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  • Iran and U.S. hold indirect talks in Oman. America’s military leader in the Mideast joins the talks

    Iran and U.S. hold indirect talks in Oman. America’s military leader in the Mideast joins the talks

    MUSCAT, Oman — Iran and the United States held indirect talks in Oman on Friday, negotiations that appeared to return to the starting point on how to approach discussions over Tehran’s nuclear program. But for the first time, America brought its top military commander in the Middle East to the table.

    The presence of U.S. Navy Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of the American military’s Central Command, in his dress uniform at the talks in Muscat, the Omani capital, served as a reminder that the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and other warships were now off the coast of Iran in the Arabian Sea.

    President Donald Trump said the United States had “very good” talks on Iran and said more were planned for early next week. But he kept up the pressure, warning that if the country didn’t make a deal over its nuclear program, “the consequences are very steep.”

    Trump has repeatedly threatened to use force to compel Iran to reach a deal on the program after earlier sending the carrier to the region over Tehran’s bloody crackdown on nationwide protests that killed thousands and saw tens of thousands of others detained in the Islamic Republic.

    Gulf Arab nations fear an attack could spark a regional war that would drag them in as well.

    That threat is real — U.S. forces shot down an Iranian drone near the Lincoln and Iran attempted to stop a U.S.-flagged ship in the Strait of Hormuz just days before Friday’s talks in this sultanate on the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula.

    “We did note that nuclear talks and the resolution of the main issues must take place in a calm atmosphere, without tension and without threats,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi later told journalists.

    “The prerequisite for any dialogue is refraining from threats and pressure,” he added. “We stated this point explicitly today as well, and we expect it to be observed so that the possibility of continuing the talks exists.”

    The U.S., represented by U.S. Mideast special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, did not immediately comment on the talks. Araghchi said diplomats would return to their capitals, signaling this round of negotiations was over.

    On Friday evening, in a display of force, the U.S. military published photos on X of the Lincoln carrier group sailing in the Arabian Sea with aircraft flying overhead, with the message “Peace through Strength!” The The carrier and accompanying warships arrived in the Middle East at the end of January as Trump threatened attacks on Iran over the killing of protesters.

    Iran’s top diplomat offers a positive note

    Araghchi offered cautious optimism as he spoke in a live interview from Muscat on Iranian state television. He described Friday’s talks as taking place over multiple rounds and said that they were focused primarily on finding a framework for further negotiations.

    “We will hold consultations with our capitals regarding the next steps, and the results will be conveyed to Oman’s foreign minister,” Araghchi said.

    “The mistrust that has developed is a serious challenge facing the negotiations,” Araghchi said. “We must first address this issue, and then enter into the next level of negotiations.”

    Omani Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi, who oversaw multiple rounds of negotiations before Israel launched its 12-day war on Iran in June, called the talks “useful to clarify both the Iranian and American thinking and identify areas for possible progress.”

    Still, Oman described the talks as a means to find “the requisite foundations for the resumption of both diplomatic and technical negotiations” rather than a step toward reaching a nuclear deal or easing tensions.

    The talks had initially been expected to take place in Turkey in a format that would have included regional countries as well, and would have included topics like Tehran’s ballistic missile program — something Iran apparently rejected in favor of focusing only on its nuclear program.

    Before the June war, Iran had been enriching uranium up to 60% purity, a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels. The U.N. nuclear watchdog — International Atomic Energy Agency — had said Iran was the only country in the world to enrich to that level that wasn’t armed with the bomb.

    Iran has been refusing requests by the IAEA to inspect the sites bombed in the June war, raising the concerns of nonproliferation experts. Even before that, Iran has restricted IAEA inspections since Trump’s decision in 2018 to unilaterally withdraw America from Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

    Omani palace hosts talks

    Friday’s talks saw in-person meetings at a palace near Muscat’s international airport, used by Oman in earlier talks Iran-U.S. talks in 2025. Associated Press journalists saw Iranian officials first at the palace and later returning to their hotel before the Americans came separately.

    It remains unclear just what terms Iran is willing to negotiate at the talks. Tehran has maintained that these talks will only be on its nuclear program. However, the Al Jazeera satellite news network reported that diplomats from Egypt, Turkey, and Qatar offered Iran a proposal in which Tehran would halt enrichment for three years, send its highly enriched uranium out of the country and pledge “not initiate the use of ballistic missiles.”

    Russia had signaled it would take the uranium, but Iran has said ending the program or shipping out the uranium were nonstarters.

    U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday that the talks needed to include all those issues.

    “I’m not sure you can reach a deal with these guys, but we’re going to try to find out,” he said.

    The U.S. slaps new sanctions on Iran’s energy sector

    Shortly after Friday’s talks, the Treasury and the U.S. State Department announced a new round of sanctions on Iran targeting its energy sector, imposing penalties, including freezes on assets in U.S. jurisdictions, on 14 oil tankers in a so-called “shadow fleet” that the U.S. says are used to try to evade sanctions, as well as on 15 trading firms and two business executives.

    “Time and time again, the Iranian government has prioritized its destabilizing behavior over the safety and security of its own citizens, as demonstrated by the regime’s mass murder of peaceful protestors,” the State Department said. “The United States will continue to act against the network of shippers and traders involved in the transport and acquisition of Iranian crude oil, petroleum products, and petrochemical products, which constitutes the regime’s primary source of income.”

    In the past month, the U.S. has sanctioned Iran’s interior minister,the secretary of the Supreme Council for National Security, and several other leaders involved in Iran’s deadly crackdown against last month’s protests.

  • Trump’s racist post about Obamas is deleted after backlash despite White House earlier defending it

    Trump’s racist post about Obamas is deleted after backlash despite White House earlier defending it

    WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s racist social media post featuring former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, as primates in a jungle was deleted after a backlash from both Republicans and Democrats who criticized the video as offensive.

    Trump said later Friday that he won’t apologize for the post. “I didn’t make a mistake,” he said.

