Tornadoes tear through Midwest and South, Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark respond to criticism, and more top news of the week

Stacker ranked the top 20 travel destinations where the U.S. dollar stretches, using data from WorldData.info and State Department country travel advisories.

When Santos Enrique Camara arrived at Shoreline Community College in Washington state to study audio engineering, he quickly felt lost.

"It's like a weird maze," remembered Camara, who was 19 at the time and had finished high school with a 4.0 grade-point average. "You need help with your classes and financial aid? Well, here, take a number and run from office to office and see if you can figure it out."

Advocates for community colleges defend them as the underdogs of America's higher education system, left to serve the students who need the most support but without the money to provide it. Critics contend this has become an excuse for poor success rates and for the kind of faceless bureaucracies that ultimately led Camara to drop out after two semesters. He now works in a restaurant and plays in two bands.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This story is part of Saving the College Dream, a collaboration between AL.com, The Associated Press, The Christian Science Monitor, The Dallas Morning News, The Hechinger Report, The Post and Courier in Charleston, South Carolina, and The Seattle Times, with support from the Solutions Journalism Network.

With scant advising, many community college students spend time and money on courses that won't transfer or that they don't need. Though most intend to move on to get bachelor's degrees, only a small fraction succeed; fewer than half earn any kind of credential. Even if they do, many employers don't believe they're ready for the workforce.

Now these failures are coming home to roost.

Community colleges are far cheaper than four-year schools. Published tuition and fees last year averaged $3,860, versus $39,400 at private and $10,940 at public four-year universities, with many states making community college free.

Yet consumers are abandoning them in droves. The number of students at community colleges has fallen 37% since 2010, or by nearly 2.6 million, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

"The reckoning is here," said Davis Jenkins, senior research scholar at the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University. (The Hechinger Report, which produced this story, is an independent unit of Teachers College.)

Those numbers would be even more grim if they didn't include high school students taking dual-enrollment courses, according to the Community College Research Center. High school students make up nearly a fifth of community college enrollment.

Yet even as these colleges serve fewer students, their already low success rates have by at least one measure gotten worse.

While four out of five students who begin at a community college say they plan to go on to get a bachelor's degree, only about one in six of them actually manages to do it. That's down by nearly 15% since 2020, according to the clearinghouse.

Two-year community colleges have the worst completion rates of any kind of university or college. Like Camara, nearly half of students drop out, within a year, of the community college where they started. Only slightly more than 40% finish within six years.

These frustrated wanderers include a disproportionate share of Black and Hispanic students. Half of all Hispanic and 40% of all Black students in higher education are enrolled at community colleges, the American Association of Community Colleges says.

The spurning of community colleges has implications for the national economy, which relies on their graduates to fill many of the jobs in which there are shortages. Those include positions as nurses, dental hygienists, emergency medical technicians, vehicle mechanics and electrical linemen, and in fields including information technology, construction, manufacturing, transportation and law enforcement.

Other factors are also contributing to the enrollment declines. Strong demand in the job market for people without college educations has made it more attractive for many to go to work. Thanks to so-called degree inflation, many jobs that require higher education call for bachelor's degrees where associate degrees or certificates were once sufficient. And private, regional public and for-profit universities, facing enrollment crises of their own, are competing for the same students.

Many Americans increasingly are questioning the value of going to college at all.

But they are particularly rejecting community college. In Michigan, for instance, the proportion of high school graduates enrolling in community college fell more than three times faster from 2018 to 2021 than the proportion going to four-year universities, according to that state's Center for Educational Performance and Information.

Those who do go complain of red tape and other frustrations.

Megan Parish, who at 26 has been in and out of community college in Arkansas since 2016, said she waits two or three days to get answers from advisers. "I've had to go out of my way to find people, and if they didn't know the answer, they would send me to somebody else, usually by email." Hearing back from the financial aid office, she said, can take a month.

Oryanan Lewis doesn't have that kind of time. Lewis, 20, is in her second year at Chattahoochee Valley Community College in Phenix City, Alabama, where she is pursuing a degree in medical assisting. And she's already behind.

Lewis has the autoimmune disease lupus and thought she'd get more personal attention at a smaller school than at a four-year university; Chattahoochee has about 1,600 students. But she said she didn't receive the help she needed until her illness had almost derailed her degree.

