JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — As a child, Dau Mabil escaped war-torn Sudan and built a new life in Mississippi. This month, fishermen found the body of the 33-year-old Mabil floating in a river, prompting calls for a federal investigation into his disappearance and death.

Mabil, who lived in Jackson with his wife, went missing in broad daylight on March 25 after going for a walk on a trail connecting the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum with other city landmarks. His brother, Bul Mabil, cast doubt on initial autopsy results published Thursday, which a sheriff said did not uncover signs of foul play.

Bul Mabil said he is dissatisfied with the way authorities have handled the case.

“I can’t believe this would happen to someone who came here from a war-torn country,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press. ”I was expecting much better government in this country. But this is the way the United States operates. It is so appalling.”

Democratic U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, whose district includes Jackson, sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland requesting a Justice Department investigation. Thompson said civil rights organizations had contacted his office about the case, and his letter described Mabil as an “African male, who is married to Mrs. Karissa Bowley, a white female.”

Family members and concerned citizens spent weeks searching for Dau Mabil, who was captured by a surveillance camera walking near the trail. In an interview, Bul Mabil said he raced to Jackson from his home in Houston on March 26 after hearing of his brother’s death from a family friend. He said he began looking into the case on his own, alongside the Capitol Police, a state law enforcement agency that operates in part of Jackson.

At the same time, Bowley led rallies and information campaigns on behalf of her missing husband, asking for the public’s help to find him. She did not respond to a text or phone call seeking comment.

Fishermen spotted a body on April 13 in the Pearl River in Lawrence County, about 60 miles (97 kilometers) south of Jackson. Days later, officials confirmed the remains were those of Dau Mabil.

Bul Mabil said his brother’s death has been devastating for him and his mother, who still lives in a refugee camp.

The brothers were among the thousands of young refugees brought to the U.S. during their country’s bloody civil war. After they arrived, Julie Hines Mabus, the ex-wife of former Mississippi Gov. Ray Mabus, started a foundation that helped the children settle in Jackson. She described Dau Mabil as “soft-spoken, a smile on his face, a little twinkle in his eye.”

“To get here was miraculous and then for Bul to get his brother here was even more miraculous,” Hines Mabus told the AP. “It was sort of like a homecoming. And now for Bul to face this with his brother, it’s just heartbreaking.”

Bul Mabil filed emergency legal papers to ensure his brother’s body wouldn’t be released to Bowley and her family until an autopsy was performed by both the state crime lab and an independent medical examiner. On Thursday, Hinds County Chancery Judge Dewayne Thomas granted the request, pausing release of the body and ordering a second autopsy.

In a subsequent court filing, Bowley’s attorney said her client “embraces” the judge’s order for an additional autopsy, with the condition it be conducted only after all law enforcement entities finish investigating.

Bul Mabil cast doubt on a statement from Lawrence County Sheriff Ryan Everett, who first reported the results of the initial autopsy Thursday. Everett said the autopsy did not reveal foul play, but an official determination may be made later, pending further testing.

Bailey Martin, a spokesperson for the state Department of Public Safety, said the state crime lab performed the autopsy. The department expects to receive DNA confirmation next week.

Bul Mabil’s attorneys said they hope an independent autopsy can be done within the next week.

Capitol Police conducted an “insufficient” investigation, Bul Mabil said. One of this attorneys, Carlos Tanner, said his client was “being left in the dark about the suspicious circumstances” about his brother’s disappearance and death.

Vallena Greer, a Jackson woman who took in and raised Dau Mabil, said he thrived in America. He received a school award for his improved English speaking skills and was a talented soccer player.

At the time of his disappearance, Dau Mabil worked as a manager at a Jackson restaurant and planned on returning to school to earn a computer science degree.

“He did well for what America wants immigrants to be,” Bul Mabil said. “We called Mississippi our second home. We didn’t know something like this would happen to one of us.”

___

Michael Goldberg is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow him at @mikergoldberg.

FREEPORT, N.Y. (AP) — Weihua Yan had seen dramatic demographic changes since moving to Long Island’s Nassau County.

Its Asian American population alone had grown by 60% since the 2010 census. Why then, he wondered, did he not see anyone who looked like him on the county’s local governing body, the 19-member Nassau County Legislature?

Last year, he decided to do something about it and ran for one of the seats. He pulled together a campaign team that knocked on 10,000 doors and developed what they believed would be a solid strategy — focusing on their potential base: white Democrats and people of color, especially Asian voters.

