School bus driver fatally hits man on bike in St. Francis
A school bus driver fatally struck a man on a bike in St. Francis on Friday morning, authorities said.
The collision happened just before 7:30 a.m. when a woman who was driving the bus, which had no passengers, was turning south onto St. Francis Boulevard from eastbound Ambassador Boulevard, the Anoka County Sheriff's Office said. The man died at the scene.
The identities of the victim and bus driver have not been released.
The crash remains under investigation by the sheriff's office, Francis Police Department, Minnesota State Patrol and Midwest Medical Examiner's Office.
Woman, 72, fatally struck by drunken driver while crossing White Bear Township road, sheriff's office says
Turkish student at Tufts University is latest Palestinian supporter swept up in US crackdown
350-pound teacher accused of stepping on sixth-grader's back during lockdown drill in northwestern Minnesota
3rd gunman sentenced in St. Paul murder that led to funeral shooting
Minnesota judge says ex-senator arrested in prostitution sting can be released to halfway house
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Yahoo
19 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Unarmed Palestinian brothers killed in Israeli raid on West Bank's Nablus
A Palestinian man in a red cap walks down the narrow alleyway in Nablus's old city towards a group of Israeli soldiers, clearly unarmed. He attempts to talk to the soldiers, who had flooded into the occupied West Bank city in the early hours of Tuesday as part of Israel's latest military raid – believed to be the largest carried out in Nablus in two years. The soldiers immediately kick and shove the man – 40-year-old Nidal Umairah – before his brother walks over, attempting to intervene. Gunfire follows, and soon the two brothers are lying dead. Nidal and his brother 35-year-old brother Khaled were the latest victims of Israel in the West Bank, after they were killed late on Tuesday. It is unclear which brother had initially been detained, but witnesses were adamant that the behaviour of the Israeli soldiers was an unnecessary escalation that led to the deaths of yet more Palestinians. Ghassan Hamdan, the director of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society in Nablus, was at the scene of the killings. 'There were at least 12 soldiers and they all fired their automatic machine guns at once,' said Hamdan. After the two men fell to the ground [medics] asked the soldiers if we could treat their wounds. They answered by firing at all of us.' 'We all took cover behind the walls of the old city,' he told Al Jazeera. Hamza Abu Hajar, a paramedic at the scene, said that the Umairah brother who had initially approached the Israeli soldiers had been trying to go to his house to move his family out and away from the Israeli raid. 'They lifted his shirt up to prove he was unarmed,' Abu Hajar said. 'They then started shooting at him, and at us as well.' The Israeli army said it acted in self-defence after one of the Umairah brothers tried to seize a weapon from a soldier. It said that four soldiers had been injured in the raid in Nablus, which lasted more than 24 hours, is the latest Israel has conducted in the West Bank. Israel has taken advantage of the world's focus on its own war on Gaza since October 2023 to escalate its land theft and violence in the West Bank. During that span, Israel has killed at least 930 people in the West Bank, 24 of whom were from Nablus, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Many of these deaths are the result of violent Israeli raids ostensibly aimed at clamping down on Palestinian fighters in the West Bank, but which have resulted in mass destruction and thousands of Palestinians fleeing their homes. According to Hamdan, Israeli troops mainly targeted Nablus's old city by storming into hundreds of homes in the middle of the night. Dozens of people were also reportedly arrested. Young people in the city protested by burning tyres and throwing rocks at Israeli troops, yet they were met with heavy tear gas, injuring at least 80 Palestinians in the raid. In the past, Palestinian protesters have been imprisoned on 'terrorism' charges or shot and killed for simply resisting Israel's occupation by throwing rocks or defying Israeli soldiers. This time around, the Israelis classified the entire old city in Nablus as a closed military zone for 24 hours. No ambulances or medics were allowed inside to aid distressed residents, said Hamdan. 'Nobody was allowed in or out. Nobody was allowed to make any movement at all. We [as medics] could not enter the area during the entire raid to try and help people in need,' he told Al the raid, Israeli troops stormed into several apartments after blowing off door hinges with explosives. Umm Hassan, a 58-year-old resident who did not want to give her full name, recalls feeling terrified when several Israeli soldiers broke into her home. About five months ago, her husband passed away from cancer, an illness that also claimed two of her children years ago. Umm Hassan is also battling cancer, yet she said Israeli soldiers showed her no mercy. They flipped her television on the ground, broke windows and tossed her paintings off the walls and onto the living room floor. They even vandalised her books by throwing them on the ground, including the Quran. 