She failed three classes and was put on academic probation. Only then did she hear from an intervention program.

"I feel like they should talk to their students more," Lewis said. "Because a person can have a whole lot going on."

Employers, meanwhile, are unimpressed with the quality of community college students who manage to graduate. Only about a third agree that community colleges produce graduates who are ready to work, according to a survey released in December by researchers at the Harvard Business School.

Community colleges get less government money to spend, per student, than public four-year universities: $8,695, according to the Center for American Progress, compared with $17,540.

Yet community college students need more support than their counterparts at four-year universities. Twenty-nine percent are the first in their families to go to college, 15% are single parents and 68% work while in school. Twenty-nine percent say they've had trouble affording food and 14% affording housing, according to a survey by the Center for Community College Student Engagement.

Community colleges that fail these students can't just blame their smaller budgets, said Joseph Fuller, professor of management practice at Harvard Business School.

"The lack of resources inside community colleges is a legitimate complaint. But a number of community colleges do extraordinarily well," Fuller said. "So it's not impossible."

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump conspired to illegally influence the 2016 election through a series of hush money payments designed to stifle claims that could be harmful to his candidacy, prosecutors said Tuesday in unsealing a historic 34-count felony indictment against the former president.

The payments, said Assistant District Attorney Christopher Conroy, were part of “an unlawful plan to identify and suppress negative information that could have undermined his campaign for president.”

Trump, stone-faced and silent as he entered and exited the Manhattan courtroom, said “not guilty” in a firm voice while facing a judge who warned him to refrain from rhetoric that could inflame or cause civil unrest.

The next court date is December 4, though it is not clear if he will be required to appear.

The broad contours of the case have long been known, but indictment contains new details about a scheme that prosecutors say involved payoffs to two women, including a porn star, who said they had extramarital sexual encounters with him years earlier, as well as to a Trump Tower doorman who claimed to have a story about a child he alleged the former president had out of of wedlock.

The arraignment, though largely procedural in nature, amounts to a remarkable reckoning for Trump after years of investigations into his personal, business and political dealings. The case is unfolding against the backdrop not only of his third campaign for the White House but also against other investigations in Washington and Atlanta that might yet produce even more charges.

Trump, his lips pursed in apparent anger, entered the courtroom shortly before 2:30 p.m. He left court about an hour later, also without commenting. All told, the typically verbose Trump spoke only about 10 words during the entire proceeding.

Before the arraignment, he narrated his feelings in real time, describing the experience as “SURREAL” as he traveled from Trump Tower to lower Manhattan to face a judge.

Get the rest of the story here:

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — “Son of a Sinner” singer Jelly Roll was the big winner at the CMT Music Awards, as the rapper-turned-country singer took home three awards on Sunday as an outsider who won over fans with his confessional songs.

The tattooed singer got emotional during the show in Austin, Texas, which aired on CBS, as he thanked the country radio industry for its acceptance and shouted out to those who felt like him.

“You can be whatever you want to be. I promise you that. I told them that I wanted to be a country singer and I am standing here at the CMT Awards with the male video of the year, baby,” he shouted. 

Some highlights from the show:

• The show started off with a somber tone as country singer and co-host Kelsea Ballerini read off the names of six victims of a school shooting killed last week in Nashville, Tennessee.
• Country superstar and five-time Grammy winner Shania Twain was given the Equal Play Award, recognizing her for being a “visible and vocal advocate” for diverse voices in country music.
• Kelsea Ballerini took to the stage flanked by drag artists, as states across the country consider legally limiting drag show performances.
• Southern rockers Lynyrd Skynyrd were honored with a tribute performance following the death in March of the last original member, Gary Rossington.

Read the full story here:

***

THE WINNERS

A complete list of winners from the 2023 CMT Music Awards:

Video of the year: Kane Brown & Katelyn Brown, "Thank God"

Female video of the year: Lainey Wilson, "Heart Like a Truck"

Male video of the year: Jelly Roll, "Son of a Sinner"

Group/duo video of the year: Zac Brown Band, "Out in the Middle"

Female breakthrough video of the year: Megan Moroney, "Tennessee Orange"

Male breakthrough video of the year: Jelly Roll, "Son of a Sinner"

Collaborative video of the year: HARDY feat. Lainey Wilson, "Wait in the truck"

CMT performance of the year: Cody Johnson, "'Til You Can't" (from 2022 CMT Music Awards)

CMT digital-first performance of the year: Jelly Roll, "Son of a Sinner" (from "CMT All Access")

***

PHOTO GALLERY

A clever squirrel has gathered quite the TikTok following after he learned to ring a bell in exchange for nuts in California.

