Category Archives: Maryland

US quadruple amputee cornhole pro suspected of murder had ‘a dark side’, ex-girlfriend claims

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Tori Mattingly told TMZ Dayton Webber would ‘lash out’ at her during four-year relationship that ended in 2025

A woman who claims she was romantically involved with a quadruple-amputee cornhole champion and the man he is accused of shooting dead in a murder case grabbing national attention has spoken of dating both of them – and said the accused killer had “a dark side”.

Tori Mattingly told TMZ in an interview published over the weekend that Dayton Webber would “lash out” at her during their four-year relationship. That relationship ended in February 2025 before she dated Bradrick Wells, the alleged victim of a deadly shooting in Webber’s car in suburban Washington DC on 22 March.

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Maryland park closed after string of explosive devices found

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Officials say bomb squad called to Fort Washington Park, which has been closed by National Park Service

Authorities found several explosive devices across a Maryland park over the weekend, prompting the park’s closure.

In a statement on Monday, the Prince George’s county fire department said that its bomb squad responded to Fort Washington Park after “several explosive devices were located”, prompting the US Park Police to close the approximately 341-acre site.

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An environmental activist and her family escaped death threats in Honduras. ICE deported her husband anyway

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Oscar, Ana and their children fled violence for safety in the US. Now Oscar, afraid and alone, is back in Honduras – ‘at the mercy of God and his will’

As soon as Oscar’s deportation flight landed at the La Lima airport in Honduras, he put on his baseball cap. On the airport shuttle toward the terminal, he pulled his cap even lower – trying to obscure his face at various police checkpoints.

His parents picked him up in a car, and drove him to a lodging they had arranged for him – miles away from his family home. He has hardly stepped outside since. “Because I can’t trust anyone – not the authorities, not the government, not a police officer,” he said. He has visited his mother a handful of times since the US deported him three weeks ago, and only under the cover of night. “They will kill anyone here. There is death everywhere.”

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US driver kills one and injures at least 14 in car-ramming attack at child’s party

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Driver turned himself in to Maryland authorities after initially fleeing scene, where eight children were injured

A driver rammed into a group of people at a children’s birthday party outside of Washington DC late on Saturday, killing a woman in her 30s and injuring at least 14 others, eight of whom were children.

In a statement released by the Bladensburg police department in Maryland, they announced that the driver of the striking vehicle had turned himself in and had been identified as a 66 year-old man from the surrounding area.

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First human case of flesh-eating screwworm parasite confirmed in US

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HHS told Reuters patient had returned from El Salvador but beef industry said person had traveled from Guatemala

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Sunday reported the first human case in the US of travel-associated New World screwworm, a flesh-eating parasite, from an outbreak-affected country.

The case, investigated by the Maryland department of health and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), was confirmed by the CDC as New World screwworm on 4 August – and involved a patient who returned from travel to El Salvador, an HHS spokesperson, Andrew G Nixon, said in an email to Reuters.

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Waste from agricultural plant poisoned US town’s water with Pfas, lawsuits allege

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Some Salisbury, Maryland, residents say the contaminated water from Perdue Farms’s local plant has sickened them

Wastewater from an industrial soya bean farm and processor has poisoned a Maryland town’s drinking water with Pfas, several lawsuits allege, raising questions about residents’ health and “forever chemical” pollution from industrial agricultural operations nationwide.

Perdue Farms acknowledged that its 300-acre Salisbury, Maryland, operation is polluting local waters, but the chemicals’ sources have not been confirmed. It appears the Pfas is in part also coming from some combination of sludge used as fertilizer and pesticides, attorneys for plaintiffs say.

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Neo-Nazi leader sentenced to 20 years for plot to attack Maryland’s power grid

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Brandon Russell, founder of neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division, was convicted of plotting to blow up Baltimore power grid

The founder of a Florida-based neo-Nazi group has been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for conspiring with his girlfriend to plan an attack on Maryland’s power grid in furtherance of their shared racist beliefs.

Brandon Russell, 30, was convicted by a jury earlier this year. Prosecutors presented evidence detailing his longstanding affiliation with white supremacist causes and his recent efforts to organize “sniper attacks” on electrical substations around Baltimore.

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Maryland boy dies after being trapped in storm drain as rains drench east coast

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Baltimore saw up to 4in of rain and the New York transportation system was flooded on Thursday; more rain is possible, weather service warns

A 13-year-old boy has died after he was trapped in a storm drain in Maryland during heavy rainfall and flooding on the east coast, officials said.

Kids were playing in the rain on Thursday in a common area between apartment buildings in Mount Airy, a town of about 10,000 people about 30 miles (48km) west of Baltimore, but flood waters rushed in and the boy was swept into the pipe, according to Mount Airy volunteer fire company spokesperson Doug Alexander.

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Senator says trip to El Salvador was to support Kilmar Ábrego García’s due process

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Chris Van Hollen says ‘if we deny constitutional rights of this one man, it threatens constitutional rights of everyone’

Senator Chris Van Hollen, who travelled to El Salvador last week to meet Kilmar Ábrego García, the man at the center of a wrongful deportation dispute, said on Sunday that his trip was to support Ábrego García’s right to due process because if that was denied then everyone’s constitutional rights were threatened in the US.

The White House has claimed Ábrego García was a member of the MS-13 gang though he has not been charged with any gang related crimes and the supreme court has ordered his return to the US be facilitated.

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Maryland senator meets Kilmar Ábrego García in El Salvador amid battle over US return

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Chris Van Hollen posts photo on X but does not provide update on status of man wrongly deported from US

The Maryland senator Chris Van Hollen met in El Salvador with Kilmar Ábrego García, a man who was sent there by the Trump administration in March despite an immigration court order preventing his deportation.