The strategy worked to drive voter turnout, but it didn’t help Yan win. His bid to become the first Asian American on the county’s governing body fell short, and he thinks he knows why.

Minority residents and voter advocates blame a redistricting process overseen by the county Legislature, which has a Republican majority. They say the county political map drawn after the 2020 census was done to mostly preserve the existing power structure, and in doing so prevented minority voters from electing a board that was more representative of the area’s burgeoning diversity.

The county is now facing a lawsuit over those maps. Four Latino residents and a local civil rights organization sued the Legislature earlier this year, claiming it manipulated the mapmaking process to dilute the influence of the county’s Black, Latino and Asian communities. Whites are just 56% of the county’s nearly 1.4 million people but comprise nearly 80% of its governing body.

Yan isn’t part of the lawsuit, but said he supports its goal.

“When I look at Nassau County, there’s been an increase in population of Asian communities ever since I moved here 16 years ago,” he said. “However, there was not a single elected office held in Nassau County by Asian Americans. So for me, we really have to make sure that we have our own true representation.”

The action against Nassau County is one of at least four lawsuits that have been filed under New York’s Voting Rights Act, which was enacted two years ago. New York is among at least seven mostly Democratic-controlled states that took action to protect voting rights after lawmakers became frustrated by the tide of new voting restrictions in many Republican-led states after the 2020 election and the failure of voting rights legislation in Congress.

The lawsuits, which include challenges filed against Mount Pleasant, Cheektowaga and Newburgh, help dispel a longstanding narrative that racial voting discrimination happens only in the South or in deeply Republican states.

“New York is not immune from racial inequity and racial vote dilution simply because it may tend to vote more in a progressive way than Southern states,” said Perry Grossman, who is director of voting rights at the New York Civil Liberties Union and helped write the new state law.

Under the federal Voting Rights Act, some states and local governments were required to get approval in advance from the U.S. Department of Justice before making voting-related changes because of their history of discrimination. That practice, known as preclearance, was effectively ended by a 2013 Supreme Court ruling.

Although Nassau County wasn’t subject to the preclearance provision, it had a history of racial segregation since the early 1900s, especially related to housing and policing, according to the lawsuit. The Ku Klux Klan held rallies and burned crosses throughout Nassau County in the 1920s.

Drastic differences remain today between communities that are affluent and mostly white and ones that are more diverse, said Lucas Sanchez, co-executive director of New York Communities for Change, which is a plaintiff in the Nassau County lawsuit.

“Long Island is a place that was built on the principle of exclusion, that was built on the principle of segregation,” he said. “The map, as it stands, keeps us away from the table, denies us seats at the table, and this is why we’re a part of this lawsuit.”

Mary Studdert, spokeswoman for the Nassau County Legislature Republican Majority, said the current map conforms to the law and is a result of public feedback that combines communities of interest.

The lawsuit paints a different picture. It says the map splits minority communities or combines them with others that are starkly different, diluting the political power of their voters.

The lawsuit cites the village of Freeport, which is nearly 44% Latino and 32% Black. Under the county’s map, part of the village was folded into a district that includes Merrick, which is predominantly white. The district’s representative more than likely will always be someone from Merrick, said Maria Jordan-Awalom, a plaintiff who is Latina and a Freeport resident.

She said a dearth of parks and poor roads is one way to distinguish Freeport from Merrick. She also referenced a local Black Lives Matter protest in 2020 as an example of the towns’ differences. She and at least 100 demonstrators marched along what she called an imaginary wall between Freeport and Merrick. Local media reported on a public outcry from Merrick residents, some telling the protesters to “go back West” to Freeport.

“We’re not connected in any way,” said Jordan-Awalom, who also is president of the Freeport School Board. “For the decision-makers to make this choice, to connect us and lump us with this community that doesn’t even want to be a part of our community and doesn’t want to have any relationship with us as residents, it’s just mind-boggling.”

The village of New Hyde Park, which also was mentioned in the lawsuit, provides another example showing how the redistricting process has diluted the voting power of minority communities.

Nearly a third of its residents are Asian, but it was stripped from the district where Yan lives during the latest round of map-drawing. Added instead was Manhasset, which is overwhelmingly white. Yan plans to run again, but the district’s boundaries don’t seem to give him a successful route, advocates said.