Researchers at UC Berkeley’s microbiology lab taught the squirrel to tug on a string tied to a bell to ring it from his perch on the window ledge, and rewarded him with a treat when he did, Alienor Baskevitch told CNN. The researchers named him Kluyver after famous microbiologist Albert Kluyver, the station reported.

Baskevitch posted a clip of Kluyver ringing the bell on TikTok, and it went viral. Users demanded to see a follow-up video of him receiving his hard-earned snack.

Others commented about how cute Kluyver is when he holds his little hands together and patiently waits for his treat.

“I would never get any work done,” someone said in the comments.

Since then, Baskevitch has posted daily updates of Kluyver stopping by around lunchtime and ringing the bell to be served his treat.

Sometimes it’s almonds, other times it’s pistachios. Several TikTok users suggested making the string longer so Kluyver wouldn’t have to work so hard to ring it.

Baskevitch tried giving him an upside down mug as a booster seat first, and while it took him a few days to learn to use it, now he’s quite the pro. She also caved and made the string longer, she said in the caption on the April 3 TikTok video.

“I think we don’t want the squirrel to rely on us as the main source of food,” she told CNN.

The cities with the worst pest problem

Cities With the Worst Pest Problem

Rodents are significantly more common in older homes

Low income homes are more likely to experience daily pest problems

10. New Orleans-Metairie, LA

9. Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH

8. Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI

7. Raleigh, NC

6. Kansas City, MO-KS MSA

5. New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA

4. Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX

3. Memphis, TN-MS-AR

2. Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD

1. Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV

Which U.S. states have more college graduates living at or below the federal poverty line than others? Stacker analyzed Census Bureau data to find out.

The creator of Cash App and former chief technology officer at Square was killed in a stabbing Tuesday in San Francisco, according to people who knew him and police.

Bob Lee, 43, died at a hospital following the 2:35 a.m. attack on the 300 block of Main Street in the Rincon Point neighborhood. Police said they responded to a report of a stabbing and found him, called medics to the scene and started aid. He was rushed to a hospital, where he died.

Homicide inspectors are investigating the killing.

"Bob was a dad, the former CTO of Square where he created Cash App & CTO of Mobile Coin. He was a generous decent human being who didn't deserve to be killed," wrote Bill Barhydt, CEO of Abra, a cryto-currency company, on Twitter.

Another friend wrote on Twitter that he learned Lee was killed while walking in the city.

"He was in the 'good' part of the city and appeared to have been targeted in a random mugging/attack," wrote UFC/MMA fighter Jake Shields.

According to a 2021 profile of Lee on PR Newswire, "Bob has diverse experience building both digital and physical products for a mobile-first world. He is most prominently known as the first CTO of Square, and the creator of Cash App (formerly Square Cash). Prior to Square, Bob was at Google leading Android's core library team and launching the world's most used operating system."

No arrests have been made and this remains an active investigation.

Photos: Notable Deaths in 2023

Jeff Beck

Robbie Knievel

Gina Lollobrigida

Lynette Hardaway ("Diamond")

Adam Rich

Charles White

Tatjana Patitz

Russell Banks

Cardinal George Pell

Ken Block

Walter Cunningham

Bobby Caldwell

WYNNE, Ark. (AP) — Storms that dropped possibly dozens of tornadoes killed at least 18 people in small towns and big cities across the South and Midwest, tearing a path through the Arkansas capital, collapsing the roof of a packed concert venue in Illinois, and leaving people throughout the region bewildered Saturday by the damage.

Confirmed or suspected tornadoes in at least seven states destroyed homes and businesses, splintered trees, and lay waste to neighborhoods across a swath of the country home to some 85 million people. The dead included seven in Tennessee's McNairy County, four in the small town of Wynne, Arkansas, and three in Sullivan, Indiana.

