Here's what's happening across the United States and around the world today.
Rescuers pull out teenage survivor as aftershocks keep Nepal's capital on edge
KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — A long-absent noise — cheers — rang out in Nepal's capital Thursday as rescuers pulled a teenager alive from the earthquake rubble he had been trapped in for five days. The joy interrupted a dreary and still fearful day in which thousands worried about aftershocks lined up to board free buses to their rural hometowns.
Hundreds cheered as the 18-year-old, identified by police as Pemba Tamang, was pulled out of the wreckage, dazed and dusty, and carried away on a stretcher. He had been trapped under the collapsed debris of a seven-story building in Kathmandu since Saturday, when the magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck.
Nepalese rescuers, supported by an American disaster response team, had been working for hours to free him. L.B. Basnet, the police officer who crawled into a gap to reach Tamang, said he was surprisingly responsive.
"He thanked me when I first approached him," said Basnet. "He told me his name, his address, and I gave him some water. I assured him we were near to him."
When Tamang was lifted out, his face was covered in dust, and medics had put an IV drop into his arm. A blue brace had been placed around his neck. He appeared stunned, and his eyes blinked in the sunlight as workers hurriedly carried him away.
U.S. & World
Stories that affect your life across the U.S. and around the world.
Foreigners see Shangri-la, but Nepalese see towering obstacles as they dig out from quake
KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — Even amid the misery, with entire neighborhoods sleeping on sidewalks for fear of a massive earthquake's aftershocks, even with no running water, no electricity, and anger and frustration boiling over — even with all this, you can still find hints of the picture-postcard image of Nepal many foreigners hold in their imaginations.
There, perhaps, is Shangri-la, off in the Himalayan foothills that loom up above the tiled roofs and arched gates of the colonial-era buildings that made it through Saturday's earthquake. There's the squeak of the rickshaw, the gentle calls of "Namaste," the blissed-out backpacker stumbling down tree-lined boulevards.
It was almost always more mirage than truth, and never more so than after the country's worst disaster in decades.
People here have long seen their struggles with crushing poverty, corruption and infrastructure failures, and with a political fecklessness almost Shakespearean in scale, overshadowed by the beauty of the land and its firm place in the collective popular romantic imagination.
As Nepalese now dig out from a quake that has killed 5,500 and counting, there's widespread pessimism that these ugly truths will become any clearer to an outside world smitten with an image that doesn't match the reality. There is even less faith that a government that many feel has consistently failed its people will rise to the occasion.
Baltimore officials try to dampen expectations of an immediate resolution to Gray case
BALTIMORE (AP) — Having weathered two all-night curfews with no major disturbances, Baltimore officials are now trying to manage growing expectations they will immediately decide whether to prosecute six police officers involved in the arrest of a black man who later died of injuries he apparently received while in custody.
In an effort to be transparent, authorities have told the community they plan to turn over the findings of a police investigation into Freddie Gray's death to a state's attorney by Friday. Gray's death from a spinal injury a week after his April 12 arrest is what sparked riots Monday — the worst the city has seen since 1968.
Prosecutors will review the information and eventually decide how to move forward, authorities have said.
But protesters on the streets and high school students who met with Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake on Wednesday have said there are rumors circulating that some kind of "verdict" will be rendered as soon as Friday.
"It became very clear ... that people misunderstood," Rawlings-Blake said.
As Supreme Court ruling on health law nears, congressional Republicans divided over response
WASHINGTON (AP) — Congressional Republicans are divided over how to respond to an approaching Supreme Court decision on President Barack Obama's health care law, even as growing numbers concede that their long-sought goal of repealing the statute will have to wait.
Should the plaintiffs prevail in the GOP-backed lawsuit, the justices could annul one of the law's backbones: federal subsidies helping around 7.7 million people afford health insurance in more than 30 states. Republicans broadly agree that Congress should react by temporarily replacing that aid, aware that abruptly ending it would anger millions of voters before the 2016 presidential and congressional elections.
Yet when it comes to choosing an overall response to a court ruling, GOP lawmakers have suggested at least five different proposals — so far. None has won consensus backing from Republicans.
The divisions underscore the challenge Republicans face between satisfying conservative supporters who want the law dismantled and providing help should millions lose their ability to afford coverage. But the sheer existence of the GOP proposals could help in court because it might suggest to the justices that despite Democrats' claims that eliminating the subsidies would spark health insurance chaos, Congress is already working on ways to avoid that.
Republicans say they remain uniformly intent on dismantling the 2010 law, but there's also no agreement on what the replacement should be. Increasingly, many acknowledge that as long as Obama remains in office, any repeal effort will mostly serve to tee up the issue for the 2016 elections.
Sen. Bernie Sanders warns that he shouldn't be underestimated in running for president
MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who is running for the Democratic nomination for president, says he will do more than simply raise progressive issues or nudge Hillary Rodham Clinton to the left.
"People should not underestimate me," Sanders told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday confirming his presidential bid. "I've run outside of the two-party system, defeating Democrats and Republicans, taking on big-money candidates and, you know, I think the message that has resonated in Vermont is a message that can resonate all over this country."
Sanders is the first major challenger to enter the race against Clinton, who launched her bid for president earlier this month and is considered the front-runner in the Democratic race. He is likely to be joined in the coming months by former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb and ex-Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee.