“I don’t want this opportunity to pass because, win or lose, I’ve always wanted to make sure that Asian Americans have the right representation,” Yan said. “Without people representing us, we don’t have a voice at the table.”

Redistricting experts expect more lawsuits under the new state voting rights acts, especially if current litigation succeeds. But Grossman, of the Civil Liberties Union, hopes the challenges become more of a lesson that pushes jurisdictions to focus on improving parks, libraries, schools and other amenities in minority communities.

“My hope is that what these initial cases do is provide the foundation for a lot more collaborative resolution because my strong preference is not to see taxpayer money going to litigation,” he said. “I hope that local governments in New York and elsewhere see state voting rights acts as an opportunity to do better.”

___

The Associated Press’ coverage of race and voting receives support from the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — To casual sports fans and people outside northern Utah, it may look like an NHL team fell into Salt Lake City’s lap in the span of two weeks.

But local organizers say the Arizona Coyotes ‘ relocation to Utah is the product of a yearslong effort to beckon professional hockey and other elite sports to the fast-growing capital city.

The move announced Thursday marks a coming-of-age moment for Salt Lake City as a pro sports hub in the Mountain West, giving the midsize market its second major professional sports franchise in the 45 years since it welcomed the NBA’s Utah Jazz.

Now it remains to be seen if the city can generate the same enthusiasm for hockey that it has for basketball — and whether it can provide the stability required for a team that has bounced from place to place over the past few years, observers say.

Utah already has plans bubbling for a new hockey-specific stadium that could also serve as a key venue when it hosts the 2034 Winter Olympics, which the International Olympic Committee is expected to make official this summer. In the meantime, the team will share the Delta Center with the Jazz.

Salt Lake City is also aggressively pursuing an MLB expansion team — which would make it home to three of the “Big Four” U.S. leagues — with advanced plans calling for a new baseball stadium. And Utah billionaire Ryan Smith, who owns the Jazz, pro men’s and women’s soccer teams Real Salt Lake and the Utah Royals, and, now, the new hockey team, has applied to work with the city to transform part of downtown into a sports and entertainment district.

Together, those efforts expand Salt Lake City’s footprint in the sporting world and give the renowned winter sports destination a chance to prove it can sustain multiple pro teams year-round.

Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall called the Coyotes’ move a “defining moment” in the city’s trajectory that she said unlocks new potential for growth. State and municipal leaders have been outspoken about leveraging a local love of sports to propel the city forward. That strategy has proved successful in other midsize cities, including Las Vegas, which is home to NFL and NHL teams and has an MLB team on the way.

When given opportunities to host major sporting events, from the 2002 Winter Olympics to last year’s NBA All-Star Game, Salt Lake City hasn’t failed to deliver, said Jeff Robbins, president and CEO of the Utah Sports Commission. Although the NHL transfer may seem sudden, he said, it was made possible by the confidence Utah has instilled in industry leaders over several decades.

“It didn’t fall in our laps,” Robbins said. “What you’re seeing is a lot of momentum around what we’ve been working towards for a long time.”

While several other U.S. and Canadian cities have been vying for an NHL team, Salt Lake City was quick to offer the Coyotes a “soft landing spot” after years of tumult, said David Carter, a sports business professor at the University of Southern California.

The Coyotes have bounced between stadiums, most recently playing in a 5,000-seat arena. Plans for a new hockey stadium may have helped lure them to Utah, but Carter cautioned that they could again end up without a permanent home if that doesn’t pan out, or if Smith’s company cannot generate enough media revenue, ticket sales and sponsorships to ensure the team’s longevity.

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said he wanted to place the Coyotes with trusted owners in a location where they could be “successful immediately.”

“We focused on the fact that these are the types of owners that we want, and this is the type of community we’d like to be a part of,” Bettman said Friday.

Hockey fans beyond the Beehive state have also questioned whether the moderate metropolis — home to just over 200,000 residents — can sustain a pro team.

Including the suburbs, the greater Salt Lake Valley has a population of nearly 1.26 million, and a light-rail system that can drop suburbanites steps from the downtown stadium. Jazz fans have packed the Delta Center for decades, even in losing years, but time will tell whether the basketball bandwagon translates to a similar hockey hype.

Early data looks promising to Smith, who said Friday that the team had already hit 22,700 season ticket deposits — more than quadruple the seats in the Coyotes’ current stadium and nearly twice the Delta Center’s current capacity for hockey.