    The Republican president’s Thursday night post was deleted Friday and blamed on a staffer after widespread backlash, from civil rights leaders to veteran Republican senators, for its treatment of the nation’s first Black president and first lady. The deletion, a rare admission of a misstep by the White House, came hours after press secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed “fake outrage” over the post. After calls for its removal for being racist — including by Republicans — the White House said a staffer had posted the video erroneously and it had been taken down.

    The post was part of a flurry of social media activity on Trump’s Truth Social account that amplified his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, despite courts around the country and a Trump attorney general from his first term finding no evidence of fraud that could have affected the outcome.

    Trump has a record of intensely personal criticism of the Obamas and of using incendiary, sometimes racist, rhetoric — from feeding the lie that Obama was not a native-born U.S. citizen to crude generalizations about majority Black countries.

    The post came in the first week of Black History Month and days after a Trump proclamation that cited “the contributions of black Americans to our national greatness and their enduring commitment to the American principles of liberty, justice, and equality.”

    An Obama spokeswoman said the former president, a Democrat, had no response.

    ‘An internet meme’

    Nearly all of the 62-second clip, which was among dozens of Truth Social posts from Trump overnight, appears to be from a conservative video alleging deliberate tampering with voting machines in battleground states as the 2020 presidential votes were tallied. At the 60-second mark is a quick scene of two primates, with the Obamas’ smiling faces imposed on them.

    Those frames were taken from a separate video, previously circulated by an influential conservative meme maker. It shows Trump as “King of the Jungle” and depicts a range of Democratic leaders as animals, including Joe Biden, who is white, as a jungle primate eating a banana.

    “This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from The Lion King,” Leavitt said by text.

    Disney’s 1994 feature film that Leavitt referenced is set on the savannah, not in the jungle, and it does not include great apes.

    “Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public,” Leavitt added.

    By noon, the post had been taken down with responsibility placed on a Trump subordinate.

    The White House explanation raised additional questions about the control of Trump’s social media account, which has also been used to levy import taxes, threaten military action, make domestic policy announcements, and intimidate political rivals. The president often signs his name or initials after policy announcements.

    The White House did not immediately respond to questions about its process for vetting posts and how it guarantees that the public knows when Trump himself is posting.

    Mark Burns, a pastor and a prominent Trump supporter who is Black, said Friday afternoon on X that he had spoken “directly” with Trump about the post. He recommended to Trump that he fire the staffer who posted the video and publicly condemn what happened.

    “He knows this is wrong, offensive, and unacceptable,” Burns posted.

    Condemnation across the political spectrum

    Trump and the official White House social media accounts frequently repost memes and artificial intelligence-generated videos. As Leavitt did Friday, Trump aides typically dismiss critiques and cast the images as humorous.

    Yet while it was still up, Trump’s post drew condemnation from across the political and ideological spectrum — and demands for an apology that had not come by the early afternoon.

    The Rev. Bernice King, daughter of the assassinated civil rights icon the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., resurfaced her father’s words: “Yes. I’m Black. I’m proud of it. I’m Black and beautiful.” She praised Black Americans as “diverse, innovative, industrious, inventive” and added, “We are beloved of God as postal workers and professors, as a former first lady and president. We are not apes.”

    The U.S. Senate’s lone Black Republican, Tim Scott of South Carolina, called on Trump to take down the post. “Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” Scott, who chairs Senate Republicans’ midterm campaign arm, said on social media.

    Another Republican, Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, is white but represents the state with the largest percentage of Black residents. Wicker called the post “totally unacceptable” and said the president should apologize.

    Some Republicans who face tough reelections this November voiced concerns, as well, feeding an unusual cascade of intraparty criticism for a president who often has enjoyed a stranglehold over fellow Republicans who stayed silent over some of Trump’s previous controversial statements or fear a public spat with the president or losing his endorsement in a future campaign.

    NAACP President Derrick Johnson pointed to Trump’s wider political concerns, asserting that Trump is trying anything to distract from economic conditions and attention on the Jeffrey Epstein case files.

    “Donald Trump’s video is blatantly racist, disgusting, and utterly despicable,” Johnson said in a statement. “You know who isn’t in the Epstein files? Barack Obama,” he continued. “You know who actually improved the economy as president? Barack Obama.”

    A long history of racism

    There is a long history in the U.S. of powerful white figures associating Black people with animals, including apes, in demonstrably false and racist ways. The practice dates back to 18th-century cultural racism and pseudo-scientific theories in which white people drew connections between Africans and monkeys to justify the enslavement of Black people in Europe and North America, and later to dehumanize freed Black people as an uncivilized threat to white people.

    Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, wrote in his famous text “Notes on the State of Virginia” that Black women were the preferred sexual partners of orangutans. President Dwight Eisenhower, discussing the desegregation of public schools in the 1950s, once argued that white parents were concerned about their daughters being in classrooms with “big Black bucks.” Obama, as a candidate and president, was featured as a monkey or other primate on T-shirts and other merchandise.

    In his 2024 campaign, Trump said immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country,” language similar to what Adolf Hitler said to dehumanize Jews in Nazi Germany.

    During his first White House term, Trump referred to a swath of developing nations that are majority Black as “shithole countries.” He initially denied using the slur but admitted in December 2025 that he did say it.

    When Obama was in the White House, Trump advanced the false claims that the 44th president, who was born in Hawaii, was born in Kenya and was constitutionally ineligible to serve. Trump, in interviews that helped endear him to many conservative voters, repeatedly demanded that Obama produce birth records and prove he was a “natural-born citizen” as required to become president.

    Obama eventually released his Hawaii records. Trump finally acknowledged during his 2016 campaign, after having won the Republican nomination, that Obama was born in Hawaii. But he immediately said, falsely, that his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton started those birtherism attacks on Obama.

  • Colorado funeral homeowner who abused nearly 200 corpses gets 40 years, decried as a ‘monster’

    Colorado funeral homeowner who abused nearly 200 corpses gets 40 years, decried as a ‘monster’

    COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — A Colorado funeral homeowner who stashed 189 decomposing bodies in a building over four years and gave grieving families fake ashes was sentenced to 40 years in state prison Friday.