'I told them to leave me alone. I was alone and so scared. There was nobody to protect me,' Umm Hassan told Al Jazeera. Another woman, Rola, said that Israeli soldiers stormed into her home two times in the span of six hours during the raid. When Israeli soldiers returned the second time, Rola said that they attacked her elderly father, hitting him on the head and chest with the butts of their guns. Rola described her three nieces and nephews – all small children – cowering with fear as Israeli soldiers vandalised and destroyed their home. 'The second time they came to our home, they put us all in a room and we weren't able to leave the room from 8am until 3:30pm,' said Rola. 'We [Palestinians] always talk about being resilient. But the reality is when Israeli soldiers come into your private home, then you get very scared. It's natural. We are humans and humans get scared,' she told Al than 80 Palestinians received treatment from the Palestine Red Crescent Society during the raid, 25 of them as a result of gunshot wounds. While Israel says its raid was 'precise', inhabitants of Nablus say that the attack on the city was the latest attempt to intimidate and frighten Palestinians. 'Honestly, what were Israeli soldiers searching for in my home? What did they think they were going to find?' asked Rola. 'The reason for their raids [violence] is to uphold the [illegal] occupation.'
Los Angeles Times
22 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
Government must release Columbia protester Mahmoud Khalil, but has until Friday to appeal, judge says
NEWARK, N.J. — A federal judge has ruled that the government must release Mahmoud Khalil, the former Columbia University graduate student whom the Trump administration is trying to deport over his participation in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. But Khalil, a legal U.S. resident, will remain in custody until at least Friday, giving the government time to appeal, U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz said Wednesday. 'The court's decision is the most significant vindication yet of Mahmoud's rights,' said Ramzi Kassem, co-director of CLEAR, a legal nonprofit and clinic at the City University of New York that represents Khalil. 'But we aren't out of the woods until Mahmoud is free and back home with his wife and child.' Lawyers and spokespersons for the Justice Department, which is handling the case, didn't immediately respond to an email seeking comment. Khalil was detained by federal immigration agents on March 8 in the lobby of his university-owned apartment, the first arrest under President Trump's crackdown on students who joined campus protests against the war in Gaza. He was then flown across the country and taken to an immigration detention center in Louisiana, thousands of miles from his attorneys and wife, a U.S. citizen who gave birth to their first child while he was in custody. Khalil's lawyers challenged the legality of his detention, accusing the Trump administration of trying to suppress free speech. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says he has the power to deport Khalil because his presence in the U.S. could harm foreign policy. Farbiarz had ruled earlier that expelling Khalil from the U.S. on those grounds was likely unconstitutional. In his new ruling Wednesday, the judge said that Khalil had shown that his continued detention is causing irreparable harm to his career, his family and his free speech rights. However, the judge put his order on hold until 9:30 a.m. Friday to allow the government time to appeal. In his ruling, Farbiarz cited Khalil's statement to the court last week that the revocation of his green card has damaged his career prospects, including a decision by Oxfam International to rescind a job offer to serve as a policy adviser. The judge also noted that the decision deterred Khalil from engaging in constitutionally protected protests and free speech-related activities. 