by Kareem Chehayeb BAGHDAD  — Nawal Sweidan quietly folded her son’s clothes and straightened the bedsheets in his room as she always used to do when he was out at work or at university. She still does it regularly, even though he hasn’t been home for almost 10 years since he was taken away by militiamen. Her son Safaa vanished in late July 2014. At around 1:30 a.m., just days before the holy month of Ramadan was to end and holiday celebrations were to begin, a group of men showed up at the family’s doorstep and asked for Safaa, a…

CHICAGO  — A firefighter died Wednesday after being critically injured while battling a blaze in a high-rise building on Chicago’s North Side, authorities said. Lt. Jan Tchoryk, 55, “went down” on the stairs on the building’s 11th floor, Fire Commissioner Annette Nance-Holt told reporters. The blaze was reported before 8 a.m. on the 27th floor of the condo and apartment building in the Gold Coast neighborhood. A medical examiner will determine Tchoryk’s cause of death. Tchoryk is the second Chicago firefighter to die this week. Jermaine Pelt, 49, died on Tuesday and two other firefighters were injured while battling a…

by Charles Gardner MILWAUKEE  — Wrapping up the top seed in the NBA playoffs was the order of business for the Milwaukee Bucks on Wednesday night. Despite being without the injured Giannis Antetokounmpo and losing Khris Middleton to an injury early in the game, the Bucks made a second-half push to beat the Chicago Bulls 105-92. The Bucks went on a 15-0 run in the third quarter to overcome a 10-point deficit and pulled away in the fourth quarter. Bobby Portis had 27 points and 13 rebounds, starting in place of Antetokounmpo, and center Brook Lopez finished with 26 points.…

by Sara Burnett CHICAGO  — Brandon Johnson, a union organizer and former teacher, was elected as Chicago’s next mayor Tuesday in a major victory for the Democratic Party’s progressive wing as the heavily blue-leaning city grapples with high crime and financial challenges. Johnson, a Cook County commissioner endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union, won a close race over former Chicago schools CEO Paul Vallas, who was backed by the police union. Johnson, 47, will succeed Lori Lightfoot, the first Black woman and first openly gay person to be the city’s mayor. Lightfoot became the first Chicago mayor in 40 years to lose her…

by Sara Burnett CHICAGO  — The candidates for Chicago mayor were in a tight race Tuesday as voters chose between sharply contrasting views on issues including crime, taxes, schools and investment in policing to lead the heavily Democratic city, the country’s third-largest. The race pitted former Chicago schools CEO Paul Vallas, a moderate Democrat endorsed by Chicago’s police union and major business groups, against progressive Brandon Johnson, a former teacher and union organizer backed by the Chicago Teachers Union. With much of the vote counted, the race was neck-and-neck. Vallas and Johnson advanced to the runoff after finishing aheadof current Mayor Lori Lightfoot in a…

by Michael R. Sisak, Eric Tucker, Jennifer Peltz and Will Weissert NEW YORK  — Donald Trump conspired to illegally influence the 2016 election through a series of hush money payments designed to silence claims that he feared would be harmful to his candidacy, New York prosecutors said Tuesday in unsealing a historic 34-count felony indictment. The charges arose from a series of checks that Trump or his company wrote during the presidential campaign to his lawyer and fixer for his role in making a payment to a porn actor who alleged an extramarital sexual encounter with Trump years earlier. The…

by Erika Kinetz LONDON  — On Oct. 14, a Russian engineer named Gleb Karakulov boarded a flight from Kazakhstan to Turkey with his wife and daughter. He switched off his phone to shut out the crescendo of urgent, enraged messages, said goodbye to his life in Russia and tried to calm his fast-beating heart. But this was no ordinary Russian defector. Karakulov was an officer in President Vladimir Putin’s secretive elite personal security service — one of the few Russians to flee and go public who have rank, as well as knowledge of intimate details of Putin’s life and potentially…

by Sara Burnett CHICAGO — Voters in Chicago will choose a new mayor on Tuesday as two candidates with contrasting views on issues including crime, taxes, schools and investment in policing compete to lead the heavily Democratic city, the country’s third-largest. The race pits former Chicago schools CEO Paul Vallas, a moderate Democrat endorsed by Chicago’s police union and major business groups, against progressive Brandon Johnson, a former teacher and union organizer backed by the Chicago Teachers Union. Both men finished ahead of current Mayor Lori Lightfoot in a February election, making her the first incumbent in 40 years to…

by Eddie Pells HOUSTON  — After six games and 240 minutes of pure dominance that ran through March, then part of April, it finally became clear there was only one thing that could stop the UConn Huskies. The final buzzer. The team from Storrs, Connecticut, topped off one of the most impressive March Madness runs in history Monday night, clamping down early, then breaking things open late to bring home its fifth national title with a 76-59 victory over San Diego State. “We knew we were the best team in the tournament going in, and we just had to play…

NASA on Monday named the four astronauts who will fly around the moon late next year, including the first woman and the first African American assigned to a lunar mission. The first moon crew in 50 years — three Americans and one Canadian — was introduced during a ceremony in Houston, home to the nation’s astronauts as well as Mission Control. “This is humanity’s crew,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. The four astronauts will be the first to fly NASA’s Orion capsule, launching atop a Space Launch System rocket from Kennedy Space Center no earlier than late 2024. They will…