2A ✦ Wednesday, March 25, 2026 ✦ nola.com ✦ The Times-Picayune
lll
Bond is $1 for woman accused of illegal abortion
BRIEFS
FROM WIRE REPORTS
No injuries in oil refinery fire near Texas coast
An oil refinery fire near the Texas coast was put out Tuesday and a shelter-in-place order was lifted following air-quality testing, hours after a large explosion at the complex shot plumes of smoke into the air, officials said. No one was injured in Monday’s explosion at the Valero refinery in Port Arthur, about 90 miles east of Houston, Carol Hebert, a Valero spokesperson, said in a statement. “All personnel are accounted for,” Herbert said. Images and video posted online show a large plume of smoke and flames billowing out from the refinery. At Tuesday’s City Council meeting, Mayor Charlotte M. Moses said she was grateful the explosion wasn’t more serious. “With something like that, we definitely could have had mass loss of life and injuries,” Moses said. “I’m just thankful and grateful that all we encountered was a fire ... We’re safe.” She had urged residents in parts of the west side of the city to stay put during the shelter-inplace order. Air monitoring that was done by Valero, the Port Arthur Fire Department and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality “confirmed there was no threat to air quality,” Hebert said. “The cause of the fire is under investigation,” she said.
Philly airport’s longest line is for cheesesteaks PHILADELPHIA — Travelers passing through Philadelphia International Airport on Monday may have expected long security lines. But the longest line was made of cheesesteaks. Organizers say they achieved a new Guinness World Record for the longest line of cheesesteak sandwiches, with 1,291 lined up inside a departure hall to mark National Cheesesteak Day. The display far surpassed the previous benchmark of 500 sandwiches. “We went for the world record for the longest cheesesteak in history,” said Clarence LeJeune of MarketPlace PHL, a company that operates airport concessions. “Today we accomplished that goal here in Philadelphia.” The cheesesteak, which originated in Philadelphia in the early 1900s, is widely considered the city’s signature food. LeJeune called it “synonymous” with Philadelphia, alongside its sports culture. People in black aprons assembled cheesesteaks along tables set up in the walkway between Terminals B and C, filling rolls from silver buckets as they moved past storefronts. After the record was certified, volunteers handed out the sandwiches to travelers, airport workers and Transportation Security Administration staff, who have been working without pay during the government shutdown. LeJeune joked there are few hard rules for cheesesteaks, which is part of the “beauty of the experience.”
Amputee accused of shooting car passenger A professional cornhole player who’s also a quadruple amputee has been accused of fatally shooting a passenger in the front seat of a car he was driving during an argument, Maryland authorities say. Dayton James Webber, 27, was featured by ESPN in 2023 in a story of inspiration, noting he rode dirt bikes, wrestled and played football before becoming a professional cornhole player. In the same year, he wrote an essay for the Today show about how he became a professional competitor. On Sunday night, he was arrested and charged as a fugitive from justice by police in Albemarle County, Virginia, the Charles County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. Charles County is seeking his extradition from Virginia and said he will be charged with first-degree murder, seconddegree murder and related charges.
She faces murder charge for taking pills
By The Associated Press
ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTO BY YUKI IWAMURA
A Spirit Airlines jet taxis past an Air Canada Express jet on the side of a runway Tuesday where it had collided with a Port Authority fire truck Sunday night at LaGuardia Airport in New York.
Truck’s warning system failed in LaGuardia crash Investigators say there was no transponder
BY MICHAEL R. SISAK, JOSH FUNK and JOHN SEEWER Associated Press
NEW YORK — A runway warning system failed to sound an alarm moments before an Air Canada jet and a fire truck collided while the plane was landing at New York’s LaGuardia Airport, federal investigators said Tuesday. National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy said during a news conference that the system didn’t work as intended because the fire truck did not have a transponder. While the NTSB hasn’t recommended that vehicles on airport grounds have transponders, they should, Homendy said. “Air traffic controllers should know what’s before them, whether it’s on airport surface or in the airspace. They should have that information to ensure safety,” she said. The plane carrying more than 70 people slammed into the fire truck while landing late Sunday
night, killing the two pilots and injuring several passengers. Most, though, were able to escape the mangled aircraft, and a flight attendant still strapped in her seat survived after being thrown onto the tarmac. Investigators don’t know yet whether the two people in the fire truck heard the control tower’s frantic, last-second warnings to stop before pulling into the plane’s path, Homendy said. Homendy said NTSB investigators have not yet interviewed the firefighters or determined whether they braked or turned to avoid a collision. She said investigators also have not reviewed data from the flight data recorder. Investigators also want to know more about the role of the air traffic controllers and what they were doing while juggling a late-night emergency involving another plane. Homendy warned against jumping to conclusions. “I would caution against pointing fingers at controllers and saying distraction was involved. This is a heavy workload environment,” she said. There were two controllers on duty in the control tower at the time of the crash, which is typical for a late-night shift,
she said. Both controllers were early into their shift when the crash happened. One controller cleared the truck to cross the runway just 20 seconds before the collision, when the plane was a little more than 100 feet in the air, the NTSB found. The crash came at a time of increasing frustration with air travel in the U.S., caused by long security lines because of the government shutdown, winter storms and rising costs. While flights resumed Monday at LaGuardia — the New York region’s third busiest airport — the runway where the collision happened was still closed. About one-quarter of the airport’s flights were canceled Tuesday, according to FlightAware.com, and there were significant delays averaging more than four hours. But it did not appear that the cancellations were spilling over to other airports around the U.S. The wreckage from the crash remained on the closed runway, which is likely to stay shut down for days during the investigation, Homendy said. Authorities recovered the plane’s cockpit and flight data recorders by cutting a hole in the aircraft’s roof.