    During the sentencing hearing, family members told Judge Eric Bentley they have had recurring nightmares about decomposing flesh and maggots since learning what happened to their loved ones.

    They called defendant Jon Hallford a “monster” and urged the judge to give him the maximum sentence of 50 years.

    Bentley told Hallford he caused “unspeakable and incomprehensible” harm.

    “It is my personal belief that every one of us, every human being, is basically good at the core, but we live in a world that tests that belief every day, and Mr. Hallford your crimes are testing that belief,” Bentley said.

    Hallford apologized before his sentencing and said he would regret his actions for the rest of his life.

    “I had so many chances to put a stop to everything and walk away, but I did not,” he said. “My mistakes will echo for a generation. Everything I did was wrong.”

    ‘Motivated by greed’

    Hallford’s attorney unsuccessfully sought a 30 year sentence, arguing that it was not a crime of violence and he had no prior criminal record.

    His former wife, Carie Hallford, who co-owned the Return to Nature Funeral Home, is due to be sentenced April 24. She faces 25 to 35 years in prison.

    Both pleaded guilty in December to nearly 200 counts of corpse abuse under an agreement with prosecutors.

    During the years they were stashing bodies, the Hallfords spent lavishly, according to court documents. That included purchasing a GMC Yukon and an Infiniti worth over $120,000 combined, along with $31,000 in cryptocurrency, pricey goods from stores like Gucci and Tiffany & Co., and laser body sculpting.

    “Clearly this is a crime motivated by greed,” prosecutor Shelby Crow said. The Hallfords charged more than $1,200 per customer, and the money the couple spent on luxury items would have covered the cost to cremate all of the bodies many times over, Crow said.

    The Hallfords also pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges after prosecutors said they cheated the government out of nearly $900,000 in pandemic-era small business aid. Jon Hallford was sentenced to 20 years in prison in that case, and Carie Hallford’s sentencing is pending.

    A plea agreement in the corpse abuse case calls for the state prison sentence to be served concurrently with the federal sentence.

    Heartbroken families

    One of the family members who spoke at the hearing was Kelly Mackeen, whose mother’s remains were handled by Return to Nature.

    “I’m a daughter whose mother was treated like yesterday’s trash and dumped in a site left to rot with hundreds of others,” Mackeen said. “I’m heartbroken, and I ask God every day for grace.”

    As she and others spoke of their grief, Jon Hallford sat at a table to their right, wearing orange jail attire and looking directly ahead. The courtroom’s wooden benches were full of relatives of the deceased and also journalists.

    The Hallfords stored the bodies in a building in the small town of Penrose, south of Colorado Springs, from 2019 until 2023, when investigators responding to reports of a stench from the building.

    Bodies were found throughout the building, some stacked on top of each other, with swarms of bugs and decomposition fluid covering the floors, investigators said. The remains — including adults, infants and fetuses — were stored at room temperature.

    The bodies were identified over months with fingerprints, DNA and other methods.

    Investigators believe the Hallfords gave families dry concrete that resembled ashes.

    After families learned that what they received and then spread or kept at home were not actually their loved ones’ remains, many said it undid their grieving process, while others had nightmares and struggled with guilt.

    Lax regulations

    One of the recovered bodies was that of a former Army sergeant first class who was thought to have been buried at a veterans’ cemetery, FBI agent Andrew Cohen said.

    When investigators exhumed the wooden casket at the cemetery, they found the remains of a person of a different gender inside, he said. The veteran, who was not identified in court, was later given a funeral with full military honors at Pikes Peak National Cemetery.

    The corpse abuse revelations spurred changes to Colorado’s lax funeral home regulations.

    The AP previously reported that the Hallfords missed tax payments, were evicted from one of their properties and were sued for unpaid bills, according to public records and interviews with people who worked with them.

    In a rare decision last year, Judge Bentley rejected previous plea agreements between the Hallfords and prosecutors that called for up to 20 years in prison. Family members of the deceased said the agreements were too lenient.

  • A funeral home stashed 189 decaying bodies and handed out fake ashes. His mother was among them

    A funeral home stashed 189 decaying bodies and handed out fake ashes. His mother was among them

    COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Derrick Johnson buried his mother’s ashes beneath a golden dewdrop tree with purple blossoms at his home on Maui’s Haleakalā Volcano, fulfilling her wish of a final resting place looking over her grandchildren.

    Then the FBI called.

    It was Feb. 4, 2024, and Johnson was teaching an eighth-grade gym class.

    “‘Are you the son of Ellen Lopes?’” a woman asked, Johnson recalled in an interview with the Associated Press.

    There had been an incident, and an FBI agent would fly out to explain, the caller said. Then she asked: “’Did you use Return to Nature for a funeral home?’”

    “‘You should probably google them,’” she added.

    In the clatter of the weight room, Johnson typed “Return to Nature” into his cell phone. Dozens of news reports appeared, details popping out in a blur.

    Hundreds of bodies stacked on top of each other. Inches of body decomposition fluid. Swarms of bugs. Investigators traumatized. Governor declares state of emergency.

    Johnson felt nauseated and his chest constricted, forcing the breath from his lungs. He pushed himself out of the building as another teacher heard his cries and came running.

    Two FBI agents visited Johnson the following week, confirming his mother’s body was among 189 that Return to Nature’s owners, Jon and Carie Hallford, had stashed in a Colorado building between 2019 and Oct. 4, 2023, when the bodies were found.

    It was one of the largest discoveries of decaying bodies at a funeral home in the U.S. Lawmakers overhauled the state’s lax funeral home regulations. And besides handing over fake ashes to grieving families, the Hallfords also admitted to defrauding the federal government out of nearly $900,000 in pandemic-era aid for small businesses.

    Even as the Hallfords’ bills went unpaid, authorities said they bought Tiffany jewelry, luxury cars, and laser-body sculpting, pocketing about $130,000 clients paid for cremations.

    They were arrested in Oklahoma in November 2023 and charged with abusing nearly 200 corpses.

    Hundreds of families learned from officials that the ashes they ceremonially spread or kept close weren’t actually their loved ones’ remains. The bodies of their mothers, fathers, grandparents, children, and babies had moldered in a room-temperature building in Colorado.

