Photos this week: March 20-27, 2025
Family members of Jason Gomez mourn for him during a vigil in Las Cruces, New Mexico, on Sunday, March 23. A mass shooting in Las Cruces left Gomez and two other teenagers dead. Four people were arrested in connection with the shooting, which also injured 15, police said early Sunday. Chancey Bush/The Albuquerque Journal/AP
Pope Francis makes a public appearance at a window of Rome's Gemelli Hospital on Sunday, March 23. He was discharged that day from the hospital, where he had been battling pneumonia in both of his lungs. Though the Pope looked frail and struggled to speak, he addressed the crowd outside the hospital, thanking them and acknowledging one woman in the crowd who was holding flowers. He also gave a blessing, though he appeared to have some difficulty raising his arms. Oliver Weiken/Sophanise Diego, a tabby bi-color Persian cat, is photographed in a studio during a cat show in Preston, England, on Saturday, March 22.Alabama's Karly Weathers, left, shoots over two Maryland players during their NCAA Tournament game on Monday, March 24. Maryland won 111-108 in double overtime to advance to the tournament's Sweet Sixteen.Hamdan Ballal, the Palestinian director of the Oscar-winning documentary 'No Other Land," is released from a police station in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba on Tuesday, March 25. The day before, Ballal was attacked by a mob of Israeli settlers in front of his home in the village of Susya. Afterward, he and two other Palestinians were taken away by Israeli soldiers and detained. The Israeli military accused Ballal of throwing stones at soldiers and said that he had been detained on suspicion of rock hurling, property damage and endangering regional security. Ballal disputes the military's interpretation of the events. Attacks on Palestinian farmers and activists in the occupied West Bank are not new. But the ferocity of the attack – and Ballal's subsequent detention – made him feel that the settlers – and the Israeli military – were taking revenge for the film and its international reach, he told CNN. Leo Correa/AP
Asparagus is covered in foil as Marko Kabitschke, head of vegetable production at the Unterspreewald agricultural cooperative, works in a field in Brandenburg, Germany, in this aerial photo taken on Thursday, March 20. Patrick Pleul/A wildfire spreads along mountain slopes in Uiseong, South Korea, on Monday, March 24. South Korea is struggling to contain wildfires ravaging the country's southeast after more than two dozen blazes broke out over the weekend. Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty Images
Packed Buddha statues are secured on a trailer's cargo bed as they're moved to safety in Andong, South Korea, on Wednesday, March 26. The statues are from Andong's Bongjeongsa Temple, which was under threat because of the country's wildfires. Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty Images
Emma Wilkins, a 10-year-old who was kneeling down in front of state lawmakers and chanting 'stop attacking my friends,' is asked to go back to her seat as a House committee votes on a bill in Nashville, Tennessee, on Wednesday, March 26. The committee approved a bill that would let schools block undocumented children from enrolling, according to The Tennessean. Nicole Hester/The Tennessean/USA Today Network/Imagn Images
Firefighters extinguish a fire at the North Hyde electrical substation in Hayes, England, on Friday, March 21. The fire disrupted the local power supply, causing a shutdown at nearby Heathrow Airport that affected hundreds of flights around the world. Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
Amir Khan, student manager of the McNeese State men's basketball team, celebrates with the team after it upset Clemson in the first round of the NCAA Tournament on Thursday, March 20. Khan, nicknamed 'Aura,' has become famous for being the team's most vociferous hype-man, rapping with the players and holding a boombox as they exit from the tunnel. Ben Solomon/American skiing legend Lindsey Vonn celebrates her second-place finish in a World Cup super-G race in Sun Valley, Idaho, on Sunday, March 23. The podium spot concluded Vonn's comeback season at the age of 40. She came out of retirement this season after a partial knee replacement. Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images
A woman takes a photograph of the empty spot where a painting of President Donald Trump used to be at the Colorado State Capitol in Denver on Tuesday, March 25. The painting, which was hanging with other presidential portraits, was taken down after Trump claimed that his was 'purposefully distorted,' according to a letter obtained by The Associated Press. David Zalubowski/AP
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Hamilton Spectator
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Russian attacks kill 3 as drones hit Kharkiv and other parts of Ukraine