The sport has started to take off locally since Salt Lake City began hosting Frozen Fury, an NHL pre-season exhibition game, in 2021, Robbins said. The valley is now home to 17 rinks, a youth hockey program and a minor league team that hit a new average attendance record this season.

For former NHL player Ken Sabourin, who spent part of his career playing in the minors in Salt Lake City, it was “a great place to play” with good crowds. While he thinks the local infrastructure is in place, he worries the Coyotes — ranked second to last in their division — are not a strong enough team to captivate their new community.

“It’s a good hockey market; it’s a good sports market,” said the player-turned-analyst. “I think they have the fans. It’s whether they’ll come out or not.”

___

AP Hockey writer Stephen Whyno contributed to this report.

NEW YORK (AP) — He seems “selfish and self-serving,” said one woman.

The way he carries himself in public “leaves something to be desired,” said another.

His “negative rhetoric and bias,” said another man, is what is “most harmful.”

Over the past week, Donald Trump has been forced to sit inside a frigid New York courtroom and listen to a parade of potential jurors in his criminal hush money trial share their unvarnished assessments of him.

It’s been a dramatic departure for the former president and presumptive GOP nominee, who is accustomed to spending his days in a cocoon of cheering crowds and constant adulation. Now a criminal defendant, Trump will instead spend the next several weeks subjected to strict rules that strip him of control over everything from what he is permitted to say to the temperature of the room.

“He’s the object of derision. It’s his nightmare. He can’t control the script. He can’t control the cinematography. He can’t control what’s being said about him. And the outcome could go in a direction he really doesn’t want,” said Tim O’Brien, a Trump biographer and critic.

While Trump is occasionally confronted by protesters, generally he lives a life sheltered from criticism. After leaving the White House, Trump moved to his Mar-a-Lago waterfront club in Palm Beach, Florida, where he is surrounded by doting paid staff and dues-paying members who have shelled out tens of thousands of dollars to be near him.

Many days, Trump heads to his nearby golf course, where he is “swarmed by people wanting to shake his hand, take pictures of him, and tell him how amazing he is,” said Stephanie Grisham, a longtime aide who broke with Trump after the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

When he returns to Mar-a-Lago in the afternoon, members lunching on the patio often stand and applaud. He receives the same standing ovation at dinner, which often ends with Trump playing DJ on his iPad, blasting favorites like “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” by James Brown.

Grisham, who spent long stretches traveling with Trump and at Mar-a-Lago during his 2016 campaign and as White House press secretary, described staff constantly serving as cheerleaders and telling Trump what he wanted to hear. To avoid angry outbursts, they requested motorcade routes that avoided protests and left a stack of positive press clips every morning on the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.

Now, Trump faces a trial that could result in felony convictions and possible prison time. And he will have to listen to more critics, without being able to punch back verbally — something he revels in doing.

Among the expected witnesses in the trial are his former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, and the porn actor who alleged she had sex with him, Stormy Daniels. Both have savaged him in interviews and books as well as on social media.

Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Trump proved during his first week in court that “he will remain defiant in the face of this unprecedented political lawfare” and said, “It is clear that his support from the American people will only grow as they watch Joe Biden, Alvin Bragg and the Democrats putting on this bogus show trial six months before the election.”

New Yorkers who said they couldn’t approach the case fairly were excused during jury selection. But one of the women with the harshest assessments of him will be among those who will determine his fate on 34 counts of falsifying business records.

“I don’t like his persona, how he presents himself in public,” said the woman, who has lived in upper Manhattan for the last 15 years. The woman said she didn’t agree with some of Trump’s politics, which she called “outrageous.”

“He just seems very selfish and self-serving, so I don’t really appreciate that in any public servant,” she said, adding that while she doesn’t “know him as a person,” how he “portrays himself in public, it just seems to me it is not my cup of tea.”

Trump’s legal team took issue with her responses, but they were out of challenges by the time she was up for consideration.

Judge Juan Manuel Merchan has withheld the names of prospective jurors for safety concerns.

On Friday, one prospective juror, who said she had attended the 2017 Women’s March protesting Trump’s inauguration, complained of the influence he has over his base.

“I think his rhetoric at times enables people to feel as if they have permission to discriminate or act on their negative impulses,” she said, citing people she has heard make homophobic or racist comments. Still, she said she didn’t have strong feelings about the former president and wasn’t sure of his current policy positions.