    Jon Hallford was sentenced Friday to 40 years in prison. His now ex-wife, Carie Hallford, was to be sentenced in April. Both had pleaded guilty in December. Attorneys for Jon and Carie Hallford did not respond to an AP request for comment.

    Johnson, 45, who’s suffered panic attacks since the FBI called, promised himself that he would speak at Hallford’s sentencing and ask for the maximum penalty.

    “When the judge passes out how long you’re going to jail, and you walk away in cuffs,” he said, “you’re gonna hear me.”

    ‘She lied’

    Jon and Carie Hallford were a husband-and-wife team who advertised “green burials” without embalming as well as cremation at their Return to Nature funeral home in Colorado Springs.

    She would greet grieving families, guiding them through their loved ones’ final journey. He was less seen.

    Johnson called the funeral home in early February 2023, the week his mother died. Carie Hallford assured him she would take good care of his mother, Johnson said.

    Days later, she handed Johnson a blue box containing a zip-tied plastic bag with gray powder, saying those were his mother’s ashes.

    “She lied to me over the phone. She lied to me through email. She lied to me in person,” Johnson told the AP.

    The following day, the box lay surrounded by flowers and photos of Ellen Marie Shriver-Lopes at a memorial service at a Holiday Inn in Colorado Springs.

    Johnson sprinkled rose petals over it as a preacher said: “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

    Caught on video

    On Sept. 9, 2023, surveillance footage showed a man appearing to be Jon Hallford walk inside a building owned by Return to Nature in the town of Penrose, outside Colorado Springs, according to an arrest affidavit.

    Camera footage inside showed a body laying on a gurney wearing a diaper and hospital socks. The man flipped it onto the floor.

    Then he “appeared to wipe the remaining decomposition from the gurney onto other bodies in the room,” before wheeling what appeared to be two more bodies into the building, the affidavit said.

    In a text to his wife, Hallford said, “while I was making the transfer, I got people juice on me,” according to court testimony.

    The neighborhood mom

    Johnson grew up with his mother in an affordable-housing complex in Colorado Springs, where she knew everyone.

    Johnson’s father wasn’t around much; at 5 years old, Johnson remembers seeing him punch his mom, sending her careening into a table, then onto a guitar, breaking it.

    It was Lopes who taught Johnson to shave and hollered from the bleachers at his football games.

    Neighborhood kids called her “mom,” some sleeping on the couch when they needed a place to stay and a warm meal. She would chat with Jehovah’s Witnesses because she didn’t want to be rude. With a life spent in social work, Lopes would say: “If you have the ability and you have the voice to help … help.”

    Johnson spoke with his mother nearly everyday. After diabetes left her blind and bedridden at age 65, she’d ask Johnson to describe what her grandchildren looked like over the phone.

    It was Super Bowl Sunday in 2023 when her heart stopped.

    Johnson, who had flown in from Hawaii to be at her bedside, clutched her warm hand and held it until it was cold.

    A gruesome discovery

    Detective Sgt. Michael Jolliffe and Laura Allen, the county’s deputy coroner, stood outside the Penrose building on Oct. 3, 2023, according to the 50-page arrest affidavit.

    A sign on the door read “Return to Nature Funeral Home” and listed a phone number. When Joliffe called it, it was disconnected. Cracked concrete and yellow stalks of grass encircled the building. At back was a shabby hearse with expired registration. A window air-conditioner hummed.

    Someone had told Jolliffe of a rank smell coming from the building the day before, the affidavit said.

    One neighbor told an AP reporter they thought it came from a septic tank; another said her daughter’s dog always headed to the building whenever he got off-leash.

    It was reminiscent of rancid manure or rotting fish, and struck anyone downwind of the building.

    Joliffe and Allen spotted a dark stain under the door and on the building’s stucco exterior. They thought it looked like fluids they had seen during investigations with decaying bodies, the affidavit said.

    But the building’s windows were covered and they couldn’t see inside.

    Allen contacted the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agency, which oversees funeral homes, which got in touch with Jon Hallford. Hallford agreed to show an inspector inside the next afternoon.

    Inspector Joseph Berry arrived, but Hallford didn’t show.

    Berry found a small opening in one of the window coverings, the affidavit said. Peering through, he saw white plastic bags that looked like body bags on the floor.

    A judge issued a search warrant that week.

    Bodies stacked high

    Donning protective suits, gloves, boots, and respirators, investigators entered the 2,500-square-foot building on Oct. 5, 2023, according to the affidavit.

    Inside, they found a large bone grinder and next to it a bag of Quikcrete that investigators suspected was used to mimic ashes. Bodies were stacked in nearly a dozen rooms, including the bathroom, sometimes so high they blocked doorways, the affidavit said.

    There were 189.

    Some had decayed for years, others several months, according to the affidavit. Many were in body bags, some wrapped in sheets and duct tape. Others were half-exposed, on gurneys or in plastic totes, or lay with no covering, it said.

    Investigators believed the Hallfords were experimenting with water cremation, which can dissolve a body in several hours, the document said. There were swarms of bugs and maggots.

    Body bags were filled with fluid, according to the affidavit. Some had ripped. Five-gallon buckets had been placed to catch the leaks. Removal teams “trudged through layers of human decomposition on the floor,” it said.

    Investigators identified bodies using fingerprints, hospital bracelets and medical implants, the affidavit said. It said one body was supposed to be buried in Pikes Peak National Cemetery.

    Investigators exhumed the wooden casket at the burial site of the U.S. Army veteran, who served in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf. Inside was a woman’s deteriorated body, wrapped in duct tape and plastic sheets.

    The veteran’s body was discovered in the Penrose building, covered in maggots.

    ‘Ashes to ashes’

    Following the call from the FBI, Johnson promised himself he would speak at the Hallfords’ sentencing. But he struggled to talk about what had happened even with close friends, let alone in front of a judge and the Hallfords.

    For months, Johnson obsessed over the case, reading dozens of news reports, often glued to his phone until one of his children would interrupt him to play.

