CNN – National

By Rachel Ramirez, CNN It’s the time of the year when most Americans finish Thanksgiving leftovers and venture out in search for the best holiday sales. More importantly, they plan their household centerpiece of the season: the Christmas tree. While some revel in the scent of a real tree and the joy of picking one

By Nicole Chavez, CNN Mary Johnson was on her way to a friend’s home in Oso, Washington, the day before Thanksgiving, but she never made it. A year later, her disappearance remains a mystery. Johnson, then 39 years old and an enrolled citizen of the Tulalip Tribes, was last seen on the reservation on November

By Gregory Lemos The mother of Ahmaud Arbery expressed gratitude Thanksgiving morning for the guilty verdicts of the three men who killed her son, calling the moment “bittersweet.” “This is the second Thanksgiving that my family and I will share without Ahmaud,” Wanda Cooper-Jones said in an interview on CNN’s “New Day” Thursday. “But this

By Rosa Flores and Dakin Andone, CNN Volunteers are converging on the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, overcoming supply chain challenges to serve tens of thousands of people who find themselves in need of a meal on Thanksgiving. Organizers expect to serve between 25,000 and 30,000 families during Thursday’s 43rd annual “Super Feast,”

By Eliott C. McLaughlin, CNN It’s daytime, and the woman screams, “Call 911! Call 911!” as pedestrians walk down a sidewalk near a South Philadelphia intersection packed with apartments and businesses. Seconds later, she is shot dead, marking the most dubious of milestones. The city witnessed its 500th homicide of 2021 on Wednesday, matching a

By Amanda Watts, CNN Bart the Bear II, a famed grizzly bear who had appeared in countless movies and TV series such as “We Bought a Zoo” and “Game of Thrones,” has died, according to his family, Lynne and Doug Seus. In a post on The Vital Ground Foundation, which was co-founded by the Seus,

By Brandon Tensley, CNN A version of this story appeared in CNN’s Race Deconstructed newsletter. To get it in your inbox every week, sign up for free here. There’s little similarity between the actual harvest feast in 1621 that eventually inspired Thanksgiving and the event’s commemoration in popular culture. Historians doubt that anyone ate turkey.

By Alisha Ebrahimji, CNN Thousands of people are raising money online for a Missouri man who served 43 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Kevin Strickland, 62, was exonerated Tuesday morning after serving decades at Western Missouri Correctional Center in Cameron, Missouri. Strickland was convicted in 1979 of one count of capital

By Rob Frehse, CNN A Massachusetts judge vacated Tyrone Clark’s 1974 rape conviction after the commonwealth failed to preserve evidence and the victim in the case, unsolicited, raised serious doubts about her identification of the defendant, according to a news release from the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office. Clark, who was released from prison Wednesday,

By Sahar Akbarzai, CNN A Newark, New Jersey, police officer is facing multiple charges after prosecutors said he was involved in a hit-and-run that left a 29-year-old nurse dead. Louis Santiago, 25, was off duty when prosecutors allege he traveled onto the right shoulder of the Garden State Parkway around 3 a.m. on November 1,