Author: chicagoinquirer

by Jack Jeffery and Samy Magdy KHARTOUM, Sudan  — The Sudanese army and a rival paramilitary force that have been battling the past four days for control of the country agreed on Tuesday to a 24-hour cease-fire, Arab media reports said. Hopes for at least a pause in the violence came as intensified fighting threatened to spiral even further into chaos. Millions of Sudanese in the capital and in other major cities have been hiding in their homes, caught in the crossfire as the two forces pounded residential areas with artillery and airstrikes and engaged in gunbattles in the street. Over the past…

by Jill Lawless BELFAST, Northern Ireland — An American architect of Northern Ireland’s historic 1998 peace accord on Monday urged its feuding politicians to revive the mothballed Belfast government, as a current political crisis clouded celebration of the peacemaking milestone. Former U.S. Senator George Mitchell told a conference to mark a quarter century since the Good Friday Agreement that Northern Ireland’s leaders must “act with courage and vision as their predecessors did 25 years ago,” when bitter enemies forged an unlikely peace. Mitchell, the U.S. special envoy who chaired two arduous years of negotiations that led to the accord, joined…

by Michael R. Sisak NEW YORK  — Republicans upset with Donald Trump’s indictment are escalating their war on the prosecutor who charged him, trying to embarrass him on his home turf partly by falsely portraying New York City as a place overrun by crime. The House Judiciary Committee, led by U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, is holding a field hearing Monday near the offices of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. The committee’s Republican majority is billing it as an examination of the Democrat’s “pro-crime, anti-victim” policies. One committee member, U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, an Arizona Republican, tweeted that…

by Jack Jeffery and Samy Magdy KHARTOUM, Sudan  — Sudan’s embattled capital awoke Monday to a third day of heavy fighting between the army and a powerful rival force for control of the country, as the weekend’s civilian death toll rose to 97. Airstrikes and shelling intensified in parts of Khartoum and the adjoining city of Omdurman. Rapid, sustained firing was heard near the military headquarters, with white smoke rising from the area. Residents hunkering down in their homes reported power outages and incidents of looting. “Gunfire and shelling are everywhere,” Awadeya Mahmoud Koko, head of a union for thousands…

by Sam Magdy CAIRO  — Tensions have been brewing for weeks between Sudan’s two most powerful generals, who just 18 months earlier jointly orchestrated a military coup to derail the nation’s transition to democracy. Over the weekend, those tensions between the armed forces chief, Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, and the head of the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group, Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, erupted into an unprecedented battle for control of the resource-rich nation of more than 46 million people. Both men, each with tens of thousands of troops deployed just in the capital of Khartoum, vowed not to negotiate or cease…

by Mary Clare Jalonick WASHINGTON  — Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell will be back at work in the U.S. Capitol on Monday, almost six weeks after a fall at a Washington-area hotel and extended treatment for a concussion. The longtime Kentucky senator, 81, has been recovering at home since he was released from a rehabilitation facility March 25. He fell after attending an event earlier that month, injuring his head and fracturing a rib. He visited his office Friday, the first time since his injury, and is expected to be working a full schedule in the Senate this week. “I…

by Michael Tarm CHICAGO  — When the U.S. prisons director visited the penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, this past week, she stopped by the federal death row where Bruce Webster is in a solitary, 12-by-7 foot cell, 23 hours a day. Webster’s not supposed to be there. A federal judge in Indiana ruled in 2019 that the 49-year-old has an IQ in the range of severe intellectual disability and so cannot be put to death. But four years on, the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Prisons haven’t moved him to a less restrictive unit or different prison. Why?…

MILWAUKEE  — Jimmy Butler scored 35 points and the Miami Heat capitalized on Giannis Antetokounmpo’s early exit to beat the top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks 130-117 on Sunday in an Eastern Conference playoff opener featuring two notable injuries. The top-seeded Bucks lost Antetokounmpo to a lower back bruise early in the second quarter. Miami’s Tyler Herro broke his right hand later in the period. No. 8 seed Miami had built a 68-55 halftime advantage before Herro’s departure and stayed ahead by shooting 59.5% (50 of 84) from the floor. The Heat were 15 of 25 and the Bucks 11 of 45 from…

Download AssetsCopy StoryMore OptionsClose by Bill Barrow PLAINS, Ga.  — Jimmy Carter already had drawn months of media scrutiny as a devout Southern Baptist running for president. Then the 1976 Democratic nominee brought up sex and sin as he explained his religious faith to Playboy magazine. Carter was not misquoted. But he was certainly misunderstood, as his thoughts in the wide-ranging interview were reduced in the popular imagination to utterances about “lust” and “adultery.” Nearly a half-century later, as the 98-year-old Carter receives hospice care in the same south-Georgia home where he once spoke with Playboy journalists, interviewer Robert Scheer…

AP-US-Tennessee-A-Movement-Revisited by Adrian Sainz, Kimbelee Kruesi and Tim Sullivan MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Squint a little as you take in the scene, or just close your eyes and listen to the voice, and 2023 stumbles back into another era. Another Memphis. “You can’t expel hope!” the young man cries in his powerful voice, his message aimed at the Tennessee state legislators who had expelled him and another Black lawmaker a week earlier. “You can’t expel justice! You can’t expel our voice.” Justin Pearson wears a dark suit in the county meeting room, a carefully knotted blue tie and glasses that bring…