    When he shut his eyes, he said he imagined trudging through the building with “maggots, flies, centipedes. There’s rats, they’re feasting.” He asked a preacher if his mother’s soul had been trapped there. She reassured him it hadn’t. When an episode of the zombie show The Walking Dead came on, he broke down.

    Johnson started seeing a therapist and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. He joined Zoom meetings with other victims’ relatives as the number grew from dozens to hundreds.

    After Lopes’ body was identified, Johnson flew in March 2024 to Colorado, where his mother’s remains lay in a brown box in a crematorium.

    “I don’t think you blame me, but I still want to tell you I’m sorry,” he recalled saying, placing his hand on the box.

    Then Lopes’ body was loaded into the cremator and Johnson pushed the button.

    Justice

    Johnson has slowly improved with therapy, engaging more with his students and children. He began practicing speaking at the Hallfords’ sentencings in therapy. Closing his eyes, he envisioned standing in front of the judge — and the Hallfords.

    “Justice is, it’s the part that is missing from this whole equation,” he said. “Maybe somehow this justice frees me.

    “And then there’s part of me that’s scared it won’t, because it probably won’t.”

  • Luigi Mangione speaks out in protest as judge sets state murder trial for June 8

    Luigi Mangione speaks out in protest as judge sets state murder trial for June 8

    NEW YORK — Luigi Mangione spoke out in court Friday against the prospect of back-to-back trials over the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, telling a judge: “It’s the same trial twice. One plus one is two. Double jeopardy by any commonsense definition.”

    Mangione, 27, made the remarks as court officers escorted him out of the courtroom after a judge scheduled his state murder trial to begin June 8, three months before jury selection in his federal case.

    Judge Gregory Carro, matter-of-fact in his decision after a lengthy discussion with prosecutors and defense lawyers at the bench, said the state trial could be delayed until Sept. 8 if an appeal delays the federal trial.

    Mangione’s lawyers objected to the June trial date, telling Carro that at that time, they’ll be consumed with preparing for the federal trial, which involves allegations that Mangione stalked Thompson before killing him.

    “Mr. Mangione is being put in an untenable situation,” defense lawyer Karen Friedman Agnifilo said. ”This is a tug-of-war between two different prosecution offices.”

    “The defense will not be ready on June 8,” she added.

    “Be ready,” Carro replied.

    Mangione has pleaded not guilty to state and federal charges, both of which carry the possibility of life in prison. Last week, the judge in the federal case ruled that prosecutors can’t seek the death penalty.

    Jury selection in the federal case is set for Sept. 8, followed by opening statements and testimony on Oct. 13.

    Wearing a tan jail suit, Mangione sat quietly at the defense table until his outburst at the end of the hearing.

    As the trial calendar began to take shape, Assistant District Attorney Joel Seidemann sent a letter to Carro asking him to begin the New York trial on July 1.

    The prosecutor argued that the state’s interests “would be unfairly prejudiced by an unnecessary delay” until after the federal trial. Under the law, he said, the state has “priority of jurisdiction for purposes of trial, sentencing and incarceration” because Mangione was arrested by New York City police, not federal authorities.

    When Mangione was arrested, federal prosecutors said anticipated that the state trial would go first. Seidemann told Carro on Friday that Thompson’s family has also expressed a desire to see the state trial happen first.

    “It appears the federal government has reneged on its agreement to let the state, which has done most of the work in this case, go first,” Carro said Friday.

    Scheduling the state trial first could help Manhattan prosecutors avoid double jeopardy issues. Under New York law, the district attorney’s office could be barred from trying Mangione if his federal trial happens first.

    The state’s double jeopardy protections kick in if a jury has been sworn in a prior prosecution, such as a federal case, or if that prosecution ends in a guilty plea. The cases involve different charges but the same alleged course of conduct.

    Mangione isn’t due in court again in the state case until May, when Carro is expected to rule on a defense request to exclude certain evidence that prosecutors say connects Mangione to the killing.

    Those items include a 9mm handgun that prosecutors say matches the one used to kill Thompson and a notebook in which they say he described his intent to “wack” a health insurance executive.

    Last week, Garnett ruled that prosecutors can use those items at that trial.

    In September, Carro threw out state terrorism charges but kept the rest of the case, including an intentional murder charge.

    Thompson, 50, was killed on Dec. 4, 2024, as he walked to a midtown Manhattan hotel for UnitedHealth Group’s annual investor conference.

    Surveillance video showed a masked gunman shooting him from behind. Police say “delay,” “deny” and “depose” were written on the ammunition, mimicking a phrase used to describe how insurers avoid paying claims.

    Mangione, a University of Pennsylvania graduate from a wealthy Maryland family, was arrested five days later at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa., about 230 miles west of Manhattan.

  • The Milan Cortina Olympics officially open with a multisite ceremony for a spread-out Winter Games

    The Milan Cortina Olympics officially open with a multisite ceremony for a spread-out Winter Games

    MILAN, Italy — Featuring tributes to da Vinci and Dante, Puccini and Pausini, Armani and Fellini, pasta and vino, and other iconic tastes of Italian culture — plus Mariah Carey hitting all the high notes in “Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu” aka “Volare” — an unprecedented four-site, dual-cauldron opening ceremony got the Milan Cortina Olympics officially started Friday.

    Allowing athletes to participate in the Parade of Nations at the mountain locales for the most spread-out Winter Games in history created what perhaps was an unintended consequence: Zero competitors from any of the first five countries announced actually showed up at the main hub, Milan’s San Siro soccer stadium.

    While signs bearing the names of Greece — which always leads the procession as the birthplace of the Olympics — Albania, Andorra, Saudi Arabia, and Argentina were carried into the home of Serie A soccer titans AC Milan and Inter Milan, there were no athletes from those places around. Instead, they were participating at simultaneous festivities held at Cortina d’Ampezzo in the heart of the Dolomites, Livigno in the Alps, and Predazzo in the autonomous province of Trento.

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    The first country with athletes at San Siro was Armenia — and their entrance drew raucous cheers from a crowd filled with 61,000 ticket-holders plus others.

