Orioles, White Sox prepare for bizarre fan-less game in Baltimore

Orioles, White Sox prepare for bizarre fan-less game in Baltimore
Supreme Court gay marriage arguments: What the justices revealed
Nepal quake survivors clash with riot police, UN seeks $415 mn
Baltimore uneasily awaits answers on black man's death
Russia warned Boston bomber's brother was budding terrorist
U.S. top court sharply divided on Oklahoma execution drug
Clinton: Baltimore shows justice system 'out of balance'
Japan PM offers condolences for WWII dead in historic speech
Tensions ease in Baltimore as curfew lifts, schools reopen
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders to announce 2016 presidential run
Justice Roberts revives an old argument that could save gay marriage

Posted:

"Does anyone know if the mascot works today?" Orioles manager Buck Showalter asked a room full of reporters in a pre-game press conference unlike any other ever held in the history of Major League Baseball...

Supreme Court gay marriage arguments: What the justices revealed

Posted:

Nepal quake survivors clash with riot police, UN seeks $415 mn

Posted: 29 Apr 2015 09:17 AM PDT

Desperate survivors of an earthquake that killed more than 5,000 people clashed with riot police in Nepal's capital on Wednesday, as the United Nations appealed for $415 million for the devastated Himalayan nation. Supplies of food and water are running thin and aftershocks have strained nerves in ruined Kathmandu, home to some 2.5 million before it was shattered by Saturday's 7.8 magnitude quake. "We've been left starving in the cold and the best this government can give us is this queue. Our government is totally absent.

Baltimore uneasily awaits answers on black man's death

Posted: 29 Apr 2015 07:50 AM PDT

By Scott Malone and Ian Simpson BALTIMORE (Reuters) - Baltimore remained on edge on Wednesday, with police in riot gear deployed near the site of a wave of rioting as citizens expressed anger over the death of a black man after his arrest by local police. The smell of smoke hung in the air near a West Baltimore CVS pharmacy that was torched two days earlier, while area residents said they wanted to see legal action against the six police officers involved in the arrest of Freddie Gray, 25, two weeks earlier. "If I killed somebody, I'd be in jail now." Gray died in a Baltimore hospital on April 19 of spinal injuries sustained while he was in police custody. Baltimore Police have said they will conclude their investigation by the end of the week, when the results will be turned over to state prosecutors and followed by an independent review.

Russia warned Boston bomber's brother was budding terrorist

Posted: 29 Apr 2015 10:03 AM PDT

By Elizabeth Barber BOSTON (Reuters) - Russian authorities contacted the FBI two years before the Boston Marathon bombings to flag Tamerlan Tsarnaev as a budding terrorist, according to a congressional report read in a U.S. court on Wednesday. The testimony about the now-dead older brother of convicted marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev came as his lawyers sought to spare him the death penalty, arguing he was a pawn in Tamerlan's al Qaeda-inspired scheme to attack the world-famous race. Russian authorities appealed to the FBI in 2011 to alert them if Tamerlan traveled to Russia, where they said he was angling to join terrorism cells, according to a March 2014 House Committee on Homeland Security report read to jurors in federal court in Boston.

U.S. top court sharply divided on Oklahoma execution drug

Posted: 29 Apr 2015 09:40 AM PDT

By Lawrence Hurley WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tensions on the Supreme Court over the use of the death penalty in the United States spilled over on Wednesday as the justices appeared badly split in a case brought by three death row inmates calling Oklahoma's lethal injection method a violation of the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Justice Anthony Kennedy, who often casts the deciding vote in close cases, said little to indicate how he would rule. The testy nature of exchanges between the justices during the hour-long oral argument illustrated that while the case concerned just one drug, it was playing out against the much bigger question of whether the death penalty should be used at all. The drug at the heart of the case is a sedative called midazolam, which the three convicted murderers - Richard Glossip, John Grant and Benjamin Cole - contend is unsuitable for use in executions because it cannot achieve the level of unconsciousness required for surgery.

Clinton: Baltimore shows justice system 'out of balance'

Posted:

Japan PM offers condolences for WWII dead in historic speech

Posted: 29 Apr 2015 09:22 AM PDT

Declaring "history is harsh," Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan offered solemn condolences Wednesday for the Americans who died in World War II as he became the first Japanese leader to address a joint meeting of Congress.