Author: rpnadmin

The body of a Bangladeshi doctoral student who went missing with his girlfriend from the University of South Florida was found on a bridge over Tampa Bay, and his roommate has been taken into custody, law enforcement authorities said Friday. Zamil Limon’s remains were found on the Howard Frankland bridge Friday morning, but Nahida Bristy is still missing, Hillsborough County Chief Deputy Joseph Maurer said. Limon’s roommate Hisham Saleh Abugharbeih, 26, was taken into custody at his family’s home nearby on preliminary charges that include unlawfully moving a dead body, failure to report a death, tampering with evidence, false imprisonment…

New York filed a lawsuit Friday to challenge the federal Transportation Department’s decision to withhold nearly $74 million in highway money because the state refused to revoke nearly 33,000 questionable commercial driver’s licenses for immigrants since an audit uncovered problems last year. New York joins California in suing over Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s efforts to tighten up the rules for which immigrants can qualify to get a commercial driver’s license and make sure the states are properly enforcing the existing rules. The federal government declined to comment on the new lawsuit Friday, but officials have been clear about the problems…

Three sets of human remains believed to be children ages 3 to 7 have been found, the Memphis Police Department said. The police said Wednesday that investigators were trying to learn the identities of the children and the circumstances surrounding their deaths. Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis said at a press conference the bones could have been in the area for a while. “Just based on the information that we’re getting from the medical examiner’s office and the anthropologist and the scientists that are working with us, we’re thinking a few years,” Chief Davis said. The investigation started March 8…

BATON ROUGE, La. — Louisiana authorities have charged a 17-year-old with murder, and they are searching for another suspect after bystanders were caught in the crossfire of a shooting at a mall in Baton Rouge on Thursday that killed one teenage girl. During a news conference Friday, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry vowed to crack down on gang violence that has plagued the capital city. The tough-on-crime governor, who said he spoke with FBI Director Kash Patel, promised to utilize state, local and federal resources to address the issue and that consequences “are going to start being felt immediately.” Landry said…

NAHUNTA, Ga. — A volunteer firefighter died battling a wildfire in northern Florida while more than 120 homes have been destroyed in southeast Georgia and thousands more remain threatened by two large blazes, one of which investigators suspect was sparked by a foil balloon touching power lines, officials said Friday. An unusually large number of wildfires are burning this spring across the Southeast, where scientists say the threat of fire has been amplified by a combination of extreme drought, gusty winds, climate change and dead trees still littering some forests after being toppled by Hurricane Helene in 2024. In northern…

LOS ANGELES — Jake Reiner, the older son of Rob and Michele Reiner, says learning his parents were killed and living in the aftermath has been “too devastating to comprehend.” In a post on Substack on Friday, Jake Reiner shares his sweetest memories of the beloved Hollywood director and the photographer and philanthropist who was his wife for 36 years. And he describes the horror of losing them when they were stabbed to death on Dec. 14 in the Los Angeles home he grew up in. It is his first detailed public account of his experience. He had previously only…

A federal appeals court allowed to stand Texas’ law giving the state independent power to arrest and deport illegal immigrants, with the judges saying the groups who challenged it lacked legal standing to bring the case. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said they were not ruling on the legality of the state’s law at this time. But they erased an injunction that had been put in place to block it from taking effect, saying that ruling was based on a faulty understanding of standing, which is the need to prove an injury that can be corrected by a…

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — A former funeral home owner who helped her ex-husband hide nearly 200 decomposing bodies faces sentencing Friday for corpse abuse in a case that prompted Colorado officials to clamp down on an industry plagued by repeated scandal and notoriously lax oversight. A plea agreement calls for Carie Hallford to receive from 25 to 35 years in prison. Her ex-husband was sentenced to 40 years on corpse abuse charges at a February hearing in which he was called a “monster” by relatives of those whose bodies were left to rot. Carie Hallford was the public face of…

NAHUNTA, Ga. — Two large wildfires burning in drought-stricken southeast Georgia have destroyed more than 120 homes and are threatening nearly 1,000 more, Gov. Brian Kemp said Friday. Kemp told reporters after touring the fire area that state officials believe the wildfires have burned more homes than any other in Georgia’s history. The fire in rural Brantley County has burned 87 homes since it began Friday, fanned by gusty winds into pine woods that are dry as tinder. Kemp said officials believe the fire was sparked by a balloon that landed on a live power line. Spread across more than…

Iowa, a deep-red state for decades that voted for President Trump in three consecutive elections, may be on the verge of choosing a Democratic governor, flipping a Republican Senate seat and capturing two GOP House seats. Hawkeye State voters, it seems, have grown more and more frustrated with tariffs, the war in Iran and the high cost of living. The state’s top Republicans scoffed at the threat of Iowa turning blue, but poll numbers show the party’s dominance there could come to an end in November, and Democrats are energized. “Iowa is in play. We’re gonna win this governor’s race,…