Kentucky

Mother, child missing in flood as storms hit South, Midwest

A mother and child remained missing Friday, hours after they were swept into a flooded creek in eastern Kentucky, as torrential rains swamped portions of the state and forced emergency crews to make more than 160 rescues farther west in Louisville. Kentucky State Police Trooper Robert Purdy said the two were stranded in their vehicle in high water on a rural highway in Lee County. Local authorities could see them in the vehicle and attempted a water rescue, Purdy said. But later, the rushing water swept them away and rescue workers lost sight of them. A search was continuing late in the day. As rain pushed through parts of the South and Midwest, severe thunderstorms were also blamed for the death of a woman who was camping with her family at Natural Bridge State Resort Park in eastern Kentucky. Meanwhile, thousands of people in south central Kansas lost power amid winds that approached 90 miles per hour, downed trees and damaged buildings overnight and early Friday, and a possible tornado was being investigated in Oklahoma.

Pennsylvania

Woman charged with aiding terrorists

A Philadelphia woman who went by the online nickname "YoungLioness," was charged with attempting to provide support to terrorists in the Middle East. Federal prosecutors said Keonna Thomas, 30, who was also known as Fatayat Al Khilafah regularly communicated over the Internet with supporters of the terrorist group the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and had made plans to travel to Syria to join them. U.S. Magistrate Judge Lynn A. Sitarski ordered Thomas held in custody pending a detention hearing scheduled for Wednesday.

California

San Francisco cops sent racist messages

San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr said he is moving to fire a captain, a sergeant and six other officers implicated in sending and receiving "reprehensible" racist and homophobic text messages that came to light during a federal corruption probe. Critics questioned whether the messages exposed a deeper vein of police bias.

Massachusetts

Police conduct after bombing criticized

While the immediate response to the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings saved lives of critically wounded spectators, law enforcement authorities came under some criticism in a new report for what played out a few days later. A throng of "self-deployed" officers from Massachusetts and neighboring states rushed to a Boston suburb without any coordination with police commanders, the report said, leading to dangerous crossfire, guns fired without proper aiming, and a risky fusillade fired at one bombing suspect in the mistaken belief that he had fired on the police.

France

Families sue over terrorism coverage

Families of the hostages of a radical gunman who killed four in a kosher supermarket are suing a French broadcaster over its live coverage of the attack, saying it endangered the hostages' lives. Paris prosecutor's office spokeswoman Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre said that a preliminary investigation has been opened into the coverage by BFM all-news television, on possible charges of "putting others' lives in danger." France's broadcast watchdog reprimanded several stations for their coverage of the market hostage-taking and attack on satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in January. Broadcasters revealed in live reports that shoppers were hiding in the kosher market.

South Korea

Missiles fired to protest military drills

North Korea fired short-range projectiles into the sea for a second consecutive day in an apparent protest against ongoing U.S.-South Korean military drills, South Korean officials said. Four projectiles with a range of 87 miles were fired into waters off North Korea's west coast, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. The drills began early last month and are to end on April 24.

China

Official charged with corruption and leaks

Prosecutors charged former national security chief Zhou Yongkang with corruption and leaking of state secrets, setting the stage for him to become the highest-level politician to stand trial in China in more than three decades. The Supreme People's Procuratorate announced the indictment following a lengthy investigation that also scrutinized Zhou's former allies in government and the oil industry, but gave no new substantial details of the accusations against him. Zhou had been under investigation since 2013.

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