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces launched a fresh drone assault across Ukraine overnight Wednesday, killing three people and wounding 60 more, Ukrainian officials said. One of the hardest-hit areas was the city of Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine, where 17 attack drones struck two residential districts, said Mayor Ihor Terekhov. Emergency crews, municipal workers and volunteers worked through the night to extinguish fires, rescue residents from burning homes, and restore gas, electricity and water services. 'Those are ordinary sites of peaceful life — those that should never be targeted,' Terekhov wrote on Telegram. Three people were confirmed killed and at least 60 injured, including nine children aged between 2 and 15, according to Kharkiv regional head Oleh Syniehubov. Kharkiv has been repeatedly targeted frequently in recent months as Russia had launched repeated large-scale drone and missile attacks on civilian infrastructure. Moscow's forces have deployed high numbers of drones and missiles in recent days, with a record bombardment of almost 500 drones on Monday and a wave of 315 drones and seven missiles overnight on Tuesday. The attacks come despite discussions of a potential ceasefire. The two sides traded memoranda at direct peace talks in Istanbul on June 2 that set out conditions. However, the inclusion of clauses that both sides see as nonstarters make any quick deal unlikely. Wednesday's strikes also caused widespread destruction in the Slobidskyi and Osnovianskyi districts, hitting apartment buildings, private homes, playgrounds, industrial sites and public transport. Images from the scene published by Ukraine's Emergency Service on Telegram showed burning apartments, shattered windows and firefighters battling the blaze. 'We stand strong. We help one another. And we will endure,' Terekhov said. 'Kharkiv is Ukraine. And it cannot be broken.' Ukraine's airforce said that 85 attack and decoy drones were fired over the country over night. Air defense systems intercepted 40 of the drones, while nine more failed to reach their targets without causing damage. Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
Washington Post
an hour ago
- Washington Post
An elementary school teacher went for a walk. She never came home.
Mariame Toure Sylla strolled around Schrom Hills Park in Greenbelt on a warm Saturday evening two years ago, her local spot for walking and praying. A friend called the police the next day after she hadn't heard from Sylla and let officers into Sylla's apartment, an officer testified in Prince George's County Circuit Court on Tuesday, where Harold Francis Landon is on trial for murder.
New York Times
an hour ago
- New York Times
What is Oakmont's church pew bunker? History behind distinctive U.S. Open course feature
OAKMONT, Pa. — He didn't even want to set foot in it. The year was 2007. Tiger Woods was scouting Oakmont Country Club, seeing the property for the first time outside of TV highlights and photographs. A group of 82 American Express cardholders walked along, watching Woods, jaws open. A 'small' fee of $900 got those AmEx customers onto Oakmont for the day, but little did they know they'd get to spend it with the then 13-time major champion. Woods helped execute the surprise as a cardholder perk, inviting them for a stroll around that year's U.S. Open venue as he strategized for the tournament ahead. Advertisement When they arrived at No. 3, Woods striped a 3-iron off the tee, splitting the fairway with ease. When the group approached his ball, one onlooker curiously asked, 'Can you hit one from the church pews?' 'No,' Woods replied, according to the AP. Woods eventually agreed to stand in the infamous 108-yard-long bunker, smiling momentarily only for a photo-op, before climbing out again: 'I only practice from where I expect to play.' The monstrosity sits between the third and fourth fairways. It now occupies more than 28,000 square feet of Oakmont real estate. And it lives rent-free in the psyche of any golfer who steps up on that tee box. The bunker creeps into your peripheral vision, even if you don't anticipate playing from it. Oakmont's church pew bunker, one of the most recognizable golf course features in the world, is just as beautiful as it is maddening. So is its history. 'Where Augusta National has Amen Corner, and TPC Sawgrass has the 17th, and Pebble Beach has No. 7, the church pews, that's us. That's our signature feature,' says David Moore, Curator of Collections at Oakmont. The church pews, as they are configured today — 13 long, grassy tufts that act as islands within a seemingly endless pit of sand — were never part of the original Oakmont design. Henry Fownes, a big-time steel mogul, built Oakmont in 1903 when his obsession with golf reached the point of setting out to design his own course. 'A poor shot should be a shot irrevocably lost,' Fownes famously said of his design philosophy. Oakmont was soon constructed by a team of 150 people and a dozen horses. It's the only course Fownes ever designed. There were more than 350 bunkers marked in the original Oakmont layout. The church pew bunker was not one of them. But a peculiar detail emerged in aerial photographs of the club taken in 1927, the year it hosted the U.S. Open for the first time. Six separate bunkers, each long and skinny and not particularly deep, lined the left side of the third hole. Check back on those aerial photos about eight years later, for the next U.S. Open hosted here, and you'll find the point of evolution that made the pews what they are today: Those six individual bunkers had morphed into one, with six floating berms. Whether you were stuck between the berms or your ball somehow managed to get caught up in one of them, the gigantic sand trap acted as a true avoid-at-all-costs hazard from there on out. Advertisement The concept of the church pews, however, was not born until a few decades later. After the debut of the grass berms, the bunker configuration came to be known as the 'snake mounds.' The sections of grass weren't built with straight edges. Their sizing was rather irregular. 