Afghanistan releases American national held for more than a year Academic researcher’s imprisonment ‘sufficient’
GET IN TOUCH Customer Service: HELP@THEADVOCATE.COM or 504-529-0522 News Tips / Stories: NEWSTIPS@THEADVOCATE.COM Obituaries: 225-388-0289 • Mon-Fri 9-5; Sat 10-5; Closed Sun Advertising Sales: 504-636-7421 • Mon-Fri 8-5 Classified Advertising: 225-383-0111 • Mon-Fri 8-5 Subscribe: nola.com/subscribe E-Edition: nola.com/eedition Archives: nola.newsbank.com The Times-Picayune (USPS 18530) is published by Capital City Press at 840 St. Charles Avenue, New Orleans, LA 70130 and at additional mailing offices. Periodicals postage paid at New Orleans, LA. ISSN: 2379-0008. Capital City Press, proprietor. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Times-Picayune, Circulation Accounting, P.O. Box 588, Baton Rouge, LA 70821-0588. Newspaper carriers are independent contractors and not employees of Capital City Press.
BY ABDUL QAHAR AFGHAN, ELENA BECATOROS and ERIC TUCKER
Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities on Tuesday released American academic Dennis Coyle after holding him for over a year, with the Foreign Ministry saying the release came on the occasion of Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim holiday that marks the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. A statement from the ministry said the academic researcher had been released in Kabul, the country’s capital, following an appeal from his family and after Afghanistan’s Supreme Court “considered his previous imprisonment sufficient.” Coyle was detained in January 2025. Afghan authorities accused him of violating laws, but never specified which ones. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio welcomed the release. “President (Donald) Trump is committed to ending unjust detentions overseas — Dennis joins over 100 Americans who have been freed in the past 15 months under his second term in office,” Rubio said in a statement. “While this is a positive step by the Taliban, more work needs to be done,” he added. Earlier this month, the U.S. State Department announced the designation of Afghanistan as a sponsor of wrongful detention, accusing it of engaging in “hostage diplomacy.” Afghanistan joined Iran as countries singled out by the United States for detaining Americans in hopes of extracting policy concessions. Afghanistan rejected U.S. allegations that it detains foreigners to obtain leverage over other countries, saying Afghan authorities arrest people for violating
A Georgia judge granted a bond of just $1 for a murder charge faced by a woman accused by police of taking pills to induce an illegal abortion. “I think that charge is extremely problematic,” Superior Court Judge Steven Blackerby said Monday during a bond hearing for Alexia Moore, according to The New York Times. “That is going to be a hard charge to convict upon.” Blackerby set a total $2,001 bond for Moore, who spent nearly three weeks jailed in coastal Camden County. In addition to $1 for the murder charge, the judge ordered $1,000 bond amounts for each of two drug charges Moore faces. Local police took the 31-year-old Moore into custody March 4 using an arrest warrant with language that echoes a Georgia law banning abortions after embryonic cardiac activity can be detected. That’s generally at about six weeks’ gestation — before many women know they’re pregnant. Moore’s case is one of the first in Georgia of a woman being charged for terminating a pregnancy since the law was adopted in 2019. The judge’s $1 bond raises questions about how a murder case against Moore might proceed. District Attorney Keith Higgins of the Brunswick Judicial Circuit didn’t oppose the bond amount in court Monday and told the judge that police didn’t consult his office before they charged Moore, according to reports by The New York Times and the Georgia news website The Current. In order to send Moore to trial for murder, Higgins’ office would first need to obtain an indictment from a grand jury. A person who answered the phone at Higgins’ office Tuesday said he does not comment on pending cases. Online jail records show that Moore posted bond and was released Monday. She is being represented by attorneys from the Georgia Public Defender Council, which applauded the judge’s decision. “Today’s decision is a reminder that justice is not served by accusation alone,” the council said in a statement. “Our system works best when courts carefully weigh the facts, uphold constitutional protections, and safeguard the rights of every person who comes before them.”
ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTO BY MUDASSIR SAFI
American Dennis Coyle is released by Taliban authorities, who had held him for over a year, before boarding a plane at the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Tuesday.
laws not to make a deal. The State Department said earlier this month that the Taliban was believed to hold at least four U.S. nationals, including Coyle and Mahmood Habibi, an Afghan American businessman who worked as a contractor for a Kabul-based telecommunications company. The FBI and Habibi’s family have said they believe he was taken by Taliban forces in 2022, but Afghan authorities have denied holding him. Habibi’s brother, Ahmad Habibi, welcomed Coyle’s release but said in a statement that “we hope that our family will soon have the same feeling of relief, when Mahmood is returned home to us.” Rubio also mentioned another American, Paul Overby, who is listed on the FBI’s missing persons website as having disappeared in eastern Afghanistan’s Khost province in mid-2014 while conducting research for a book he was writing. “We are still seeking the immediate return of Mahmood Habibi, Paul Overby, and all other unjustly detained Americans,” Rubio said. “The Taliban must end their practice of hostage diplomacy.”
All home delivery subscription sales are non-refundable. Should you discontinue your subscription during term, the subscription will end with the expiration date on your subscription, and there will not be a refund of a prorated amount. Subscribers who purchased their subscription before Feb. 1, 2023 and wish to cancel can request a refund of a remaining balance at https://www.nola.com/app/forms/refund-request-form/. Refunds are considered on a case-by-case basis at the discretion of Capital City Press, LLC or its designee. All subscriptions purchased that include a special edition will have the special edition value deducted prior to any refund provided to subscriber upon cancellation of service. Standard subscription rates may be effective upon renewal. All standard subscriptions include digital access and e-Edition, a digital replica of the printed Advocate edition(s). The apps are free for tablets and smartphones. Smartphone apps may not be supported on all devices. The Times-Picayune standard subscription rate is $80.89 per 4-week period, plus tax. Standard digital subscriptions include e-Edition with the rate of $31.15 per 4-week period, plus tax starting 1/1/25. Special editions included in home delivery subscriptions are 1/30/26, 3/11/26, 4/15/26, 5/27/26, 7/8/26, 8/19/26, 9/30/26 11/26/26, 1/22/27, 3/10/27, 4/14/27, 5/26/27, 7/14/27, 8/18/27, 9/29/27 and 11/25/27 and are billed at $6.23 each. The Thanksgiving Day edition will be billed at your regular Thursday rate plus $6.23. To opt out of special edition delivery, email help@theadvocate.com or call 225-388-0395. By opting out of special editions you will not receive that day’s newspaper. Thanksgiving Day is not a special edition and opting out for that edition isn’t permitted. Prices shown are in U.S. dollars. Prices subject to change. Other restrictions may apply. We no longer provide credit for temporary delivery stops of 14 days or less. During a temporary delivery stop donations are made to our News in Education program. This program provides newspapers and digital access to schools across Louisiana. This program is paid for by sponsors and temporary stops so that students may use the newspaper for educational purposes in the classroom. During a temporary delivery stop of the print edition subscribers have unlimited digital access to theadvocate.com, nola.com and the apps for tablet and smartphone. Seasonal delivery times from August 2025 through February 2026 will extend to 8:00 a.m. on weekends. Subscribers may also choose to access our digital replica e-Edition of the printed Advocate, Times Picayune and Acadiana Advocate only. As a highly valued customer, we also value your privacy. All personal information collected by The Advocate will be used for administration and customer verification; it may be used for promotional purposes in accordance with The Advocate’s privacy policy. Please refer to our policy located at https://www.theadvocate. com/new_policy/ for information regarding the collection, use and disclosure of personal information. By providing your phone number and email address you agree that we can call or email you to confirm delivery service, satisfaction and/or sales promotions as they may occur from The Times-Picayune. The Times-Picayune: 840 St. Charles Ave., New Orleans, LA 70130 St. Tammany Bureau (NEWS only): 321 New Hampshire St., Covington, LA 70433 • 985-276-5054