Category: News

NEW ORLEANS — People leaned out of wrought iron balconies, hollering the iconic phrase “Throw me something, Mister” as a massive Mardi Gras parade rolled down New Orleans’ historic St. Charles Avenue on Tuesday.

Mardi Gras, also known as Fat Tuesday, marks the climax and end of the weekslong Carnival season and a final chance for indulgence, feasting, and revelry before the Christian Lent period of sacrifice and reflection. The joyous goodbye to Carnival always falls the day before Ash Wednesday.

In Louisiana’s most populous city, which is world-famous for its Mardi Gras bash, people donned green, gold, and purple outfits, with some opting for an abundance of sequins and others showing off homemade costumes.

The revelers began lining the streets as the sun rose. They set up chairs, coolers, grills, and ladders — offering a higher vantage point.

As marching bands and floats filled with women wearing massive feathered headdresses passed by, the music echoing through the city streets, people danced and cheered. Others sipped drinks, with many opting for adult concoctions on the day of celebration rather than the usual morning coffee.

Each parade has its signature “throws” — trinkets that include plastic beads, candy, doubloons, stuffed animals, cups, and toys. Hand-decorated coconuts are the coveted item from Zulu, a massive parade named after the largest ethnic group in South Africa.

As a man, dressed like a crawfish — including red fabric claws for hands — caught one of the coconuts, he waved it around, the gold glitter on the husk glistening in the sun.

Sue Mennino was dressed in a white Egyptian-inspired costume, complete with a gold headpiece and translucent cape. Her face was embellished with glitter and electric blue eyeshadow.

“The world will be here tomorrow, but today is a day off and a time to party,” Mennino said.

The party isn’t solely confined to the parade route. Throughout the French Quarter, people celebrated in the streets, on balconies and on the front porches of shotgun-style homes.

One impromptu parade was led by a man playing a washboard instrument and dressed as a blue alligator — his papier-mâché tail dragging along the street, unintentionally sweeping up stray beads with it. A brass band played “The Saints” as people danced.

In Jackson Square, the costumed masses included a man painted from head to toe as a zebra, a group cosplaying as Hungry Hungry Hippos from the tabletop game and a diver wearing an antique brass and copper helmet.

“The people are the best part,” said Martha Archer, who was dressed as Madame Leota, the disembodied medium whose head appears within a crystal ball in the Haunted Mansion attraction at Disney amusement parks.

Archer’s face was painted blue and her outfit was a makeshift table that came up to her neck — giving the appearance that she was indeed a floating head.

“Everybody is just so happy,” she explained.

The good times will roll not just in New Orleans but across the state, from exclusive balls to the Cajun French tradition of the Courir de Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday Run — a rural event in Central Louisiana featuring costumed participants performing, begging for ingredients and chasing live chickens to be cooked in a communal gumbo.

Parades are also held in other Gulf Coast cities such as Mobile, Ala., and Pensacola, Fla., and there are other world-renowned celebrations in Brazil and Europe.

One of the quirkiest is an international Pancake Day competition pitting the women of Liberal, Kan., against the women of Olney, England. Pancakes are used because they were thought to be a good way for Christians to consume the fat they were supposed to give up during the 40 days before Easter.

Contestants must carry a pancake in a frying pan and flip the pancake at the beginning and end of the 415-yard race.

ATLANTA — Georgia high school students on Tuesday testified in court about the horrors of being shot during their algebra class, and recounted through tears seeing a classmate in a pool of blood, then seeing blood on their own bodies and fearing they might die.

Various students took the stand at the trial of Colin Gray, the father of Colt Gray, who investigators said had carefully planned the Sept. 4, 2024, shooting at the school northeast of Atlanta that left two teachers and two students dead and several others wounded.

This is one of several cases around the nation where prosecutors are trying to hold parents responsible after their children are accused in fatal shootings.

A ninth-grade girl saw a hole in her wrist and began screaming moments after the gunfire began in her Algebra I class, she testified Tuesday.