Other deaths were reported in Alabama, Illinois and Mississippi, along with one near Little Rock, where the mayor said more than 2,000 buildings were in a tornado's path.

Stunned residents of Wynne, a community of about 8,000 people 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of Memphis, Tennessee, woke Saturday to find the high school's roof shredded and its windows blown out. Huge trees lay on the ground, their stumps reduced to nubs. Broken walls, windows and roofs pocked homes and businesses.

Debris and memories of regular life lay scattered inside the damaged shells of homes and strewn on lawns: clothing, insulation, roofing paper, toys, splintered furniture, a pickup truck with its windows shattered.

“I’m sad that my town has been hit so hard,” said Heidi Jenkins, a salon owner. “Our school is gone, my church is gone. I’m sad for all the people who lost their homes.”

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WASHINGTON — Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said Friday he was not required to disclose the many trips he and his wife took that were paid for by Republican megadonor Harlan Crow.

Describing Crow and his wife, Kathy, as "among our dearest friends," Thomas said in a statement that he was advised by colleagues on the nation's highest court and others in the federal judiciary that "this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable." Thomas did not name the other justices or those in the judiciary with whom he had consulted.

The nonprofit investigative journalism organization ProPublica reported Thursday that Thomas, who has been a justice for more than 31 years, has for more than two decades accepted luxury trips from Crow nearly every year.

Thomas, 74, and his wife, Virginia, have traveled on Crow's yacht and private jet as well as stayed at his private resort in New York's Adirondack Mountains, ProPublica reported. A 2019 trip to Indonesia the story detailed could have cost more than $500,000 had Thomas chartered the plane and yacht himself.

Supreme Court justices, like other federal judges, are required to file an annual financial disclosure report which asks them to list gifts they have received, but provides exemptions for hospitality from friends.

Ethics experts have offered conflicting views about whether Thomas was required to disclose the trips. Last month, the federal judiciary bolstered disclosure requirements for all judges, including the high court justices, although overnight stays at personal vacation homes owned by friends remain exempt from disclosure.

New York University law professor Stephen Gillers, an authority on legal ethics, said Thomas' statement "is an abdication of his responsibility" under ethics guidelines.

"Thomas is shamelessly seeking to shift the blame for his failure to report Crow's princely hospitality to advice he allegedly received from other Justices when he joined the court more than 30 years ago. Most of them are now dead and, conveniently, cannot contradict him," Gillers wrote in an email.

Charles Geyh, a University of Indiana law professor who studies judicial ethics, wrote in an email that he doubts any justice would have advised Thomas against disclosure if he had laid out the details in ProPublica's report, "hundreds of thousands of dollars in luxurious travel and accommodations at exotic locales spanning decades, from a benefactor who has a deeply rooted partisan and ideological interest in the future of the Court on which the justice sits."

University of Pittsburgh ethics expert Arthur Hellman said that even if Thomas could reasonably have believed he did not have to report Crow's gifts, he still should have. "It would have been preferable in the sense of public confidence in the courts if he had disclosed," Hellman said.

Thomas, the longest-serving member of the court, said he has always tried to comply with disclosure guidelines. Regarding the recent changes, "It is, of course, my intent to follow this guidance in the future," he said in the statement.

The new reporting requirements appear to cover almost all the travel and lodging Crow provided, Hellman said. The mere need to disclose could make judges more reluctant to accept the gifts in the first place, he said.

"If I had to predict, I'd say Justice Thomas will be seeing less of Harlan Crow's luxurious properties," Hellman said.

Democratic lawmakers said the ProPublica story was the latest illustration of why the Supreme Court should adopt an ethics code and further tighten the rules on travel and other gifts.

It is by no means clear that the justices will agree to subject themselves to an ethics code or that Congress will seek to impose one on the court.

Thomas did not refer to any individual trips paid for by Crow. But he said, "As friends do, we have joined them on a number of family trips during the more than quarter century we have known them."

Last year, questions about Thomas' ethics arose when it was disclosed that he did not step away from election cases following the 2020 election despite the fact that his wife, a conservative activist, reached out to lawmakers and the Trump White House to urge defiance of the election results.

The 9 current justices of the US Supreme Court

Justice Amy Coney Barrett

NASA on Monday named the four astronauts who will fly to the moon by the end of next year, including one woman and three men.