    Later, a smattering of boos met Israel’s four representatives at the Milan ceremony. There have been some calls for Israel to be banned from the Olympics over the war in Gaza, which began with Hamas’ deadly attack in October 2023.

    And while athletes from the U.S. were cheered when they appeared, Vice President JD Vance was jeered when he was shown briefly on the arena’s video boards from his spot in the tribune. Support for the United States among its allies has been eroding as the Trump administration has taken an aggressive posture on foreign policy, including punishing tariffs, military action in Venezuela and threats to invade Greenland.

    The contingent from Venezuela got a big backing when entering. So did that from Ukraine, where a war continues four years after Russia invaded.

    The ceremony’s organizers have said they sought to convey themes of harmony and peace, seeking to represent the city-mountain dichotomy of the particularly unusual setup for these Olympics while also trying to appeal to a sense of unity at a time of global tensions. South African actor Charlize Theron and Italian rapper Ghali delivered messages of peace toward the end of the night.

    “I hope the opening ceremony is seen by everyone as an opportunity to be respectful,” new International Olympic Committee President Kirsty Coventry said when asked this week about possible crowd reactions.

    The loudest greeting was reserved, naturally, for host Italy, which walked in last, to an electronic version of The Barber of Seville.

    The ceremony was already nearly three hours old — and not yet done — by the time Italian President Sergio Mattarella officially declared the Milan Cortina Games open following a speech by Coventry, the first woman to lead the IOC.

    “Thank you for believing in the magic of the Olympic Games,” she said, then several minutes later made sure to make mention of the “media rights holders” who pay to broadcast the event.

    Soon, tenor Andrea Bocelli’s voice was belting out Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma” and its closing refrain of “Vincerò,” Italian for “I will win!” As he concluded, torch bearers headed out of the arena to light a cauldron at the Arch of Peace, 2½ miles from San Siro.

    One symbol of how far-flung things are at these Olympics: Instead of the usual one cauldron that is lit and burns throughout the Games, there were going to be two, both intended as an homage to Leonardo da Vinci’s geometric studies. The other is 250 miles away in Cortina.

    All three flame-lighters — Alberto Tomba and Deborah Compagnoni in Milan, and Sofia Goggia in Cortina — are Olympic champion Alpine ski racers from Italy. Tomba and Compagnoni are retired; Goggia is entered in the 2026 Games.

    The full collection of competition venues for the next two-plus weeks dot an area of about 8,500 square miles, roughly the size of the entire state of New Jersey. The multicity ceremony format Friday allowed up-in-the-mountains sports such as Alpine skiing, bobsled, curling, and snowboarding to be represented without requiring folks to make the several-hours-long trek to Milan.

    It didn’t exactly feel like a Winter Games in the country’s financial capital, where the temperature was a tad below 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and the sky was a crisp, clear azure all afternoon Friday. Not a trace of clouds, let alone snow.

    As Italy welcomed the world by displaying symbols of its heritage, the show produced by Olympic ceremony veteran Marco Balich began with dancers from the academy of the famed Milan opera house Teatro alla Scala reimagining 18th-century sculptor Antonio Canova’s marble works.

    Singer Mariah Carey performs during the Olympic opening ceremony at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Friday, Feb. 6, 2026.

    People wearing oversized, mascot-style heads representing opera composers Giacomo Puccini, Gioachino Rossini, and Giuseppe Verdi appeared on the central stage, before giant paint tubes floated above and dropped silk of red, blue, and yellow — the primary colors — before an early parade of various-color-wearing characters arrived in the stadium. They represented music and art, literature, and architecture, appreciations for beauty and history and, above all, La Dolce Vita (loosely, Italian for “The Good Life” and the name of a 1960 film by Federico Fellini).

    There were references to ancient Rome, the Renaissance, the Venice Carnival, and the country’s noted traditions in various areas such as cuisine and literature, such as Pinocchio and Dante’s Inferno.

    A runway walk showcased outfits — created by the late fashion designer Giorgio Armani, who died last year at 91 — in the colors of Italy’s flag: red, green, and white. And balladeer Laura Pausini sang Italy’s national anthem.

    Carey got loud cheers in Milan as she sang in Italian. In Cortina, hundreds of fans sang along with her, and a roar emerged when they realized she was performing the song with the “Volare” refrain.

    Another local touch: Italian actor Sabrina Impacciatore, of White Lotus fame, led a segment that took viewers through a century of past Olympics, with examples of evolving equipment, sportswear, and music. And actor and comedian Brenda Lodigiani demonstrated the popular Italian hand gestures often used to communicate in place of words.

    Team United States enters the stadium during Friday’s opening ceremony at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, Italy.
  • New York City police officer convicted of manslaughter in cooler throwing death

    New York City police officer convicted of manslaughter in cooler throwing death

    NEW YORK — A New York City police officer was convicted Friday of second-degree manslaughter after he tossed a picnic cooler filled with drinks at a fleeing suspect, causing the man to fatally crash his motorized scooter.

    Judge Guy Mitchell handed down the guilty verdict Friday in Bronx criminal court in the case against Sgt. Erik Duran in the 2023 death of Eric Duprey.

    “The fact that the defendant is a police officer has no bearing,” the judge said before reading out his verdict in a brief hearing. ”He’s a person and will be treated as any other defendant.”

    Members of Duprey’s family sobbed as the decision was read out. Orlyanis Velez, Duprey’s wife, said after that she was happy but also surprised.

    “I was waiting for justice just like everybody, but when the moment happens, you can’t believe it’s happening,” she said outside of the courthouse. “It’s been a lot of time. These people been killing citizens, been killing everybody. They don’t give no reason.”

    Duran didn’t appear to react when the decision was handed down, and his lawyer and spokespersons for his police union didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment.

    Duran had been suspended with pay pending the trial, but the department confirmed Friday he was dismissed following his conviction, as state law mandates. Duran now faces up to 15 years in prison when he is sentenced March 19.

    State Attorney General Letitia James, whose office prosecuted the case, offered her condolences to Duprey’s family.

    “Though it cannot return Eric to his loved ones, today’s decision gives justice to his memory,” she said in a statement.