“I was also worried that I was going to die and how that would affect my parents because my dad has a heart problem,” she said.

As paramedics carried her out of the school building, she saw Colt Gray on the floor with his hands behind his back and screamed obscenities at him as she passed by him.

“I remember yelling at him that we were kids, because we were kids,” she said. The faces of she and others who testified were not shown during a video livestream of the testimony because of their young ages.

Other students said the trauma was not limited to their physical wounds, as they spoke of being depressed, anxious and slow to trust people even now, more than a year later.

“Just seeing what I saw that day, it just sticks with me … and not being able to trust certain people, trust people,” said one girl who sustained a gunshot wound to her left shoulder.

Many of the students said they were still in counseling to deal with nightmares, fears of loud noises and anxiety at school and at home. “Even to go on a walk around my neighborhood, anxiety would fill my head, and I feel like somebody driving past me would shoot me,” a female student testified.

Colt Gray, who was 14 years old at the time of the shooting, faces 55 counts, including murder in the deaths of four people and 25 counts of aggravated assault. His father Colin Gray faces 29 counts, including two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of involuntary manslaughter.

Colin Gray should be held responsible for providing the weapon despite warnings about alleged threats his son made, a prosecutor said as the father’s trial began Monday.

“This case is about this defendant and his actions in allowing a child that he has custody over access to a firearm and ammunition after being warned that child was going to harm others,” Barrow County District Attorney Brad Smith said in his opening statement.

Prosecutors argue that amounts to cruelty to children, and second-degree murder is defined in Georgia law as causing the death of a child by committing the crime of cruelty to children.

But Brian Hobbs, an attorney for Colin Gray, said the shooting’s planning and timing “were hidden by Colt Gray from his father.”

“That’s the difference between tragedy and criminal liability,” he said. “You cannot hold someone criminally responsible for failing to predict what was intentionally hidden from them.”

With a semiautomatic rifle in his book bag, the barrel sticking out and wrapped in poster board, Colt Gray boarded the school bus, investigators said. He left his second-period class and emerged from a bathroom with the gun and then shot people in a classroom and hallways, they said.

Smith told the jury that in September 2021, Colt Gray used a school computer to search the phrase, “how to kill your dad.” School resource officers were then sent to the home, but it was determined to be a “misunderstanding,” Smith said.

Sixteen months before the shooting, in May 2023, law enforcement acted on a tip from the FBI after a shooting threat was made online concerning an elementary school. The threat was traced to a computer at Gray’s home, Smith said.

Colin Gray was told about the threat and was asked whether his son had access to guns. Gray replied that he and his son “take this school shooting stuff very seriously,” according to Smith. Colt Gray denied that he made the threat and said that his online account had been hacked, Smith said.

That Christmas, Colin Gray gave his son the gun as a gift and continued to buy accessories after that, including “a lot of ammunition,” Smith said.

Colin Gray knew his son was obsessed with school shooters, even having a shrine in his bedroom to Nikolas Cruz, the shooter in the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., prosecutors have said. A Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent had testified that the teen’s parents had discussed their son’s fascination with school shooters but decided that it was in a joking context and not a serious issue.

Three weeks before the shooting, Gray received a chilling text from his son: “Whenever something happens, just know the blood is on your hands,” according to Smith.

Colin Gray was also aware his son’s mental health had deteriorated and had sought help from a counseling service weeks before the shooting, an investigator testified.

“We have had a very difficult past couple of years and he needs help. Anger, anxiety, quick to be volatile. I don’t know what to do,” Colin Gray wrote about his son.

But Smith said Colin Gray never followed through on concerns about getting his son admitted to an inpatient facility.

GENEVA, Switzerland — Delegations from Moscow and Kyiv met in Geneva on Tuesday for another round of U.S.-brokered peace talks, a week before the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor.

