Author: rpnadmin

Three people have been charged with threatening a judge, a witness and local officials connected to the investigation into the death of Nolan Xavier Wells, an 18-year-old found dead after a July Fourth boat trip with friends to an island off Mississippi’s Gulf Coast. None of the three appear to know Wells, his family or the boating group, or be part of the investigation. The threats came amid rampant speculation and scrutiny of the investigation, deepened in part by uncertainty surrounding Wells’ final hours, distrust of law enforcement and the state’s long history of racist violence. The teenager, who was…

The Orange County Fair pulled a photograph from its competitive art exhibit this week after Orange County Republicans objected to the image, which depicted a child holding a sign reading “Happy Last Birthday” beside anti-Trump messaging — though fair officials say the removal came at the photographer’s own request, not in response to GOP pressure. The image, titled “The Young Fight” and submitted by photographer Alexander Nguyen as entry No. 1443, showed a family at a “No Kings” protest in Torrance. A child in the photo held the “Happy Last Birthday” sign next to another bearing a caricature of President…

The Trump administration said Wednesday it will shut down a Kentucky organ donation group accused of continuing plans for organ retrieval from some patients who unexpectedly showed signs of life. While those surgeries were canceled, the cases made headlines several years ago, prompting a spike in people around the country revoking their organ donor registrations. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called the nonprofit Network for Hope “a bad apple” and accused it of “persistent safety failures” in announcing the government was starting the process to decertify it. Network for Hope is one of about 55 organ procurement organizations, or…

A large part of the National Firearms Act is now unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled Wednesday, in a decision that could erase registration requirements for sales or transfer of silencers and short-barreled long guns. Judge James Wesley Hendrix, a Trump appointee to the bench in Texas, said when Congress zeroed out a tax on those weapons and accessories last year, it erased the constitutional underpinnings for the paperwork and registration requirements that were part of the 1934 gun law. Lawmakers said they needed the registrations to carry out the tax. But Judge Hendrix said no tax means no more registration.…

SPOKANE, Wash. — Firefighters have taken advantage of cooler weather to begin getting a handle on wildfires that have displaced tens of thousands of people around Washington state’s second-largest city, but hotter, drier and breezier days lie ahead. Officials reported Wednesday that firefighters had established containment lines around the perimeters of all three fires affecting Spokane and that they were focused on reinforcing those lines. Temperatures were expected to climb from the 80s the past two days into the upper 90s, with less humidity, late this week. The fires – one of which authorities say was deliberately set by a…

Multiple people were killed, and at least one other was wounded Wednesday morning in what North Carolina authorities are calling a mass shooting at a home in rural Caswell County, officials said. The Caswell County Sheriff’s Office said deputies responded to a call for service just before 8 a.m. at 352 Brooks Road in the Prospect Hill area, where they found multiple people who had been shot, including several who were killed. The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, in an earlier statement, put the timing slightly later, saying the shooting occurred around 8:30 a.m. One person was transported to…

Ronald Exantus, the Kentucky man found not guilty by reason of insanity in the 2015 killing of 6-year-old Logan Tipton, was released from the Kentucky State Reformatory on July 29 after completing the sentence he received on separate assault convictions tied to the same attack. Mr. Exantus, 42, broke into the Tipton family’s Versailles home on Dec. 7, 2015, and stabbed Logan to death as the boy slept, prosecutors said. Logan’s father and sisters survived the attack. A 2018 jury found Mr. Exantus guilty but mentally ill on two counts of second-degree assault and one count of fourth-degree assault for…

The Supreme Court on Tuesday released its upcoming oral argument calendar for October, when the justices gavel in for their new 2026-2027 term and are set to hear a major climate dispute involving big oil and allegations of climate change. During their first month back after summer recess, the justices also will grapple with bond hearing requirements for illegal aliens and whether they deserve certain due process protections. In Suncor Energy v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, scheduled to be heard the first day of the new term on Oct. 5, Colorado communities allege that oil companies have created extreme…

A U.S. bankruptcy court will allow clergy abuse claimants to sue for an estimated half-billion dollars in parish assets to fund settlements under the Vermont Roman Catholic Diocese’s current financial reorganization case. In a written order, Burlington-based Judge Heather Cooper said creditors can pursue not only the highest-level bank and building holdings of the state’s largest religious denomination, but also the trust-sheltered local property and possessions of nearly 70 parishes – from St. Edward the Confessor in northernmost Derby Line, population 687, to St. Joachim in southernmost Readsboro, population 702. The order doesn’t promise any parish assets, but simply permits…

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Missouri’s top election official has rejected a citizens’ petition seeking a statewide referendum on new congressional districts backed by President Donald Trump. Supporters of the referendum had submitted hundreds of thousands of petition signatures in a bid to force a November election on a new U.S. House map approved by the Republican-led state Legislature. But Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins asserted Tuesday that the petition is unconstitutional because congressional redistricting plans cannot be subject to voter referendums. A group backing the referendum effort has said it will challenge Hoskins’ decision in court. Missouri was the…