    The 38-year-old Duran, who was the first New York Police Department officer in years to be tried for killing someone while on duty, also faced charges of criminally negligent homicide and assault.

    But Mitchell dismissed the assault count earlier, saying prosecutors failed to show he intended to hurt Duprey. He also didn’t deliver a verdict on the criminally negligent homicide charge as he’d already found Duran guilty of the more serious manslaughter charge.

    Duran had pleaded not guilty and opted for a bench trial, meaning the judge, not a jury, would render the verdict.

    Authorities say that on Aug. 23, 2023, Duprey sold drugs to an undercover officer in the Bronx and then fled.

    Duran, who had been part of a narcotics unit conducting the operation, is seen in security footage grabbing a nearby red cooler and quickly hurling it at Duprey in an attempt to stop him.

    The container full of ice, water and sodas struck Duprey, who lost control of the scooter, slammed into a tree and crashed onto the pavement before landing under a parked car.

    Prosecutors said the 30-year-old, who was not wearing a helmet, sustained fatal head injuries and died almost instantaneously.

    Duran, testifying in his own defense this week, said he only had seconds to react and was trying to protect other officers from Duprey as he sped toward them. He told the court he immediately tried to render aid after seeing the extent of Duprey’s injuries.

    “He was gonna crash into us,” Duran said in court. “I didn’t have time. All I had time for was to try again to stop or to try to get him to change directions. That’s all I had the time to think of.”

    But prosecutors maintained Duprey didn’t pose a threat and that his death wasn’t accidental but the result of Duran’s reckless, negligent and intentional actions.

    They suggested the officer had enough time to warn others to move, but instead tossed the cooler in anger and frustration.

  • Actor Timothy Busfield indicted on 4 counts of sexual contact with a child

    Actor Timothy Busfield indicted on 4 counts of sexual contact with a child

    SANTA FE, N.M. — West Wing and Field of Dreams actor Timothy Busfield has been indicted by a grand jury on four counts of criminal sexual contact with a child under age 13, a New Mexico prosecutor announced Friday.

    The allegations are tied to Busfield’s work as a director on the set of the TV series The Cleaning Lady from 2022 to 2024.

    Busfield has denied the allegations, initially filed in court by police, and a defense attorney on Friday said he would “fight these charges at every stage.”

    Bernalillo County District Attorney Sam Bregman announced the indictment in a social media post.

    Busfield had turned himself in to authorities in January on related charges by police and was released from jail by a judge who found no pattern of criminal conduct or similar allegations involving children in Busfield’s past. The grand jury indictment allows the case against Busfield to proceed toward possible trial without a preliminary courtroom hearing on evidence.

    Larry Stein, an attorney for Busfield, did not comment directly on the sexual contact charge in the indictment but said the grand jury declined to endorse grooming charges sought by prosecutors. Prosecutors declined to comment on what accusations it brought before the grand jury.

    Stein said in a statement that a detention hearing already “exposed fatal weaknesses in the state’s evidence — gaps that no amount of charging decisions can cure.”

    “Mr. Busfield will fight these charges at every stage and looks forward to testing the State’s case in open court,” the statement said.

    An investigator with the Albuquerque Police Department said a boy reported that Busfield touched his private areas over his clothing when he was 7 years old and again when he was 8, according to the initial criminal complaint from police. The boy’s twin told authorities he was also touched by Busfield, but he didn’t say anything right away because he didn’t want to get in trouble, the complaint said.

    The indictment — filed Friday in state District Court — reiterates allegations that Busfield “touched or applied force to the intimate parts” of one of the boys on several occasions.

    At a detention hearing last month, Busfield’s attorneys pointed out that the children initially said during interviews with police that Busfield didn’t touch them inappropriately. Busfield’s attorneys then accused the boys’ parents of coaching their children toward incriminating statements after the boys lost lucrative roles on the show.

    But Assistant District Attorney Savannah Brandenburg-Koch has called evidence of abuse against Busfield strong and specific, with support from medical findings and the boys’ therapist. She also said witnesses expressed fear about potential retaliation and professional harm.

    Prosecutors have outlined what they said was grooming behavior and abuse of power by Busfield over three decades.

    Each count in the indictment against Busfied carries a possible penalty of six years in prison that can be enhanced if it involves a sexual offense, according to prosecutors.

    In freeing Busfield on Jan. 20, state District Court Judge David Murphy said that while the crimes Busfield is accused of inherently are dangerous and involve children, prosecutors didn’t prove the public wouldn’t be safe if he’s released.

    Busfield is best known for appearances on The West Wing, Field of Dreams, and Thirtysomething.

  • Justice Dept. announces arrest of ‘key participant’ in 2012 Benghazi attack

    Justice Dept. announces arrest of ‘key participant’ in 2012 Benghazi attack

    WASHINGTON — A man Justice Department officials described as a key participant in the 2012 attack that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya, was taken into U.S. custody Friday and will face prosecution.

    Zubayar al-Bakoush was arrested in an undisclosed country and flown to an airfield near Washington, where he arrived just after 3 a.m. Friday, Attorney General Pam Bondi said. He faces an eight-count indictment on charges including murder, terrorism and arson.

    Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel declined at a news conference to answer questions about where al-Bakoush was arrested and whether the operation that brought him into custody involved the assistance of foreign nations.

    “We have never stopped seeking justice for that crime against our nation,” Bondi said.

    In the Sept. 11, 2012, attack, at least 20 militants, armed with AK-47s and grenade launchers, stormed the U.S. mission in Benghazi, breaching its gates, forcing their way into offices and setting buildings ablaze. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, State Department employee Sean Smith and CIA contractors Tyrone S. Woods and Glen Doherty were killed. Stevens was the first U.S. ambassador slain while performing his duties abroad in nearly four decades

    Almost immediately, the incident became a subject for partisan finger-pointing, with Republican lawmakers faulting the Obama administration and especially then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for alleged security failures at the facility and what they described as a slow response to the violence. References to Benghazi — nearly 14 years later — remain a potent point of political division.