'The Court finds as a matter of fact that the Petitioner's career and reputation are being damaged and his speech is being chilled — and this adds up to irreparable harm,' the judge wrote. Farbiarz noted in his ruling that the government has also argued it is detaining and deporting Khalil in part because of alleged omissions on his green card application. But the judge said evidence presented by his attorneys showed lawful permanent residents are virtually never detained for such a thing. Khalil, in his statement to the court last week, also disputed that he wasn't forthcoming on the application. For example, he said he was never employed by or served as an 'officer' of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, as the administration claims, but completed an internship approved by the university as part of his graduate studies. The judge's decision comes after several other legal residents targeted for their activism have been released from custody, including another Palestinian student at Columbia, Mohsen Mahdawi; a Tufts University student, Rumeysa Ozturk; and a Georgetown University scholar, Badar Khan Suri. Rubio has cited a rarely used statute to justify the deportation of Khalil and others, which gives him power to deport those who pose 'potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.' Khalil isn't accused of breaking any laws during the protests at Columbia. The government, however, has said that noncitizens who participate in such demonstrations should be expelled from the country for expressing views that the administration considers to be antisemitic and 'pro-Hamas,' referring to the Palestinian militant group that attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Khalil, then an international affairs graduate student, had served as a negotiator and spokesperson for student activists at Columbia who took over a campus lawn last spring to protest Israel's military campaign in Gaza. The university brought police in to dismantle the encampment after a small group of protesters seized an administration building. Khalil is not accused of participating in the building occupation and wasn't among the people arrested in connection with the demonstrations. But images of his maskless face at protests, along with his willingness to share his name with reporters, made him an object of scorn among those who saw the protesters and their demands as antisemitic. The White House accused Khalil of 'siding with terrorists,' but has yet to give any evidence for the claim. Offenhartz and Marcelo write for the Associated Press.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Judge says Columbia University activist facing deportation should be freed
Supporters of Mahmoud Khalil rally outside the federal courthouse in Newark on March 28, 2025. (Reena Rose Sibayan for New Jersey Monitor) A federal judge ruled Wednesday that a Columbia University activist detained for partaking in pro-Palestinian protests cannot be held by the federal government over allegations that his presence in the United States undermines the nation's foreign policy interests. U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz issued the order Wednesday but gave federal prosecutors until Friday at 9:30 a.m. to ask the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals to step in. It's unclear if the activist, Mahmoud Khalil, will be released Friday if the government does indeed appeal. 'This is the news we've been waiting over three months for. Mahmoud must be released immediately and safely returned home to New York to be with me and our newborn baby, Deen,' Noor Abdalla, Khalil's wife, said in a statement from the American Civil Liberties Union of New York. 'True justice would mean Mahmoud was never taken away from us in the first place, that no Palestinian father, from New York to Gaza, would have to endure the painful separation of prison walls like Mahmoud has.' If it stands, Farbiarz's ruling, which comes on the heels of a previous decision that said the government's push to deport Khalil was likely unconstitutional, could deal a blow to the Trump administration's efforts to deport dissidents. Khalil was arrested by immigration authorities in March and has been held in Louisiana since. He's fighting two cases to fend off his deportation — one in Louisiana and one in New Jersey, because he was being transferred through Elizabeth Detention Center when his attorneys first filed a petition for his release. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed Khalil supports terrorist group Hamas and called his presence in the country a national security risk. Rubio has cited a rarely used provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 to justify Khalil's deportation. Farbiarz noted in his Wednesday ruling that the government could argue that Khalil would have been detained anyway because he inaccurately filled out his lawful permanent resident application, which can be a basis for removal under very rare circumstances. But that argument won't work, he said. 'Lawful permanent residents are virtually never detained pending removal for the sort of alleged omission' Khalil is accused of, the judge wrote in the 14-page filing. Khalil, whose wife and newborn son are American citizens, has not been charged with any crime. He was among the first university students who were picked up by immigration authorities targeting pro-Palestine activists. Some students who were detained under similar circumstances have been released but still face deportation. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
