Newly freed Chelsea Manning ‘figuring things out’

Newly freed Chelsea Manning ‘figuring things out’

KANSAS CITY, Mo.

Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning, spared by presidential clemency from the rest of a 35-year prison term for giving classified materials to anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, stepped out of a military lockup Wednesday and into a future she said she was eager to define.

“I’m figuring things out right now – which is exciting, awkward, fun and all new for me,” Manning said by email hours after being released from confinement at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., having served seven years behind bars for one of the largest exposing of classified information in U.S. history.

Venezuela leader: Officials treated like Jews under Nazis

CARACAS, Venezuela

Venezuela’s embattled socialist president is complaining about ill treatment of his government’s officials abroad, comparing the harassment to that of Jews in Nazi Germany.

President Nicolas Maduro on Tuesday criticized Venezuelan expatriates who have been yelling at Venezuelan officials in other countries, or who use social media to post photos of officials living it up outside Venezuela while the country’s people are struggling with triple-digit inflation and food shortages.

“We are the Jews of the 21st century,” Maduro declared.

MS-13 gang targeted in pre-dawn sweep across Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES

Hundreds of federal and local law enforcement fanned out across Los Angeles in pre-dawn sweeps, serving arrest and search warrants as part of a three-year investigation into the ultra-violent street gang MS-13.

Federal prosecutors unsealed a sweeping indictment Wednesday morning charging dozens of members and leaders of the brutal street gang with a variety of crimes, including murder.

Acting U.S. Attorney Sandra Brown said the 127-page anti-racketeering indictment targets 44 members and associates of the gang, including the one-time leader of a Los Angeles faction of MS-13. Three people accused of murder could face the death penalty, she said.

300,000 children migrating solo, up nearly fivefold

DAKAR, Senegal

The U.N. children’s agency says more than 300,000 young people migrating alone have been recorded in a two-year period, marking a dramatic escalation of a dangerous trend that has forced some young refugees into slavery and prostitution.

UNICEF says 170,000 of those children sought asylum in Europe in 2015-16, many after making the treacherous trip across the Mediterranean Sea where hundreds of children are estimated to have drowned last year.

Residents take stock after night of tornadoes in US

ELK CITY, Okla.

Residents of an Oklahoma subdivision and a Wisconsin trailer park that were leveled by deadly tornadoes sifted through what remained of their homes and possessions Wednesday, even as forecasters warned of another round of powerful storms on the horizon.

The twisters were among up to 29 that were reportedly spawned by powerful storms that raced through a swath of the central U.S. stretching from Texas to the Great Lakes on Tuesday evening, destroying dozens of homes, killing two people and injuring dozens of others.

Associated Press