As he has for months in prospective campaign stops in the early voting states, and throughout his political career, the former mayor of Burlington, Vermont, assailed an economic system that he said has devolved over the past 40 years and eradicated the nation's middle class.
"What we have seen is that while the average person is working longer hours for lower wages, we have seen a huge increase in income and wealth inequality, which is now reaching obscene levels," Sanders said.
40 years after Vietnam War, communists celebrate victory; Americans reflect on fall of Saigon
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam (AP) — This city once known as Saigon was festooned in red banners on Thursday that read "Long Live the Glorious Communist Party of Vietnam," 40 years after northern forces seized control of the country and America walked away from a divisive and bloody war that remains a painful sore.
Thousands of Vietnamese, including war veterans in uniform, lined up to watch soldiers and traditional performers parade through the streets of what is now Ho Chi Minh City.
On April 30, 1975, North Vietnamese tanks rolled into Saigon, then the capital of South Vietnam. They crashed through the gates of the presidential palace and hoisted the communist flag. It was an incredible victory for the revolutionary forces that had waged guerrilla warfare for more than a decade against the U.S., and before that against France.
"The tank crashing the gates ... was a symbol of victory for the Vietnamese nation and the Vietnamese People's Army, marking the end of the 30 years of national resistance against the French and then the Americans," said Nguyen Van Tap, 64, who drove Tank 390 through the iron bars and reunited with members of his tank company Wednesday. "For the Vietnamese, April 30 is a day of festivities and national reunification."
For the U.S. and its South Vietnamese allies, the day was one of panic, chaos and defeat known simply as the fall of Saigon.
Near Syria's border, wounded fighters and civilians recover from war trauma
KILIS, Turkey (AP) — Sitting up in bed, 16-year-old Anas Baroudi lifts up an orange blanket to show where his left foot used to be, before he lost it almost three years ago in Syria's civil war.
"It's not painful," the Syrian teenager says quietly as he covers the leg again.
Lying in the next bed is Hassan, 26, a rebel fighter who lost his right eye and mobility in his right leg when a tank shell struck close to him on the front lines of Aleppo.
They both tease 23-year-old Khaled Qatrib, another Syrian war amputee who is sharing their room, about being a "Facebook addict," with a smartphone seemingly attached to his hand.
The mood is relatively upbeat among the young Syrian men, their lives forever scarred by war, at the Dar Al-Salameh center for recovery and physiotherapy in the Turkish border town of Kilis.
Chinese builder assembles 57-story skyscraper in 19 days using modular approach
CHANGSHA, China (AP) — A Chinese construction company is claiming to be the world's fastest builder after erecting a 57-story skyscraper in 19 working days in central China.
The Broad Sustainable Building Co. put up the rectangular, glass-and-steel Mini Sky City in the Hunan provincial capital of Changsha using a modular method, assembling three floors per day, company vice president Xiao Changgeng said.
The company, which has ambitions to assemble the world's tallest skyscraper at 220 floors in only three months, worked on Mini Sky City in two spurts separated by winter weather. Its time-lapse video of the rapid assembly has become popular on Chinese video-sharing sites since it was first uploaded on YouTube.
"With the traditional method, they have to build a skyscraper brick by brick, but with our method, we just need to assemble the blocks," company engineer Chen Xiangqian said.
Such modular approaches have been used for high-rise apartment blocks elsewhere, including in Britain and the U.S. Some critics say the method could lead to cityscapes with overly uniform architecture.
Naked, 'superhuman' paranoids begging police to save them from imaginary mobs? That's flakka!
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — One man ran naked through a Florida neighborhood, tried to have sex with a tree and told police he was the mythical god Thor. Another ran nude down a busy city street in broad daylight, convinced a pack of German shepherds was pursuing him.
Two others tried separately to break into the Fort Lauderdale Police Department. They said they thought people were chasing them; one wound up impaled on a fence.
The common element to these and other bizarre incidents in Florida in the last few months is flakka, an increasingly popular synthetic designer drug. Also known as gravel and readily available for $5 or less a vial, it's a growing problem for police after bursting on the scene in 2013.
It is the latest in a series of synthetic drugs that include Molly, Ecstasy and bath salts, but officials say flakka is even easier to obtain in small quantities through the mail. Flakka's active ingredient is a chemical compound called alpha-PVP, which is on the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's list of the controlled substances most likely to be abused. It is usually made overseas in countries such as China and Pakistan.
Flakka, a derivative of the Spanish word for a thin, pretty woman, is usually sold in a crystal form and is often smoked using electronic cigarettes, which are popular with young people and give off no odor. It can also be snorted, injected or swallowed.
The fight, the Derby, the playoffs, the draft — Saturday in sports has something for everyone
The most-anticipated fight of all time. The best-known horse race. The premier baseball rivalry. The NFL draft.
And those are just the highlights.
Super Saturday — perhaps a day unlike any other in the history of sport — awaits.
Stock the refrigerator, replace the remote batteries, get the weekend errands done early, invite your friends, fire up that grill and if you're very fortunate, confirm those flights. For the sports consumer, an amazing number of options will be available.
From the Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao fight that could generate $400 million and topple every known record in boxing history, to the 141st edition of the Kentucky Derby, to the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox colliding for the 2,142nd time to the NFL draft's finishing rounds and so much more, it's a sports enthusiast's dream.
That's what's happening. Read more stories to jump start your day in our special Breakfast Buzz section.
