NAACP, Brown family renew calls for accountability in Andrew Brown shooting

Columbia University canceled in-person classes and police arrested dozens of students at New York University and Yale as tensions over Israel's war with Hamas continue to grow on U.S. college campuses. The moves at the Ivy League schools came hours before Monday evening's start of the Jewish holiday of Passover. A New Haven, Connecticut, police spokesperson said about 45 protesters were arrested at Yale on Monday morning and charged with misdemeanor trespassing. All were being released on promises to appear in court later. Following arrests last week at Columbia, pro-Palestinian demonstrators set up encampments on other campuses around the country, including at the University of Michigan, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of North Carolina.

A $12 billion high-speed passenger train line between Las Vegas and the Los Angeles area has started construction. U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg joined Brightline West company officials on Monday to hammer commemorative yellow rail spikes at the site of terminal due to open in 2028 just south of the Las Vegas Strip. The company plans to build track in the median of Interstate 15 to a Rancho Cucamonga, California, commuter rail hub connection to Los Angeles. Trains would whisk past at speeds comparable to Japan's bullet trains. A Brightline sister company operates a train about two-thirds that fast between Miami and Orlando.

Donald Trump has canceled his first planned rally since the start of his criminal hush money trial because of a storm in North Carolina. It's an added complication for the former president and presumptive Republican nominee as he juggles legal troubles and his rematch against President Joe Biden. Trump called into the rally on Saturday near the Wilmington airport less than an hour before he was scheduled to take the stage and apologized to a few thousand supporters who had gathered throughout the afternoon. Trump promised to reschedule a rally at the same location, with a “bigger and better” event. The venue still highlights the importance of North Carolina as a key battleground between Trump and Biden.

The United Auto Workers union is celebrating a huge win at a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee, where workers will now be represented by the union. The UAW won a stunning 73% of the vote after losing two elections there in the past decade. That is giving the UAW hope of making broader inroads in the South, the least unionized part of the country. The union's next target is two Mercedes-Benz plants in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where workers will vote next month on whether to join the union. Harry Katz, a labor-relations professor at Cornell University, says other companies will be more aggressive than VW in fighting to prevent workers from unionizing.

A video of people pulling bear cubs from a tree in North Carolina has prompted an investigation, but a state official says no charges will be filed. The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission says staff responded to a report of people harassing bear cubs at an Asheville apartment complex on Tuesday. Staffers learned that the two cubs escaped after one bit a person. Officials say one cub was found later in a retention pond but the second wasn't found. In the video, people are not only seen pulling cubs from a tree, but one person poses for a photo while holding one of the wild animals, then drops the cub, who runs for a nearby fence.

The Sheetz convenience store chain has been hit with a lawsuit by federal officials who allege the company discriminated against minority job applicants. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says Sheetz Inc. discriminated against Black, Native American and multiracial job seekers by automatically weeding out applicants whom the company deemed to have failed a criminal background check. President Joe Biden stopped by a Sheetz for snacks this week while campaigning in Pennsylvania. Sheetz is based in the state and also has stores in West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Ohio and North Carolina. The privately run family-owned company says it “does not tolerate discrimination of any kind.”

The National Enquirer's former publisher is expected to return to the stand in Donald Trump's historic hush money trial as testimony continues in the first-ever criminal trial against a former U.S. president. David Pecker was the first and only witness Monday following opening statements. Prosecutors say Pecker worked with Trump and Trump’s then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, on a “catch-and-kill” strategy to buy up and then spike negative stories during the 2016 campaign. Testimony resumes Tuesday. It's the first of Trump's four indictments to go to trial and the first criminal trial against a former U.S. president. He has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts.

Thousands of United Methodists are gathering Tuesday in Charlotte, North Carolina, to begin an 11-day denominational General Conference. Typically it is held every four years, but church leaders delayed the 2020 gathering until now due to the pandemic. Hundreds of delegates will vote on policies, though many international delegates are not confirmed as able to attend. It's the first gathering since thousands of conservative U.S. congregations left the denomination over its failure to enforce bans on LGBTQ clergy and on same-sex marriages. Progressive delegates will attempt to overturn these bans. Other proposals include allowing regional autonomy in deciding such policies, and making it easier for international churches to disaffiliate.

Stocks are ticking higher on Wall Street and adding to their hot start to the week. The S&P 500 was up 0.7% Tuesday, pulling further out of the hole created by a six-day losing streak. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 170 points, and the Nasdaq composite rose 1%. A flood of earnings reports is dictating trading. Danaher was one of the strongest forces lifting the market after reporting stronger profit than expected. General Motors and Kimberly-Clark also rose following their reports. A preliminary update suggesting a slowdown in growth for U.S. business activity also helped Treasury yields to ease.

A judge is holding a hearing on prosecutors’ request to hold Donald Trump in contempt of court and fine him for social media posts that they say violated his gag order. Prosecutors in the historic hush money case cited 10 posts on Trump’s social media account and campaign website that they said breached the order, which bars him from making public statements about witnesses in the case. They called the posts a “deliberate flouting” of the court’s order. Trump's lawyers deny that he violated the order. He faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records and has pleaded not guilty.

Satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press appear to show a new compound of tents being built near Khan Younis in southern the Gaza Strip as the Israeli military continues to signal it plans an offensive on the city of Rafah. Khan Younis has been targeted by repeated Israeli military operations over recent weeks. Israel says it plans to evacuate civilians from Rafah during an anticipated offensive on the southern city, where hundreds of thousands of people have taken refuge during the war, now in its seventh month. On Monday, a failed rocket strike was launched at a base housing U.S.-led coalition forces in Syria.