CNN – National

By Cheri Mossburg and Dakin Andone, CNN The oldest Black church in California’s East Bay was devastated by a massive fire Sunday night that the church’s pastor said gutted its interior structure. Video showed heavy smoke and flames shooting from the roof of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church of Oakland, where the fire erupted

By Eric Levenson, CNN In opening statements of Alex Murdaugh’s murder trial, the prosecution went into a lengthy defense of the value and importance of circumstantial evidence. “A lot of times people hear, ‘Oh, it’s just a circumstantial case,’ but the law says otherwise,” prosecutor Creighton Waters told the jury. “The law says circumstantial evidence

By Alexandra Meeks, CNN Today is Presidents Day, a federal holiday in the US commemorating George Washington’s birthday and honoring the nation’s commanders in chief. Many Americans are off work today — and most banks and postal services will not be operating. If you plan to run errands today, see what else is open and

By Zoe Sottile, CNN A long-lost letter from George Washington hints at the first president’s financial woes, and it is expected to fetch $50,000 at auction. The Raab Collection, an auction house specializing in historical documents, announced the discovery of the letter in a news release Sunday. The letter was previously “unknown to scholars” and

By Nouran Salahieh, Holly Yan and Claire Colbert, CNN More than two weeks after a toxic train wreck unleashed plumes of black smoke, contaminated the soil and fueled anxiety in East Palestine, Ohio, residents have reported a growing number of ailments — from rashes to nausea to trouble breathing. Now, the state will open a

By Elizabeth Wolfe and Dakin Andone, CNN A man is in custody after one person was killed and four others — including a 4-year-old girl — were injured in a shooting Sunday night along a Mardi Gras parade route ahead of the city’s raucous celebration this week, the New Orleans Police Department said Monday. Mansour

By Michelle Watson, CNN California’s Bay Area Rapid Transit system says it is running “limited service” to the Oakland International Airport because of a power outage in Alameda County. “Oakland Airport Connector service is running limited service due to a power outage. Shuttles will depart every 18 minutes,” BART said in a 2:38 p.m. PST

By Samantha Beech and Zenebou Sylla, CNN Two students wounded in a mass shooting last week at Michigan State University remained in critical condition Monday, according to university police, one week after the campus community was paralyzed by violence that left three students dead. Two other students were in serious but stable condition and a

By Zoe Sottile, CNN A new bill moving through the New Mexico legislature would make the state the first in the nation to have its own official aroma: green chiles roasting in the fall. Democratic state senator William Soules sponsored Bill 188, which seeks to add to the roster of New Mexico’s state symbols. Other

By Emma Tucker, CNN Three days after Michigan State University was terrorized by a mass shooting on campus, Democratic lawmakers in the state filed a host of bills targeting gun safety — legislation they are hopeful can become law since the party last month took control of the legislature and governor’s office for the first

By Rebekah Riess and Susannah Cullinane, CNN The mother of a 7-year-old kidnapped and killed in Texas in December thanked a grand jury for its role in the indictment of the man accused of her daughter’s murder. Tanner Horner was arrested in December after allegedly telling authorities he strangled 7-year-old Athena Strand after accidentally hitting

By Holly Yan, CNN The church where Jimmy Carter taught Sunday school for decades marked his poignant absence this weekend as the former president receives end-of-life care. Carter, 98, has taught Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, since the 1980s. Not even a cancer diagnosis stopped him from teaching

By Dakin Andone, CNN US Sen. Sherrod Brown echoed officials’ beliefs Sunday that the water and air are safe in East Palestine, Ohio, after a train carrying hazardous materials derailed there earlier this month, but he acknowledged that residents are “right to be skeptical.” “We think the water’s safe,” the senator, a Democrat, told CNN’s