The enslaved Africans who first arrived in the British colony of Virginia in 1619 after being forcefully removed from their natural environments left much behind, but their rhythms associated with music-making journeyed with them across the Atlantic.

Many of those Africans came from cultures where the mother tongue was a tonal ...Read more

Humans have sailed the world’s oceans for thousands of years, but they haven’t all reached port. Researchers estimate that there are some three million shipwrecks worldwide, resting in shallow rivers and bays, coastal waters and the deep ocean. Many sank during catastrophes – some during storms or after running aground, others in battle...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — The sites of the three consequential deaths span just over two miles of south Minneapolis. George Floyd in 2020, Renee Good and Alex Pretti last month.

The death of Floyd, after a police officer dug a knee into his neck for more than nine minutes, was a catalyst for the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests that sought law ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Tens of thousands of protesters marching with signs. A chorus of whistles shrieking to alert neighborhoods to the presence of federal agents. Parents escorting neighborhood children to school. People on street corners holding up phones to record what they see.

The overwhelming majority of the pushback against the federal ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Current and former gang members have long come to Homeboy Industries to get their lives back on track, in part lured by their trust in Father Greg Boyle, a Jesuit priest who founded the nonprofit nearly 40 years ago.

At Homeboy's headquarters in Chinatown, people receive employment, tattoo removal, therapy and more. But in ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — In the days after Charlie Kirk was fatally shot in September while speaking at a Utah college campus, stunned followers of his conservative movement mourned online, condemning political violence. From his Los Angeles home, Johnathan Perkins, a Black diversity, equity and inclusion director at UCLA, had a different take.

“Good ...Read more

New York and New Jersey won a temporary court order blocking the Trump administration’s freeze on federal funds for the $16 billion Gateway tunnel under the Hudson River.

U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas on Friday granted a request by the two states for a temporary injunction restoring funding to the project while their lawsuit against ...Read more

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump eliminated the extra 25% tariff he had imposed on Indian goods over the country’s purchases of Russian oil, the first step to cement the terms of a trade deal the two nations announced earlier this week.

“India has committed to stop directly or indirectly importing Russian Federation oil, has ...Read more

NEW YORK — A Manhattan judge has stopped the Trump administration from freezing funding for the Hudson River Tunnel project in an 11th-hour ruling.

The order by Manhattan Federal Court Judge Jeannette Vargas granted emergency relief to New York and New Jersey, prohibiting the federal government from continuing to withhold funds. Vargas said...Read more

Harvard University is proposing to limit the number of top grades awarded to undergraduate students, responding to concerns that grade inflation may weaken the meaning of a degree from the school.

The plan would cap A grades at 20% of undergraduates, with some flexibility, across courses and departments if it’s approved by faculty ahead of ...Read more

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Friday deleted from his social media account a video clip depicting former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes, following fierce backlash from Democrats and some Republicans who called it racist and urged the president to take it down.

The White House initially defended ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Hennepin County Sheriff Dawanna Witt said she hasn’t decided how much to cooperate with federal officials when it comes to handing over immigrants in the country illegally who are held in the jail she oversees in downtown Minneapolis.

Witt told reporters on Friday she’s had four meetings with White House border czar Tom ...Read more

NEW YORK — As temperatures are expected to drop again into single digits over the weekend, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said the city is enlisting the help of school nurses, business improvement districts and formerly homeless New Yorkers to get people out of the dangerously chilly elements.

The mayor said that, over the past three weeks, outreach ...Read more

WASHINGTON — As lawmakers begin working toward a potential reauthorization of the post-9/11 program that provides emergency communications services for first-responders, they will have to navigate calls for a revamp of its structure and for more competition.

A House Energy and Commerce subcommittee is headed toward a markup Tuesday after ...Read more

Does your favorite cocktail these days come in a can?

In a real twist on cocktail culture, ready-to-drink cocktails, or RTDs, are now the top-selling American spirit by volume.

According to new data released by the Distilled Spirits Council of the U.S., in 2025 Americans bought 85.6 million 9-liter cases of RTDs, up 17.1% from the year before....Read more

NEW YORK — Archbishop Ronald Hicks was officially installed Friday as New York’s top Catholic leader, outlining a vision of a missionary church that would put people above politics.

“This is a call to be a missionary church not a country club,” Hicks said. “A club exists to serve its members. The Church exists, on the other hand, to ...Read more

DENVER — The Colorado Senate this week approved a bill that would expand the list of who can authorize and prescribe vaccines and, in the words of the sponsor, sidestep “the dysfunction coming out of Washington, D.C.”

Senate Bill 32 would allow pharmacists to prescribe vaccines independently. It would also authorize the state Board of ...Read more

DENVER — Federal immigration authorities have repeatedly violated a court order by continuing to “indiscriminately” arrest people in Colorado without warrants and without first checking if they’re likely to flee, attorneys alleged in a new legal filing.

Lawyers representing four immigrants arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs ...Read more