Author: chicagoinquirer

by Jay Cohen CHICAGO — Alex Bowman thinks he is moving in the right direction. With the NASCAR Cup Series back in Chicago on Sunday, it’s good timing for the Hendrick Motorsports driver. Bowman raced to a sorely needed victory in downtown Chicago a year ago, stopping an 80-race drought and securing a spot in the playoffs. He is still looking for his first win this season, but he finished third last weekend at Atlanta. The 32-year-old Bowman is the only driver to win at Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, a 45-mile drive from downtown, and the Chicago Street Course. He…

by Jim Vertigo, Julio Cortez, John Seewer and Hannah Fingerhut KERRVILLE, Texas  — Rescuers scoured a devastated central Texas landscape of mangled trees, overturned cars and muck-filled debris Saturday in an increasingly bleak mission to locate survivors, including 27 girls who have not been seen since their camp was slammed with a wall of water in a historic flash flood. The flooding in Kerr County killed at least 43 people, including 15 children, and at least eight people died in nearby counties. Authorities still have not said how many people were missing beyond the children from Camp Mystic, a Christian…

WASHINGTON — Eight men deported from the United States in May and held under guard for weeks at an American military base in the African nation of Djibouti while their legal challenges played out in court have now reached the Trump administration’s intended destination, war-torn South Sudan, a country the State Department advises against travel to due to “crime, kidnapping, and armed conflict.” The immigrants from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, Vietnam and South Sudan arrived in South Sudan on Friday after a federal judge cleared the way for the Trump administration to relocate them in a case that had gone…

by Adith Ramakrishnan and Devi Shastri Some hospitals in the U.S. are without essential staff because international doctors who were set to start their medical training this week were delayed by the Trump administration’s travel and visa restrictions. It’s unclear exactly how many foreign medical residents were unable to start their assignments, but six medical residents interviewed by The Associated Press say they’ve undergone years of training and work only to be stopped at the finish line by what is usually a procedural step. “I don’t want to give up,” said a permanent Canadian resident who matched to the University…

by David Rising DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — President Donald Trump campaigned on keeping the United States out of foreign wars, but it didn’t take long to convince him to come to the direct aid of Israel, hitting Iranian nuclear targets with bunker-buster bombsdropped by B-2 stealth bombers and Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from a submarine. Beyond the attack’s immediate impact on helping bring the 12-day war to a close, experts say Trump’s decision to use force against another country also will certainly be reverberating in the Asia-Pacific, Washington’s priority theater. “Trump’s strikes on Iran show that he’s not afraid…

CAIRO (AP) — Egypt said Friday that Ethiopia has consistently lacked the political will to reach a binding agreement on its now-complete dam, an issue that involves Nile River water rights and the interests of Egypt and Sudan. Ethiopia’s prime minister said Thursday that the country’s power-generating dam, known as the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, on the Nile is now complete and that the government is “preparing for its official inauguration” in September. Egypt has long opposed the construction of the dam, because it would reduce the country’s share of Nile River waters, which it almost entirely relies on for…

by Matt Carlson CHICAGO (AP) — Michael Busch and the Chicago Cubs turned their holiday into a home run. Eight of them, to be exact. Busch hit three longballs, Pete Crow-Armstrong connected twice and the Cubs went deep a franchise-record eight times to hammer the St. Louis Cardinals 11-3 on Fridayfor their fourth straight victory. “It was just a fun game to be a part of,” Busch said. “Baseball is kind of a July Fourth kind of deal and especially to do it in Wrigley Field and have just so much excitement in the game — that was one I’ll…

by Michael R. Sisak and Larry Neumeister NEW YORK (AP) — In rejecting Sean “Diddy” Combs’ release on bail, a federal judge confronted the hip-hop impresario with a disturbing aspect of his criminal case that his lawyers couldn’t deny: his history of violence. Combs’ defense lawyers claimed he is a changed man. But Judge Arun Subramanian on Wednesday let the Bad Boy Records founder know that his hopes for freedom soon are slim — even after the jury acquitted him on racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking charges that could have put him in prison for life. Subramanian’s words signaled how…

by Mary Clare Jalonick WASHINGTON — The House has passed the massive tax and spending cuts package that President Donald Trump calls “beautiful,” getting it to his desk a day before the July 4 deadline that he had set. The 887-page bill includes spending cuts, tax breaks, military spending, money for deportations and other longtime GOP priorities like cuts to Medicaid and renewable energy programs. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that under the bill 11.8 million more Americans would become uninsured by 2034 and 3 million more would not qualify for food stamps, also known as SNAP benefits. Some takeaways…

by Lindsay Whitehurst WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the way for the deportation of several immigrants who were put on a flight in May bound for South Sudan, a war-ravaged country where they have no ties. The decision comes after the court’s conservative majority found that immigration officials can quickly deport people to third countries. The majority halted an order that had allowed immigrants to challenge any removals to countries outside their homeland where they could be in danger. The court’s latest decision makes clear that the South Sudan flight can complete the trip, weeks after it…