    Even as they announced al-Bakoush’s arrest Friday, Justice Department officials seized the opportunity to swipe at frequent Republican targets, renew old lines of attack, and credit President Donald Trump.

    “Hillary Clinton famously once said about Benghazi, ‘What difference, at this point, does it make?’” Bondi said, referring to an irritated response Clinton gave during a 2013 Senate hearing at which she was repeatedly pressed about the motive for the attack.

    “Well, it makes a difference to Donald Trump,” Bondi continued. “It makes a difference to those families and 14 years later, it makes a difference to law enforcement who made the difference in this case.”

    A Republican-led congressional investigation into the incident later found no evidence of wrongdoing by Clinton, though it faulted the Obama administration more broadly for being slow to respond after the militants breached the gates.

    Jeanine Pirro, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Washington whose office is overseeing the prosecution, made reference to that frequent Republican criticism in her remarks Friday about al-Bakoush’s arrest.

    In her prior role as a Fox News host, Pirro frequently waded into the debate over Benghazi, at one point accusing then-FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III of orchestrating a cover-up to protect administration officials.

    “For 13 hours, the American cavalry never came,” she said Friday. “For 13, hours [the victims] waited for that help that never came.

    Democrats have defended their efforts to prosecute individuals tied to the deaths of Stevens and the others, noting that the Justice Department had by late 2013 filed sealed complaints against roughly a dozen overseas militants accused of playing a role in the attack.

    Pirro acknowledged Friday that the complaint that led to al-Bakoush’s arrest was first filed in 2015, during the final year of the Obama administration.

    Court filings unsealed Friday described al-Bakoush as a member of an extremist Libyan militia who was identified by a cooperating FBI witness as one of the attackers caught on surveillance footage from the compound. Agents described footage showing al-Bakoush, with a firearm slung over his shoulder, attempting to break into cars of U.S. service members and following the crowd into buildings where Stephens and others were killed.

    Al-Bakoush is the third man law enforcement officials have brought to the U.S. to face charges.

    A federal jury in Washington in 2017 convicted Ahmed Abu Khattala, a Libyan militia leader and the accused mastermind behind the attack, on conspiracy and terrorism charges tied to the incident. A second militant, Mustafa al-Imam, was found guilty on similar charges in 2019. Both men were sentenced to prison terms of more than a decade.

    “Time will not stop us from going after these predators, no matter how long it takes, to fulfill our obligation to those families who suffered horrific pain at the hands of these violent terrorists,” Pirro said.

  • Norwegian crown princess apologizes to royals and all ‘disappointed’ by her Epstein contacts

    Norwegian crown princess apologizes to royals and all ‘disappointed’ by her Epstein contacts

    OSLO, Norway — Norway’s crown princess apologized on Friday for the situation she has put the royal family in as she faces scrutiny over her contacts with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, part of a broader apology for all those she has “disappointed.”

    Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s communications and contacts with Epstein have put her in the spotlight over the past week, adding to the embarrassment to the royals just as her son went on trial in Oslo for multiple offenses, including charges of rape.

    The Epstein files contained several hundred mentions of the crown princess, who said in 2019 that she regretted having had contact with Epstein, Norwegian media reported.

    The documents, which include email exchanges, showed that Mette-Marit borrowed an Epstein-owned property in Palm Beach, Fla., for several days in 2013. Broadcaster NRK reported that the stay was arranged through a mutual friend, which was later confirmed by the royal household.

    The royal palace said Friday that Mette-Marit wants to talk about what happened and explain herself in more detail, but is unable to at present. It added that she is in a very difficult situation and “hopes for understanding that she needs time to gather her thoughts.”

    It also issued a statement from the crown princess — her second in a week — in which she reiterated her deep regret for her past friendship with Epstein.

    “It is important for me to apologize to all of you whom I have disappointed,” she said. “Some of the content of the messages between Epstein and me does not represent the person I want to be. I also apologize for the situation I have put the Royal Family in, especially the King and Queen.”

    King Harald, 88, and the royals are generally popular in Norway, but the case against Mette-Marit’s son, Marius Borg Høiby, has been a problem for the family’s image since 2024 and the latest Epstein files have compounded that. Mette-Marit is married to Crown Prince Haakon, the heir to the throne.

    The release of documents included an email from Mette-Marit to Epstein in November 2012 asking: “Is it inappropriate for a mother to suggest two naked women carrying a surfboard for my 15-year-old son’s wallpaper?”

    He replied, “Let them decide,” and advised that the mother should, “Stay out of it.”

    Mette-Marit, 52, said in a statement issued shortly after the files were released that she “must take responsibility for not having investigated Epstein’s background more thoroughly, and for not realizing sooner what kind of person he was.” She added: “I showed poor judgment and regret having had any contact with Epstein at all. It is simply embarrassing.”

    The crown princess isn’t the only high-profile Norwegian who faces unflattering attention stemming from the documents on millionaire financier and sex offender Epstein released by the U.S. Department of Justice.

    The Norwegian Economic Crime Investigation Service, a mixed unit of police and prosecutors, said Thursday that it would look into whether gifts, travel or loans were received by former Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland in connection with his positions.

    Jagland was Norway’s prime minister between 1996 and 1997. He also has chaired the Norwegian Nobel Committee and was secretary general of the Council of Europe.

    The files revealed years of contact between the politician and Epstein. Emails indicate that he made plans to visit Epstein’s island with his family in 2014, when he was chairman of the Nobel committee, with an Epstein assistant organizing the flights.

    Norwegian authorities are also looking to lift Jagland’s immunity, which he enjoys because of his past as a diplomat. His legal representative told Norwegian broadcaster NRK that Jagland is cooperating with the investigation.

    The World Economic Forum also announced on Thursday that it was opening an internal review into its CEO Børge Brende to determine his relationship with Epstein, after the files indicated the two had dined together several times and exchanged messages. Brende was Norway’s foreign minister from 2013-2017.

    He told NRK that he is cooperating with the investigation, that he only met Epstein in business settings and that he had been unaware of Epstein’s criminal background.

    Epstein killed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges that he sexually abused underage girls at his homes in the U.S.