Another man said he’d grown up admiring the former president and business mogul’s real estate portfolio and even thinking he might someday live in Trump Tower. But he had come to oppose Trump’s “negative rhetoric and bias against people that he speaks about.”

At other times, lawyers read aloud social media posts from prospective jurors mocking Trump and celebrating his defeats.

One prospective juror, an older white woman, was struck from the jury pool by the judge after Trump’s legal team uncovered years-old social media posts that described Trump as a “racist, sexist” narcissist.

One of Trump’s attorneys called the posts “vitriolic.”

“She harbors a deep hatred for him,” said the lawyer, Susan Necheles. “She said that ’I wouldn’t believe Donald Trump if his tongue were notarized’” and that he was “anathema” to everything she was taught about love.

Confronted with the posts inside the courtroom, the juror said she understood why they’d be concerning to the defense, but her views had evolved. “Election policies can get pretty spicy and Mr. Trump can get pretty spicy,” she said.

Merchan, the judge, also dismissed a man who in 2017 had shared a Facebook post celebrating the defeat of one of Trump’s policies in court. “Get him out and lock him up!” it read in part.

Court rules require Trump to be present throughout the trial. He can’t storm out of the courtroom like he did during a recent defamation trial. He is also barred by a gag order from attacking any of the jurors, including on his Truth Social platform.

He has already been admonished by Merchan for audibly uttering something and gesturing while one juror was answering questions.

“I will not tolerate any jurors being intimidated in this courtroom,” said Merchan, who previously warned Trump he could be sent to jail for engaging in disruptive behavior in court.

Trump’s assessments in the courthouse weren’t all bad, however, with a perhaps surprising number of potential jurors saying they had no strong opinions about one of the best known and most divisive men on the planet.

In fact, the process seemed to reveal more supporters than might be expected in a borough where President Joe Biden captured 87% of the vote in 2020.

One potential juror Thursday who spoke of Trump in glowing terms said he was “impressed” with Trump’s career as a successful businessman.

“I mean he was our president, pretty amazing. He is a businessman in New York. He has forged his way, you know, he made kind of history in terms of like where he started and where he has become,” said the man, who said he saw his own story similarly.

On Tuesday, another man expressed regret that he couldn’t juggle the trial with his job.

“Your Honor, as much as I would love to serve for New York and one of our great presidents, I could not give up my job for six-plus weeks,” he said.

Many said they had read his book “The Art of the Deal.”

Even the woman who criticized his persona and ended up on the jury anyway acknowledged his appeal to voters.

“Sometimes the way he may carry himself in public leaves something to be desired. At the same time, I can relate to sometimes being a bit unfiltered,” she said. “I see him speak to a lot of people in America. I think there is something to be said about that.”

___ Associated Press writers Michael R. Sisak, Jennifer Peltz and Jake Offenhartz contributed to this report.

GILFORD, N.H. (AP) — A costumed skier races down a slope, hits a pond and hydroplanes halfway across. He pirouettes and then plunges into the icy water before jumping up and waving to the cheering crowd.

It’s the wacky spring tradition of pond skimming, and it’s happening this month at ski resorts across the country. It’s often held to celebrate the last day of the skiing season before the chairlifts close until the following winter.

Among the resorts holding pond skimming events this weekend are Snowbasin in Utah and Winter Park in Colorado. Mountains in New England and California have already held events or have them scheduled for later in the month. The tradition dates back decades, made famous by the late filmmaker Warren Miller who began documenting the annual Mt. Baker Slush Cup in Washington state in the 1950s.

These days, most resorts make their own ponds with plastic sheeting and water about 3 feet (1 meter) deep. The idea is that skiers and snowboarders try to gain enough downhill momentum to skim clear across a pond. People ski in pajamas, dressed as movie characters, holding fishing rods or shirtless.

During the pond skim at Gunstock Mountain Resort in New Hampshire this month, Dan Nutton made one of the most spectacular splashes of the day. His skis dug into the water early, propelling him through the air with his arms held out like Superman before he hit the water. Hard.

“It was a little bit rough coming into the corner there, and then we hit a bump and I was going a little bit slow,” he explained with a grin. “So, I navigated incorrectly, and I made a mistake.”

Gunstock ended up making its pond longer and more challenging this year after too many skiers stayed dry at last year’s event.