'If you looked at them from above, they kind of looked like slithering snakes,' Moore says. The term 'church pew' was first associated with the giant bunker ahead of the 1962 U.S. Open in the Pittsburgh Press's tournament preview. The bunker, now stuck with a permanent name, was tweaked and fiddled with over time. Pews were added, straightened, trimmed and tucked. Ahead of this year's championship, renowned golf course architect Gil Hanse helped put the snake back into the snake mounds, bending the pews to match original photographs. His team also added a 13th pew. 'We deconstructed all of them and used the dirt to build the new pews to more accurately reflect the old style, in an expanded configuration,' Hanse says. For an on-course obstacle so widely recognized in the sport, it is surprising that one simple question proves unanswerable: Who came up with the idea? No one wrote it down. No one thought to document it. No one expected that, almost 100 years later, the club would be hosting its record 10th U.S. Open. With the pews tracing back to the years between the 1927 and 1935 U.S. Opens, there is a working theory that they were not a creation of Henry Fownes himself, but rather his son, William C. Fownes. At the time, W.C. was one of the best amateurs in Western Pennsylvania, competing frequently. Every year, he teed it up in one particular tournament in Atlantic City, New Jersey. And en route to that event, either traveling via the turnpike or the train, he would stop in Philadelphia and stay with his sister, Amelia. Advertisement The murkiness of the story begins about 20 miles outside of Philadelphia. It is loosely believed that W.C. played a course called The Springhaven Club during his visits with his sister. The club was first founded in 1896 by three women who were exposed to golf after trips abroad, much like Henry Fownes. Aerial photographs of Springhaven from 1924 feature a very familiar sight: a series of grass mounds, lined up in a row, along the first hole. It's not a bunker, but the resemblance is striking. At Springhaven, the configuration is referred to as a steeplechase. There are several loose connections between Springhaven and Oakmont. According to Michael Hodges, Springhaven's de facto historian, Springhaven members also participated in the same tournament in Atlantic City, and perhaps even played with or against W.C. in matches. The credit for the design of The Springhaven Club has long been associated with Ida Dixon. Ron Whitten and Geoffrey S. Cornish assert in their book, The Architects of Golf, that Dixon may have been the first female golf architect in the world. She went on to serve as the president of the Women's Golf Association of Philadelphia from 1911 to 1916, and Springhaven was her only design. Mysteriously, Springhaven's pews did not survive longer than a few years. Hodges uncovered photographs documenting the evolution of the club over the years in the Hagley Museum, a small museum in Wilmington, Delaware, and the pews were nowhere to be found by 1927. There is very little evidence that proves Dixon was responsible for the construction of such a unique design, and why they were eventually removed. Multiple golf architects were brought in by Springhaven pre-Great Depression to consult on its routing. Around the time of Englishman Herb Barker's hire, Springhaven also featured several long, skinny bunkers resembling the early stages of the six individual pew bunkers. William Flynn, perhaps best known for his design of Shinnecock Hills, was hired to correct bunker drainage around the course in 1923, which may have contributed to the pews' demise. 'The committee is determined to improve the course as much as possible during the winter and spring. They have consulted with H.H. Barker, the Garden City pro., who staked out fifty pits which will be placed as rapidly as the weather will permit. Most of the new hazards guard the approaches to the greens,' reads an article from the January edition of the 1910 American Golfer Magazine, one of the few pieces of concrete evidence available about the early stages of Springhaven. Advertisement The devilish pew design eventually re-emerged at Oakmont, and they've been reinstated at Springhaven too, as part of a recent renovation. The iconic feature has since been replicated around the world, including at TPC Scottsdale, Bucknell Golf Club and Lonsdale Links in Australia. The pews are alive and well. The Springhaven Club has never claimed to be the original inspiration for the pews. But a series of coincidences and likelihoods make Moore, for one, virtually certain of it. There isn't really another explanation. The church pews were a product of the sincerest form of flattery: Imitation. Whether it was Fownes, Dixon, Barker or Flynn, whoever thought of the church pews knew how to torture a golfer. One hundred years later, as the best players in the world descend upon Oakmont yet again, they're still doing their job.
