Mississippi voters are deciding the last U.S. Senate race of the midterms, choosing between a white Republican Senate appointee backed by President Donald Trump and a black Democrat who was agriculture secretary when Bill Clinton was in the White House. Either way, history will be made: Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, 59, would be the first woman ever elected to Congress from Mississippi, and Democrat Mike Espy, 64, would be the state's first African-American U.S. senator since Reconstruction.

Earl Jethroe of Marrero allegedly walked into a Popeyes, ordered a meal and apparently took issue with the condiments provided by employees. At some point, Jethroe threw his chicken across the counter, pulled a pistol from his waistband and pointed it at the manager.

It was supposed to be a fun, post-Christmas trip to Disney World for kids from the church in Marksville, Louisiana.. But then word came of a fiery crash on a Florida highway that killed seven people, including five children from this area traveling in a church van.

An MMA fighter suspected of killing two people, including an ex-girlfriend, was captured Sunday after escaping from a prisoner transport van in Texas, authorities said. Cedric Marks was taken into custody after a nine-hour manhunt involving multiple law enforcement agencies, Conroe police Lt. Scott Spencer said in a tweet Sunday evening.

Activists praised Houston area law enforcement for pursuing a tip that led to the arrest of an African-American man in the fatal drive-by shooting of a 7-year-old black girl, in an apparent case of mistaken identity. There were initial concerns that the shooting was racially motivated until a tip came from Shaun King, a New York social activist and writer who helped raise a $100,000 reward for information.

Crews are working around the clock at a NASA rocket factory, intent on meeting a new fall 2020 deadline to test launch a mega-rocket designed to propel astronauts to the moon and beyond, a space agency official said Friday. "I came out here in the middle of the night ... talking to people who were working on the engine section, working hard through the night," NASA Deputy Administrator James Morhard said on a press tour at New Orleans' Michoud Assembly Center.

Authorities said he had no known criminal record. A friend described him as an introverted animal lover who showed no animosity toward any race, and a talented, if frustrated heavy metal guitar player and singer. A fellow musician called him "a really sweet guy." But Holden Matthews, the white, 21-year-old son of a Louisiana sheriff's deputy, was behind bars Thursday, accused of torching three century old African American churches during a 10-day period in and around Opelousas.

President Donald Trump has urged farmers to stick with him even as many grapple with the impact of his trade war with China and the partial government shutdown. In a Monday address to the 100th annual convention of the American Farm Bureau Federation, Trump the American heartland largely supported him in 2016 and pledged that his policies would ultimately help the agriculture industry despite short-term pain.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell traveled Tuesday to a historically black university in the Mississippi Delta to deliver a message that the nation's prosperity has not been felt in many such areas around the country. Powell said that many rural areas had been left out and needed special support, such as access to affordable credit to start small businesses and high-quality education to train workers.

A black man was arrested and charged with murder in the killing of a 7-year-old black girl in a drive-by shooting that authorities said Sunday appeared to be a case of mistaken identity, not a racially motivated attack, as her family feared.