“We actually do enjoy it sometimes when they don’t make it — it gets the crowd more excited and it’s a little more fun,” said Tom Day, the resort’s general manager, who is retiring after more than four decades in the ski business. “We’re going out with a bang. It’s a beautiful day. We’ve got the music on the deck, and we’ve got the barbecue, burgers going on.”

Many skiers and snowboarders showed their prowess by zipping right across the pond. Edward Murphy, dressed in a bright green costume, wasn’t one of them. He said he realized about halfway across that he wasn’t going to make it.

“I decided to reach out and grab some water,” he said.

“Feels great,” he added. “Diving into spring.”

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The year-old war in Sudan between rival generals vying for power has sparked “a crisis of epic proportions” fueled by weapons from foreign supporters who continue to flout U.N. sanctions aimed at helping end the conflict, the U.N. political chief said Friday.

“This is illegal, it is immoral, and it must stop,” Undersecretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo told the U.N. Security Council.

Sudan plunged into chaos in mid-April 2023, when long-simmering tensions between its military, led by Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary commanded by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo broke out into street battles in the capital, Khartoum. Fighting has spread to other parts of the country, especially urban areas and the western Darfur region.

DiCarlo painted a dire picture of the war’s impact — over 14,000 dead, tens of thousands wounded, looming famine with 25 million people in need of life-saving assistance, and over 8.6 million forced to flee their homes.

Mohamed Ibn Chambas, chair of the African Union panel on Sudan and high representative for its Silence the Guns in Africa initiative, called external interference “a major factor compounding both the efforts to negotiate a cease-fire and to stop the war.”

“As a matter of fact, external support in terms of supply of war materiel and other needs has been the main reason why this war has lasted so long,” Chambas said. “It is the elephant in the room.”

Neither DiCarlo nor Chambas named any of the foreign supporters.

But Burhan, who led a military takeover of Sudan in 2021, is a close ally of neighboring Egypt and its president, former army chief Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi. In February, Sudan’s foreign minister held talks in Tehran with his Iranian counterpart amid unconfirmed reports of drone purchases for government forces.

The Rapid Support Forces’ leader, Dagalo, has reportedly received support from Russia’s Wagner mercenary group. U.N. experts said in a recent report that the RSF has also received support from Arab allied communities and new military supply lines running through Chad, Libya and South Sudan.

The Arab-dominated RSF has carried out brutal attacks in Darfur on ethnic African civilians, especially the ethnic Masalit, and has taken control of most of the vast region.

Its newest target appears to be El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur. Edem Wosornu, the U.N. humanitarian office’s director of operations, said RSF-affiliated militias attacked and burned villages west of El Fasher on April 13.

“Since then, there have been continuing reports of clashes in the eastern and northern parts of the city, resulting in more than 36,000 people displaced,” she told the council.

Wosornu warned that “the violence poses an extreme and immediate danger to the 800,000 civilians who reside in El Fasher, and it risks triggering further violence in other parts of Darfur — where more than 9 million people are in dire need of humanitarian assistance.”

Two decades ago, Darfur became synonymous with genocide and war crimes, particularly by the notorious Janjaweed Arab militias, against populations that identify as Central or East African.

That legacy appears to have returned, with the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor, Karim Khan, saying in late January there are grounds to believe both sides may be committing war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide in Darfur.

The RSF was formed from Janjaweed fighters by former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who ruled the country for three decades before being overthrown during a popular uprising in 2019. He is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide and other crimes during the conflict in Darfur in the 2000s.

DiCarlo called for redoubled efforts to bring peace, saying U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ personal envoy for Sudan, Ramtane Lamamra, has proposed convening a meeting with African and Arab organizations and key countries “to develop a comprehensive mediation and peacemaking strategy.”

Chambas said the AU is appealing to countries in the region not to support either side.

It is also organizing “an all inclusive political dialogue for Sudanese that will prepare the civilians for post-war transition to democratic governance,” he said.

“The war has set the country back several decades and it will take more than a generation to rebuild Sudan to its pre-war state,” Chambas said.

By Jasper Ward

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate has reached an agreement to approve the reauthorization of a controversial surveillance program and plans to vote on it on Friday night, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said.

If the Senate votes to reauthorize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which the House approved last week, it would secure what supporters call a key element of the United States’ foreign intelligence-gathering operation. The law is set to expire at midnight Friday.

