Here's what's happening across the United States and around the world today.
Baltimore riots raise questions about police response; National Guard troops called in
BALTIMORE (AP) — National Guard troops fanned out through the city, shield-bearing police officers blocked the streets and firefighters doused still-simmering blazes early Tuesday as a growing area of Baltimore shuddered from riots following the funeral of a black man who died in police custody.
The violence that started in West Baltimore on Monday afternoon — within a mile of where Freddie Gray was arrested and placed into a police van earlier this month — had by midnight spread to East Baltimore and neighborhoods close to downtown and near the baseball stadium.
It was one of the most volatile outbreaks of violence prompted by a police-involved death since the days of protests that followed the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black man who was shot and killed during a confrontation with a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, last summer.
At least 15 officers were hurt, including six who remained hospitalized late Monday, police said. Two dozen people were arrested.
State and local authorities pledged to restore order and calm to Baltimore, but quickly found themselves responding to questions about whether their initial responses had been adequate.
U.S. & World
Stories that affect your life across the U.S. and around the world.
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The latest on Baltimore police-custody death: Police seek to regain control over rioters
11:58 p.m.
Fredericka Gray, the twin sister of Freddie Gray, who suffered a fatal injury while in police custody, has deplored the violence.
"I think the violence is wrong ... I don't like it all," she said late Monday, adding she thought her brother also would have disapproved.
Rioting erupted around the city hours after the funeral for Freddie Gray. He died of a mysterious spinal injury days after being taken into custody.
11:40 p.m.
Helicopters ferry injured from remote Nepalese villages near earthquake's epicenter
GORKHA, Nepal (AP) — Helicopters crisscrossed the skies above the mountains of Gorkha district Tuesday near the epicenter of the weekend earthquake, ferrying the injured to clinics, and taking emergency supplies back to remote villages devastated by the disaster in Nepal that killed more than 4,400 people across the region.
Around noon, two helicopters brought in eight women from Ranachour village, two of them clutching babies to their breast, and a third heavily pregnant.
"There are many more injured people in my village," said Sangita Shrestha, who was pregnant and visibly downcast as she got off the helicopter. She was quickly surrounded by Nepalese soldiers and policemen and ushered into a waiting van to be taken to a hospital.
The little town of Gorkha, the district's administrative and trading center, is being used as a staging post to get rescuers and supplies to those remote communities after Saturday's magnitude-7.8 quake. Some villages were reachable only by air after landslides blocked mountain roads.
Some women who came off the helicopters were grimacing and crying in pain and unable to walk or speak, in agony three days after being injured in the quake.
Attorney: Colorado theater shooter studied the brain to find answers to his mental problems
CENTENNIAL, Colo. (AP) — After nearly 3 years of mystery, a clearer but conflicted portrait of James Holmes emerged from the first few hours of his trial in the Colorado theater shootings.
In opening statements Monday, defense lawyers portrayed him as a smiling child who enjoyed surfing with his family but who also sensed something was wrong with his mind, even at a young age.
Hoping to find a fix, he set off to study neuroscience at the University of Colorado, but mental illness propelled him to commit the bloody and terrifying attack on a suburban Denver movie theater in July 2012, defense lawyer Katherine Spengler said.
Prosecutors depicted a frighteningly smart killer who methodically planned and carried out a mass murder to make himself feel good and be remembered — knowing all the while that what he was doing was immoral and illegal.
No witnesses testified Monday, but in four hours of opening statements, prosecutors and defense attorneys revealed a wealth of details that had been kept secret for months because of the judge's gag order.
Boston Marathon bomber's lawyer urges jury to spare his life, says he was once 'a good kid'
BOSTON (AP) — Defense lawyers for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev began making their case to spare his life by contrasting him with his older brother, a man they said was "consumed by jihad" and determined to drag his brother down his path to terrorism.
Attorney David Bruck told jurors that Dzhokhar was "a good kid" who was led astray by his increasingly fanatical brother, Tamerlan.
During the defense's opening statement on Monday, Bruck said there is no punishment Tsarnaev can get that would be equal to the suffering of the bombing victims. "There is no evening the scales," he said. "There is no point in trying to hurt him as he hurt because it can't be done."
Three people were killed and more than 260 were wounded when the Tsarnaev brothers set off two pressure-cooker bombs packed with shrapnel near the marathon's finish line on April 15, 2013.
The jury convicted Tsarnaev, 21, earlier this month of all 30 charges against him. During the trial, prosecutors called a long list of people who lost their legs or loved ones in the bombings.
Army starts bringing in aid to Gorkha district, the epicenter of Nepal's monster quake
2.15 p.m. (0830 GMT)
At Dubai International Airport, workers loaded crates packed with relief aid into a Boeing 747 destined for Nepal, just over a four-hour flight away.
