis Flowers in June 2019, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh citing a “relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of Black individuals.”Flowers stood trial six...

Man United agrees to $69 million deal to sign Chelsea midfielder Mason Mount, AP sources

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:20:57 GMT

MANCHESTER, England (AP) — Manchester United has agreed to sign midfielder Mason Mount from Chelsea for 55 million pounds ($69 million).The agreement was confirmed Thursday by two people with knowledge of the negotiations, which have been on-going since the end of the Premier League season.The people spoke on condition of anonymity because the deal has not been publicly announced.Mount will sign a five-year contract, with the option of a further 12 months.United will also have to pay a further 5 million pounds ($6.3 million) based on meeting certain targets.___James Robson is at https://twitter.com/jamesalanrobson___AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer and https://twitter.com/AP_SportsSource

Suspect in gender class stabbing at Canadian university to be charged with hate crime, official says

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:20:57 GMT

TORONTO (AP) — A suspect in the stabbing of a professor and two students during a class on gender issues at a university in the Canadian city of Waterloo will be charged with a hate crime, an official told The Associated Press on Thursday. The suspect, a former student of the university, has been taken into custody after the stabbing on Wednesday, police said. An official familiar with the matter confirmed that the suspect will be charged with a hate crime and that is expected to happen on Thursday. The official, who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter, spoke on condition of anonymity.Court documents have identified the suspect as Geovanny Villalba, 24. The wounds were non-life-threatening, police said, adding that the motive for the attack at the University of Waterloo wasn’t immediately clear. The suspect was being questioned by investigators.Nick Manning, associate vice president of communications for the University of Waterloo, confirmed that the suspec...

Paris-area town imposes overnight curfew in response to rioting over police killing of teen

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:20:57 GMT

NANTERRE, France (AP) — A Paris region town of 54,000 people says it’s putting an overnight curfew in place, stretching through the weekend, in response to rioting triggered by the deadly police shooting of a suburban teenager. The town of Clamart, in the French capital’s southwest suburbs, announced the extraordinary measure Thursday in a statement on its website. It said the overnight curfew would start at 9 p.m. and last until 6 a.m. – from Thursday night through to Monday. It cited “the risk of new public order disturbances” for the decision, after two nights of urban unrest. “Clamart is a safe and calm town, we are determined that it stay that way,” it said.THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below. A police officer in a Paris suburb was handed a preliminary charge of voluntary homicide Thursday after the deadly shooting of a 17-year-old that triggered two nights of riots, as the French government vowed to restore order and crack down on a violence that h...

Turkey’s president condemns Quran burning in Sweden, signals it’ll obstruct NATO membership

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:20:57 GMT

ISTANBUL (AP) — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday condemned a Quran-burning protest in Sweden, signaling that this would pose another obstacle to the country’s bid for NATO membership.Speaking to members of his Justice and Development Party, Erdogan equated “those who permitted the crime” to those who perpetrated it.Swedish police allowed the protest outside a mosque in central Stockholm citing freedom of speech after a court overturned a ban on a similar Quran-burning. “We will eventually teach Western monuments of hubris that insulting Muslims’ sacred values is not freedom of thought,” Erdogan said.Erdogan implied that Turkey wasn’t ready to lift its objections that are holding up Sweden joinint NATO. “We will put forward our reaction in the strongest possible way until there is a concerted effort to combat the enemies of Islam as well as terrorist organizations.”Sweden applied to join NATO last year following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the milit...

Paris region town announces overnight curfew through the weekend in response to rioting over teen’s shooting death

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:20:57 GMT

CLAMART, France (AP) — Paris region town announces overnight curfew through the weekend in response to rioting over teen’s shooting death.Source

Club Q shooter transferred to diagnostic facility in Denver

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:20:57 GMT

DENVER (KDVR) – The Club Q shooter has been transferred to a diagnostic facility in Denver, records from the Colorado Department of Corrections show.Anderson Lee Aldrich pleaded guilty to five counts of murder and 46 counts of attempted murder earlier this week in relation to the November attack in Colorado Springs. Problem Solvers: Fired prosecutor blackmailed over naked photo As part of the plea, Aldrich was sentenced to five consecutive life sentences for the murder charges and will not have the possibility of parole.Five people were killed and 17 others injured when Aldrich entered the club and opened fire. There were dozens of other people inside as well who escaped without physical injury.When Aldrich was sentenced, the El Paso County district attorney said they would be assessed in Denver then a determination would be made on which state facility in which they would serve their sentence.The 23-year-old identifies as non-binary according to their lawyer, but the DOC paperwor...

Could the Supreme Court's decision change CU Boulder enrollment?

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:20:57 GMT

DENVER (KDVR) -- Now that affirmative action is effectively dead for U.S. colleges, could it reverse the trend of Colorado's largest university growing less and less white? In a pair of cases Thursday, The Supreme Court of the United States severely limited the use of race as a factor in college admissions, upending decades of affirmative action programs that U.S. institutions have used to select students from their applicant pools. Supreme Court upends affirmative action in college admissions In rulings that broke along ideological lines, the court’s six conservative justices invalidated admissions practices at Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill by ruling they did not comply with the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection.At Colorado's largest university, the student body's racial composition has changed over time but more in some groups than others. Hispanic/Latino representation rose markedly, while Black/African American representation has...

Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions, Biden ‘strongly’ disagrees

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:20:57 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down affirmative action in college admissions, declaring race cannot be a factor and forcing institutions of higher education to look for new ways to achieve diverse student bodies.The court’s conservative majority overturned admissions plans at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, the nation’s oldest private and public colleges, respectively.Chief Justice John Roberts said that for too long universities have “concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”Justice Clarence Thomas — the nation’s second Black justice, who had long called for an end to affirmative action — wrote separately that the decision “sees the universities’ admissions policies for what they are: rudderless, race-based preferences designed to ensure a particular racial...

European Parliament wants Ukraine’s EU membership talks to start in December

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:20:57 GMT

BRUSSELS — European Parliament President Roberta Metsola said she wants the European Union to open serious negotiations on Ukraine’s EU membership bid in mid-December this year.“We must keep our promises on opening negotiations,” the Maltese member of European Parliament told journalists after participating in a summit of EU heads of state and government. “Ukraine’s efforts on reforms have been extraordinary, even and especially in times of war. If the reform criteria have been sufficiently met, we need to respond.” “And I remain optimistic that this can still be achieved this year,” Metsola said.Metsola has been one of the most outspoken EU figures supporting Ukraine’s bid to become the bloc’s 28th member, having twice visited the country since the full-scale invasion started and meeting President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who addressed EU leaders by video link Thursday. She pushed for months for Ukraine’s accession talks to start th...