“It’s an important part of our national security toolkit and helps law enforcement stop terrorist attacks, drug trafficking, and violent extremism,” Schumer said in a written statement.

FISA has attracted criticism from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers, who argue it violates Americans’ constitutional right to privacy. The bill was blocked three times in the past five months by House Republicans bucking their party, before passing last week by a 273-147 vote when its duration was shortened from five years to two years.

The White House, intelligence chiefs and top lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee have warned of potentially catastrophic effects of not reauthorizing the program, which was first created in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Although the right to privacy is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, the data of foreign nationals gathered by the program often includes communications with Americans, and can be mined by domestic law enforcement bodies such as the FBI without a warrant. 

That has alarmed both hardline Republicans and far-left Democrats. Recent revelations that the FBI used this power to hunt for information about Black Lives Matter protesters, congressional campaign donors and U.S. lawmakers have raised further doubts about the program’s integrity.

(Reporting by Jasper Ward in Washington, DC; Additional reporting by Brad Brooks in Longmont, Colorado; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Federal officials are resolved never to allow a terrorist attack like the Oklahoma City bombing happen again, Deputy Homeland Security Adviser Caitlin Durkovich told survivors and loved ones of the 168 people killed in the April 19, 1995, bombing Friday.

“What happened here in Oklahoma still rests heavy in our hearts; … what transpired here 29 years ago remains the deadliest act of homegrown terrorism in U.S. history,” Durkovich said in front of a field of 168 bronze chairs, each engraved with the name of a bombing victim, at the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum.

“Our collective resolve to never let this happen is how we bear witness to the memory and the legacy of those who were killed and those who survived” the bombing, Durkovich told the crowd of more than 100 people as a woman in the crowd wiped tears from her face.

The nearly hour-and-half long ceremony began with 168 seconds of silence for each of those killed and ended with the reading of the names of each of the victims.

Durkovich was joined by Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt and Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt for the ceremony on a partly sunny, cool and windy morning for the 29th anniversary of the attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building downtown.

“This is a place where Americans killed Americans,” and the lessons learned after the bombing should be used to address the “political vitriol” of today, Holt said.

“We don’t want more places, and more days of remembrance. This should be enough,” Holt said.

The motives of the bombers included hate, intolerance, ignorance, bigotry, conspiracy theories, misinformation and “extreme political views,” Holt said.

Hatred of the federal government motivated former Army soldier Timothy McVeigh and co-conspirator, Terry Nichols, to commit the attack.

McVeigh’s hatred was specifically fueled by the government’s raid on the Branch Davidian religious sect near Waco, Texas, that left 76 people dead and a standoff in the mountains of Ruby Ridge, Idaho, that left a 14-year-old boy, his mother and a federal agent dead. He picked April 19 because it was the second anniversary of the Waco siege’s fiery end.

McVeigh was convicted, sentenced to death and executed by lethal injection in 2001. Nichols was sentenced to life in prison.

Stitt ordered American and state flags on state property to be flown at half-staff until 5 p.m. Friday in remembrance of those killed and injured in the bombing.

“As the world watched, Oklahomans banded together in a community-wide display of noble humanity,” Stitt said in a statement announcing the order.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The University of Southern California further shook up its commencement plans Friday, announcing the cancelation of a keynote speech by filmmaker Jon M. Chu just days after making the controversial choice to disallow the student valedictorian from speaking.

The private university in Los Angeles on Monday said it was canceling valedictorian Asna Tabassum’s speech at the May 10 ceremony because of safety concerns. Tabassum, who is Muslim, has expressed support for Palestinians in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, and university officials said the response to her selection as valedictorian had “taken on an alarming tenor.” They did not cite any specific threats.

The university’s decision was met with praise from pro-Israel organizations but condemnation from free speech groups and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Students and faculty marched across campus Thursday in silent protest of the university’s decision.

Now, university officials say they are “redesigning” the entire commencement program.

“Given the highly publicized circumstances surrounding our main-stage commencement program, university leadership has decided it is best to release our outside speakers and honorees from attending this year’s ceremony,” the university said in an unsigned statement posted Friday. “We’ve been talking to this exceptional group and hope to confer these honorary degrees at a future commencement or other academic ceremonies.”