The three Americans and one Canadian were introduced during a ceremony in Houston, home to the nation's astronauts as well as Mission Control.

"This is humanity's crew," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

The four astronauts will be the first to fly NASA's Orion capsule, launching atop a Space Launch System rocket from Kennedy Space Center no earlier than late 2024. They will not land or even go into lunar orbit, but rather fly around the moon and head straight back to Earth, a prelude to a lunar landing by two others a year later.

The mission's commander, Reid Wiseman, will be joined by Victor Glover, an African American naval aviator; Christina Koch, who holds the world record for the longest spaceflight by a woman; and Canada's Jeremy Hansen. All are space veterans except Hansen.

"This is a big day. We have a lot to celebrate and it's so much more than the four names that have been announced," said Glover.

This is the first moon crew to include a woman and someone not from the U.S. — and the first crew in NASA's new moon program named Artemis. Late last year, an empty Orion capsule flew to the moon and back in a long-awaited dress rehearsal.

During Apollo, NASA sent 24 astronauts to the moon from 1968 through 1972. Twelve of them landed. All were military-trained test pilots except for Apollo 17's Harrison Schmitt, a geologist who closed out that moonlanding era alongside the late Gene Cernan.

Provided this next 10-day moonshot goes well, NASA aims to land two astronauts on the moon by 2025 or so.

NASA picked from 41 active astronauts for its first Artemis crew. Canada had four candidates.

A dog missing for seven years had a “touching” reunion with his owner just weeks before he died.

Nugget the dog was found “limping down a wet dark road” in South Carolina — more than 1,700 miles from his home. Then, the Greenville-based organization Carolina Loving Hound Rescue said it helped the pup get back in touch with his long-awaiting family in February. 

“Nugget was a warrior and fought to make it back home… and when he did, he knew it was OK to just let go,” the dog’s owner, Facebook user Jessie Springer, wrote in an April 4 post.

Springer told KOB that her beloved pet was in a Farmington, New Mexico, yard when he disappeared in December 2015, setting off a frantic, yearslong search. Facebook posts describe Nugget as a “spunky” dog who had been his owner’s “ride or die.”

“He rode horses, drove with her in the truck, went to rodeos, was kicked by a horse and survived being shot,” the animal rescue organization wrote. “He was and is her heart.”

Then in February, a woman stepping outside to drink tea in South Carolina spotted a 16-year-old dog “in horrific shape.” The dog was “stinky to high heaven” with long nails, an ear infection and muscle loss — which is common in older pups, according to the rescue and WXIA.

The dog was scanned for a microchip, which contained contact information for Springer. Rescue organizations have urged people to microchip their pets and take stray animals they find to vets to check for the devices, McClatchy News reported.

The chip helped to identify the dog as Nugget. He got medical clearance to fly home with his owner before the two had an emotional reunion, rescue officials said.

“There was not a dry eye in the house, I think the entire airport, because people were coming out and watching, even my most (hardened) volunteers (had) tears running down their eyes,” Angela Gschwind, founder and director of the rescue, told KOB.

Over the next two months, officials said “Jessie took amazing care of Nugget and got him to embrace his spunky self.” But the dog’s health worsened in recent days despite his owner trying to feed him.

Nugget’s story resonated with thousands of Facebook users before his death. After the sad update, several people went online to share their condolences.

“I’m really grateful for the miracle of Nugget coming home to his family,” one person wrote. “I’m praying for you all.”

Another person commented: “Nugget waited to be home where he belonged. I’m so very sorry for your loss. He was inspiration to all of those missing their pet.”

While the rescue said it isn’t sure how the dog made it across the country to South Carolina, it believes he brought people together.

“My heart is breaking for Jessie,” the organization wrote. “After all the years missing Nugget she only had him for such a short time."

Though far from the only U.S. president dogged by legal and ethical scandals, Donald Trump now occupies a unique place in history as the first indicted on criminal charges.

Two others, like Trump, found themselves impeached by Congress — Bill Clinton for lying under oath about his affair with a White House intern, and Andrew Johnson for pushing the limits of his executive authority in a bitter power struggle following the Civil War.

Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace over his role in the infamous Watergate break-in. And Ronald Reagan and Ulysses S. Grant both became forever tied to scandals in which close aides got prosecuted, though neither president was ever charged.