Van Hollen posted a photo of the meeting on X, saying he also called Ábrego García’s wife “to pass along his message of love”.

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Democratic senator heads to El Salvador to try to visit Kilmar Ábrego García

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Chris Van Hollen warns of ‘constitutional crisis’ and says he hopes to report back to family on Maryland man’s condition

Democratic senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland will travel to El Salvador on Wednesday and attempt to visit Kilmar Ábrego García, a constituent whose deportation and incarceration in the Central American country, he warns, has tipped the United States into a constitutional crisis.

In an interview with the Guardian on Tuesday, Van Hollen said he hopes to learn of Ábrego García’s condition and convey it to his family, who also live in the state he represents.

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The Trump administration trapped a wrongly deported man in a catch-22

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The US says it can’t aid in his return as he’s in El Salvador; El Salvador says to help would be like ‘smuggling’ him back

It is difficult to find a term more fitting for the fate of the Maryland father Kilmar Abrego García than Kafkaesque.

Abrego García is one of hundreds of foreign-born men deported under the Trump administration to the Cecot mega-prison in El Salvador as part of a macabre partnership with the self-declared “world’s coolest dictator”, Nayib Bukele.

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Supreme court orders US to help return man wrongly deported to El Salvador

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Justices uphold judge’s order and say Trump officials must ‘facilitate’ return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to United States

The US supreme court upheld on Thursday a judge’s order requiring Donald Trump’s administration to facilitate the return to the United States of a Salvadoran man who the government has acknowledged was deported in error to El Salvador.

US district judge Paula Xinis last week issued an order that the administration “facilitate and effectuate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, in response to a lawsuit filed by the man and his family challenging the legality of his deportation.

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DoJ lawyer put on leave after not backing erroneous deportation of Maryland man

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Erez Reuveni no longer on Kilmar Abrego Garcia case after not ‘vigorously’ defending Trump administration

A federal justice department attorney has been placed on leave by the Trump administration for purportedly failing to defend the administration vigorously enough after it says it erroneously deported a Maryland man to El Salvador, which a US judge called a “wholly lawless” detention.

The action against justice department lawyer Erez Reuveni came after US district judge Paula Xinis had ordered that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran immigrant who lived in the US legally with a work permit, be returned to Maryland despite the Trump administration’s position that it cannot return him from a sovereign nation.

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Federal judge rules return of Maryland man mistakenly deported to El Salvador prison

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White House has said US courts can’t order return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose wife has been protesting outside court

A federal judge on Friday afternoon ordered the US to return a Maryland man mistakenly deported to an El Salvador prison after a Trump administration attorney was at a loss to explain what happened.

The wife of the man, who was flown to a notorious Salvadoran prison had earlier joined dozens of supporters at a rally before a court hearing on Friday, where his lawyers had asked the judge – Paula Xinis – to order the Trump administration to return him to the US.

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More US states report measles cases amid vaccine misinformation

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Ohio, Maryland and Alabama among states to report new cases, with 378 confirmed in first few months of 2025

More US states are reporting measles cases as the Texas outbreak expands, surpassing last year’s total, amid vaccine misinformation and hesitancy.

The Texas outbreak could take a year to get under control, one health official said – during which time it may spread to more states. Yet the parents of the six-year-old girl who died of measles in Texas have spoken against measles vaccination as misinformation continues to proliferate, including from figures such as the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.

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Johns Hopkins to lose 2,000 jobs after Trump’s $800m cut in USAid funding

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University says cut in funding ‘forcing us to wind down critical work’ as academics rally against job losses

Johns Hopkins University announced it was planning to cut more than 2,000 jobs after the Trump administration slashed $800m in grants to the renowned academic institution.

The funding for the positions had come from the US Agency for International Development, which the administration has gutted with massive cuts. A total of 247 domestic US workers and another 1,975 positions abroad in 44 countries will be affected by what amounts to the largest layoff in the history of the university.

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Chain, chain, chain: political theatre confirms Elon Musk’s Maga hero status at jubilant CPAC

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Emboldened and exultant, speakers put less emphasis on baiting liberals and more on spreading the Maga gospel

What do you give the man who has everything? A ballroom full of cheering conservative activists found out this week when Elon Musk was presented with a chainsaw by Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, who has used the power tool as a symbol of his push to impose fiscal discipline.

Wearing sunglasses, a black Maga baseball cap and a gold necklace, Musk giddily wielded the chainsaw up and down the stage. “This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy!” he declared. Members of the audience shouted: “We love you!” Musk replied: “I love you guys, too!” And he quipped: “I am become meme.”

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Trump cuts reach FDA workers focused on food safety and medical devices

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Positions cut also appeared to focus on agency’s centers for tobacco products, including oversight of e-cigarettes

The Trump administration’s effort to slash the size of the federal workforce reached the Food and Drug Administration this weekend, as recently hired employees who review the safety of food ingredients, medical devices and other products were fired.

Probationary employees across the FDA received notices on Saturday evening that their jobs were being eliminated, according to three FDA staffers who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

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‘All hands on deck’: Bird flu in US poultry puts state cooperation to the test

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Unusually late migration season means poultry operations may continue to see H5N1 outbreaks, officials say

Maryland has detected bird flu among three different commercial poultry flocks in the past week, marking the state’s first outbreak in more than a year. The discoveries come shortly after the establishment of a joint command with Delaware following the latter state’s detection of H5N1 in two other poultry operations.

Although the deadly bird flu has circulated in North America since 2022, the past few months have been especially brutal for the poultry industry. More than 20 million egg-laying hens died in the fall, the worst rates since the outbreak began, and egg prices have risen as a result.

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