Recent news
Growing up in church during the 1970s, we didn’t listen to many popular tunes. Music back then was thought to lead to dancing and all other debauchery. (In truth, my dance moves weren’t that great.) But I knew all the church songs and could even play #203 and #204 in the hymnal on the piano.
ACCRA, Ghana (AP) — Shoppers may get a bitter surprise in their Easter baskets this year, as chocolate eggs and bunnies are more expensive than ever. About three-quarters of the world’s cocoa — the main ingredient in chocolate — are produced on cacao trees in Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Cameroon. But dusty seasonal winds from the Sahara were severe in recent months, blocking out the sunlight needed for bean pods to grow. The season prior, heavy rainfall spread a rotting disease.
CLEVELAND (AP) — Seventh-grade student Henry Cohen bounced side to side in time to the Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” playing in teacher Nancy Morris’ classroom, swinging his arms open and closed across the planets pictured on his T-shirt.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — As Yemen’s Houthi rebels continue to target ships in a Mideast waterway, satellite pictures analyzed by The Associated Press show what appears to be a new airstrip being built at an entrance to that crucial maritime route.
BALTIMORE (AP) — The cargo ship that lost power and crashed into a bridge in Baltimore underwent “routine engine maintenance” in port beforehand, the U.S. Coast Guard said Wednesday, as divers recovered the bodies of two of six workers who plunged into the water when it collapsed. The others were presumed dead, and officials said search efforts had been exhausted.
For Evan Gershkovich, the dozen appearances in Moscow's courts over the past year have fallen into a pattern. Guards take the American journalist from the notorious Lefortovo Prison in a van for the short drive to the courthouse. He’s led in handcuffs to a defendants’ cage in front of a judge for yet another hearing about his pretrial detention on espionage charges.