However, expectations for any breakthroughs in the scheduled two days of talks in Switzerland were low, with neither side apparently ready to budge from its positions on key territorial issues and future security guarantees, despite the United States setting a June deadline for a settlement.

The head of the Ukrainian delegation, Rustem Umerov, posted photos on social media of the three delegations at a horseshoe-shaped table, with the Ukrainian and Russian officials sitting across from each other. President Donald Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, and son-in-law Jared Kushner sat at the head of the table in front of U.S., Russian, Ukrainian, and Swiss flags.

“The agenda includes security and humanitarian issues,” Umerov said, adding that Ukrainians will work “without excessive expectations.”

Tough talks expected

Discussions on the future of Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory are expected to be particularly tough, according to a person familiar with the talks who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to talk to reporters.

Russa is still insisting that Ukraine cede control of its eastern Donbas region.

Also in Geneva will be American, Russian, and Ukrainian military chiefs, who will discuss how ceasefire monitoring might work after any peace deal, and what’s needed to implement it, the person said.

During previous talks in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, military leaders looked at how a demilitarized zone could be arranged and how everyone’s militaries could talk to one another, the person added.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov cautioned against expecting developments on the first day of talks as they were set to continue on Wednesday. Moscow has provided few details of previous talks.

Trump describes the talks as ‘big’

Ukraine’s short-handed army is locked in a war of attrition with Russia’s bigger forces along the roughly 750-mile front line. Ukrainian civilians are enduring Russian aerial barrages that repeatedly knock out power and destroy homes.

The future of the almost 20% of Ukrainian land that Russia occupies or still covets is a central question in the talks, as are Kyiv’s demands for postwar security guarantees with a U.S. backstop to deter Moscow from invading again.

Trump described the Geneva meeting as “big talks.”

“Ukraine better come to the table fast,” he told reporters late Monday as he flew back to Washington from his home in Florida.

It wasn’t immediately clear what Trump was referring to in his comment about Ukraine, which has committed to and taken part in negotiations in the hope of ending Russia’s devastating onslaught.

Complex talks as the war presses on

The Russian delegation is headed by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s adviser Vladimir Medinsky, who headed Moscow’s team of negotiators in the first direct peace talks with Ukraine in Istanbul in March 2022 and has forcefully pushed Putin’s war goals. Medinsky has written several history books that claim to expose Western plots against Russia and berate Ukraine.

The commander of the U.S. military — and NATO forces — in Europe, Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, and Secretary of the U.S. Army Dan Driscoll will attend the meeting in Geneva on behalf of the U.S. military and meet with their Russian and Ukrainian counterparts, said Col. Martin O’Donnell, a spokesman for the U.S. commander.

Overnight, Russia used almost 400 long-range drones and 29 missiles of various types to strike 12 regions of Ukraine, injuring nine people, including children, according to the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Zelensky said tens of thousands of residents were left without heating and running water in the southern port city of Odesa. He said Moscow should be “held accountable” for the relentless attacks, which he said undermine the U.S. push for peace.

“The more this evil comes from Russia, the harder it will be for everyone to reach any agreements with them. Partners must understand this. First and foremost, this concerns the United States,” the Ukrainian leader said on social media late Monday.

“We agreed to all realistic proposals from the United States, starting with the proposal for an unconditional and long-term ceasefire,” Zelensky noted.

The talks in Geneva took place as U.S. officials also held indirect talks with Iran in the Swiss city.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Security Service, or SBU, used long-range drones to strike an oil terminal in southern Russia and a major chemical plant deep inside the country, a Ukrainian security official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly told the AP.

Drones targeted the Tamanneftegaz oil terminal, one of the biggest ports of its type on the Black Sea, in Russia’s Krasnodar region for the second time this month, starting a fire, the official said.

Drones also hit the Metafrax Chemicals plan, which manufactures chemical components used in explosives and other military materials, in Russia’s Perm region, more than 1,000 miles from the Ukrainian border, according to the official.