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At about 9:30 p.m., at the All Stars Gentlemen's Club parking lot in San Antonio, Texas, a barber and a police officer got into a gunfight. Both were seriously wounded. A female witness was wounded with a bullet crease to her head. The police reported the incident was caused by road rage. That seems to be correct. The barber was cut off by the police officer. They both pulled into the parking lot. They both got out of their vehicles.  Then the gunfight happened.Initially, the story from the police was the barber opened up on the police officer, who was...

The Police Department in Tulsa, Okla., released video on Monday of an encounter during which, the authorities said, a white police officer fatally shot an unarmed black man who could be seen raising his hands above his head. The department opened a criminal investigation into the shooting and said the Tulsa County district attorney, Steve Kunzweiler, would review its findings. The federal Justice Department opened a separate civil rights investigation. During the encounter, which took place around 7:40 p.m. Friday, Terence Crutcher, 40, was shot once and killed by Betty Shelby, a Tulsa police officer since 2011, after the police...

Some middle school students in Georgia got a lesson in slang from the streets this week and some parents are not pleased. WSAV-TV is reporting a class at Godley Station School got quizzed on words like “punked,” “popo,” “true dat” and “bling bling.” A parent posted the quiz online and now many are questioning what arrived on the desks of some Savannah-Chatham students this week. Labeled as “Geography Jumpstart,” the instructions of the worksheet called for the middle school class to define words like “yo,” “dog,” “punked,” “popo,” “sportin’” and “bling-bling” based on the context of sentences provided. …

Columns of gas and ash 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) high were detected after two strong explosions from the Popocatepetl volcano, Mexico's Cenapred disaster-management agency said Friday. The first blast came at 10:14 p.m. Thursday, followed by another a little more than two hours later. The explosions deposited glowing fragments up to 1.5 kilometers from the crater as well as columns of ash and gas that were carried northeastward by the prevailing winds, Cenapred said. Popocatepetl, which rises 5,452 meters (17,875 feet) above sea level, is located about 64 kilometers (40 miles) from Mexico City. Mexican authorities have prepared contingency plans...

EVANSVILLE — An affidavit filed in Vanderburgh Superior Court shows the Evansville Police Department did not have a specific suspect when a fully armed SWAT team stormed into a house last week with "flashbang" stun grenades and found only a teenage girl and her grandmother.

Decorated Marine veteran Nick Popaditch on Tuesday announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination in the 51st Congressional District seat held by Democrat Bob Filner. Nicknamed “Gunny Pop,” Popaditch served two separate stints in the Marines. He was a tank commander during the Persian Gulf war and honorably discharged in 1992 after six years. Tiring of civilian life, he rejoined the Marines in 1995. A widely circulated photograph after the fall of Baghdad in 2003 shows the tank commander and platoon sergeant smoking a cigar in front of the statue of Saddam Hussein just before his unit helped tear it...

Anybody who has ever had to stand at a podium after a gifted speaker knows how it might have been for Pope Benedict XVI this week as he has made the first papal visit to the United States since John Paul II. His predecessor was the ultimate media-savvy leader. When he came to the ultimate media-fixated nation, it was a match made in Heaven. Millions of the faithful and the merely curious flocked to parks and stadiums. People at times had to be physically restrained from throwing themselves at him. Even on his last trip here in 1999, visibly deteriorating,...

The following is the cover story that will run in the April 29 issue of National Catholic Reporter. By JOHN L. ALLEN JR. Rome Two days before the opening of the conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago had a conversation with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, about the American sex abuse norms, arguing that the norms should be maintained more or less as is. George asked if Ratzinger, whose office is charged with processing sex abuse cases, had any questions. Ratzinger, according to George on April...