The Gulf commercial hub is home to a sprawling logistical and warehouse facility known as International Humanitarian City that is used by United Nations agencies and NGOs to deploy humanitarian aid.
The chief executive of IHC, Shaima al-Zarooni, said relief workers have faced difficulties in delivering needed aid such as temporary shelters, satellite communications gear and medical equipment because of closures and congestion at the airport in Kathmandu.
Supreme Court to take up historic arguments over right of same-sex couples to marry
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is set to hear historic arguments in cases that could make same-sex marriage the law of the land.
The justices are meeting Tuesday to offer the first public indication of where they stand in the dispute over whether states can continue defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman, or whether the Constitution gives gay and lesbian couples the right to marry.
The court is hearing extended arguments, scheduled to last 2 ½ hours, which also will explore whether states that do not permit same-sex marriage must nonetheless recognize such unions from elsewhere.
Same-sex couples can marry in 36 states and the District of Columbia.
The cases before the court come from Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee, four of the 14 remaining states that allow only heterosexual marriage. Those four states had their marriage bans upheld by the federal appeals court in Cincinnati in November. That is the only federal appeals court that has ruled in favor of the states since the Supreme Court in 2013 struck down part of the federal anti-gay marriage law.
Iraqi army and militia allies face huge obstacles in dislodging Islamic State group from Anbar
BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraqi forces are on a westward push to retake Anbar, a sprawling Sunni-dominated desert province captured by the Islamic State group in their offensive last year. But as the battles for Tikrit and Ramadi have shown, it will be a hard slog for a much-diminished Iraqi army — especially given Baghdad's reticence to arm Sunni tribesmen and local fears of the Shiite militias backing government forces.
Earlier this month, Iraqi forces captured the northern Sunni-majority city of Tikrit from the Islamic State group, but only with the backing from Iranian-trained and Iran-funded Shiite militias and U.S. airstrikes — methods that cannot work in Anbar province.
The Islamic State is estimated to hold at least 65 percent of the vast province at this point.
The past weeks of seesaw battles in Anbar, with progress in areas like Garma east of Fallujah, a stalemate in the biggest city of Ramadi and an Iraqi rout near Lake Tharthar, show that the army still needs help. But relying on erstwhile Shiite militia allies may not be palatable to locals.
"The Iraqi soldiers fighting in Anbar are not well-trained enough for this battle. Many of the soldiers are there for the money, but the (Shiite militias), they are believers in this fight," said an Iraqi brigadier general involved in the Anbar campaign. "There isn't yet a clear plan to liberate Anbar because of the political and tribal disputes."
Vietnam and the US: From hostility to reconciliation, and the courtship continues
BANGKOK (AP) — After tanks from communist North Vietnam burst through the gates of the Presidential Palace in Saigon 40 years ago Thursday, Washington imposed a punitive economic embargo that kept Hanoi from receiving assistance even from multilateral institutions such as the World Bank.
For decision-makers in Hanoi and Washington, an anniversary more significant to relations today comes this summer: The countries restored diplomatic relations in July 1995. Then-President Bill Clinton also lifted the embargo and brokered a bilateral trade agreement; when he finally visited the Vietnamese capital in 2000, he received a rock-star welcome.
The countries' ties, though strained on issues such as human rights, has grown since then, thanks in part to a mutual rival: China.
Bilateral friendship was formalized in 2013, when Vietnam's President Truong Tan Sang visited the White House and with President Barack Obama launched a "Comprehensive Partnership" for cooperation in political and diplomatic relations, trade and economic ties, defense, the war legacy and many other issues. The two countries pledged respect for "each other's political systems, independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity."
Both countries regard with wariness the offshore territorial claims by Beijing in the South China Sea, including in traditionally Vietnamese waters.
Ukraine's rebels mete out their own rough justice, as leaders struggle to set up courts
KRASNYI PARTYZAN, Ukraine (AP) — A bruised rebel fighter in battle fatigues is tied to a traffic pole, avoiding glances as a crude message hung about his neck flutters in the wind: "I am a marauder. I beat up and robbed my countrymen."
The man's captors were not his foes, but fellow separatist fighters in eastern Ukraine.
In the maelstrom of conflict, summary justice has become commonplace in rebel-controlled areas, and it targets civilians and combatants alike.
Rebel unit commander Alexander Nazarchenko stood a few paces away from the humiliated fighter in the town of Krasnyi Partyzan. He said he consulted with superiors before taking such a drastic measure. The man's offenses, he explained, were particularly outrageous.
"He assaulted a civilian, stole his car, took cash from his relatives," Nazarchenko said. "He said he was borrowing the money, but that isn't exactly how you borrow money."
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