Chu was slated to deliver the keynote address at the May 10 ceremony. He is a 2003 graduate of the university who has since directed films like “Crazy Rich Asians” and “Wicked,” an adaptation for the Broadway musical set for release last this year.

More than 65,000 people are expected to gather on campus for commencement, including 19,000 graduates.

“Although this should have been a time of celebration for my family, friends, professors, and classmates, anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian voices have subjected me to a campaign of racist hatred because of my uncompromising belief in human rights for all,” Tabassum said in a statement earlier this week.

The Israel-Hamas war has presented a challenge for colleges under pressure to preserve free speech and open debate, and campuses are expected to be further tested as commencement speeches get underway in the coming weeks.

At Columbia University on Thursday, New York police removed a pro-Palestinian protest encampment and arrested more than 100 demonstrators. Most of them were charged with trespassing at the Ivy League-institution.

Several students involved in the protest said they also were suspended from Columbia and nearby Barnard College. The school said it was still identifying students involved in the protest and added more suspensions would be forthcoming.

“Students have a right to free speech but do not have a right to violate university policies and disrupt learning on campus,” said New York Mayor Eric Adams, who said the city was asked by university officials to remove the encampment.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.N. World Food Program has agreed to help deliver aid for the starving civilians of Gaza once the U.S. military completes a pier for transporting the humanitarian assistance by sea, U.S. officials said Friday.

The involvement of the U.N. agency could help resolve one of the major obstacles facing the U.S.-planned project — the reluctance of aid groups to handle on-the-ground distribution of food and other badly needed goods in Gaza absent significant changes by Israel.

An Israeli military attack April 1 that killed seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen intensified international criticism of Israel for failing to provide security for humanitarian workers or allow adequate amounts of aid across its land borders.

President Joe Biden, himself facing criticism over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza while supporting Israel’s military campaign against Hamas, announced March 8 that the U.S. military would build the temporary pier and causeway, as an alternative to the land routes.

The U.S. Agency for International Development confirmed to The Associated Press that it would partner with the WFP on delivering humanitarian assistance to Gaza via the maritime corridor.

“This is a complex operation that requires coordination between many partners, and our conversations are ongoing. Throughout Gaza, the safety and security of humanitarian actors is critical to the delivery of assistance, and we continue to advocate for measures that will give humanitarians greater assurances,” USAID said in its statement to the AP.

U.S. and WFP officials were working on how to deliver the aid to Palestinian civilians “in an independent, neutral, and impartial manner,” the agency said.

There was no immediate comment from the WFP, and an WFP spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.

Israel promised to open more border crossings into Gaza and increase the flow of aid after its drone strikes killed the seven aid workers, who were delivering food into the Palestinian territory.

The war was sparked when Hamas militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people and taking some 250 others hostage. The Israeli offensive in Gaza, aimed at destroying Hamas, has caused widespread devastation and killed over 33,800 people, according to local health officials. Hundreds of U.N. and other humanitarian workers are among those killed by Israeli strikes.

International officials say famine is imminent in northern Gaza, where 70% of people are experiencing catastrophic hunger.

The U.S. military will be constructing what’s known as a modular causeway as part of the maritime route, in hopes that handling the inspection and processing of the aid offshore will speed the distribution to Gaza’s people.

Offshore, the Army will build a large floating platform where ships can unload pallets of aid. Then the aid will be transferred by Army boats to a motorized string of steel pier or causeway sections that will be anchored to the shore.

Several Army vessels and Miliary Sealift Command ships are already in the Mediterranean Sea, and are working to prepare and build the platform and pier.

That pier is expected to be as much as 1,800 feet (550 meters) long, with two lanes, and the Pentagon has said it could accommodate the delivery of more than 2 million meals a day for Gaza residents.

Army Col. Sam Miller, commander of the 7th Transportation Brigade, which is in charge of building the pier, said about 500 of his soldiers will participate in the mission. All together, Pentagon officials have said about 1,000 U.S. troops will be involved.

Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, told reporters this week that the U.S. in on track to have the system in place by the end of the month or early May. The actual construction of the pier had been on hold as U.S. and international officials hammered out agreements for the collection and distribution of the aid.

He said the U.S. has been making progress, and that Israel has agreed to provide security on the shore. The White House has made clear that there will be no U.S. troops on the ground in Gaza, so while they will be constructing elements of the pier they will not transport aid onto the shore.

U.S. Navy ships and the Army vessels will provide security for U.S. forces building the pier.