By JEFF MARTIN, Associated Press

A former police chief and convicted killer known as the “Devil in the Ozarks” was captured by law enforcement 1.5 miles northwest of the prison he escaped from following a massive manhunt in the mountains of northern Arkansas, authorities announced on Friday.

Grant Hardin’s identity was confirmed through finger printing, the Izard County Sheriff’s Office said in a Facebook post.

Hardin, a former police chief in the small town of Gateway near the Arkansas-Missouri border, was serving lengthy sentences for murder and rape. He was the subject of the TV documentary “Devil in the Ozarks.”

A flier looking for Grant Hardin hangs on the glass of a business, Thursday, May 29, 2025, in downtown Calico Rockt, Ark. (AP Photo/Nicholas Ingram)

Hardin had been held at the Calico Rock prison since 2017 after pleading guilty to first-degree murder in a fatal shooting. In order to escape, he had impersonated a corrections officer “in dress and manner,” according to a court document. A prison officer in one of the guard towers opened a secure gate, allowing him to walk out of the facility.

Rand Champion, a spokesperson for the state prison system, said that someone should have checked Hardin’s identity before he was allowed to leave, describing the lack of verification as a “lapse” that’s being investigated.

Police set up checkpoints looking for escaped prisoner Grant Hardin, Thursday, May 29, 2025, near downtown Calico Rock, Ark. (AP Photo/Nicholas Ingram)

Searchers had been using bloodhounds, officers on horseback, drones and helicopters in their hunt for Hardin since he escaped on May 25.

An elite and highly trained U.S. Border Patrol team had recently joined the search, federal authorities announced this week.

The Border Patrol Tactical Team known as BORTAC provided “advanced search capabilities and operational support” in the hunt for Hardin, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said. Its members are experienced in navigating complex terrain, the agency said. The Ozark Mountains region is known for its rocky and rugged landscape, thick forests and an extensive cave network.

Police set up checkpoints looking for escaped prisoner Grant Hardin, Thursday, May 29, 2025, near downtown Calico Rock, Ark. (AP Photo/Nicholas Ingram)

MONTREAL — A man who was once convicted in the United States of supporting al-Qaida has been charged in Canada after allegedly threatening an attack.

Mohammed Abdullah Warsame, 51, allegedly told a homeless shelter employee in Montreal that he wanted to build bombs to detonate on public transit. He was charged with uttering threats.

He was ordered at a court appearance in Montreal on Friday to undergo a 30-day psychological assessment and return to court July 7, according to the newspaper La Presse.

“Both parties have reason to believe that Mr. Warsame’s criminal responsibility is in question in this case,” Vincent Petit, who represents Warsame, told the court.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police confirmed that he is the same Mohammed Warsame who spent 5½ years in solitary confinement before pleading guilty in Minnesota in 2009 to one count of conspiracy to provide material support and resources to al-Qaida, which the U.S. calls a terrorist organization that was responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

Warsame was sentenced to seven years and eight months in federal prison with credit for time served. He was deported to Canada in 2010 and had no fixed address at the time of the latest alleged incident.

The Old Mission Brewery, which runs several homeless shelters in Montreal, contacted police after Warsame allegedly said on May 27 that he wanted to carry out an attack that would kill a large number of people. Warsame was hospitalized for psychiatric reasons, and he was formally arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on Wednesday.

The Somali-born Canadian citizen admitted in his 2009 plea agreement that he traveled to Afghanistan in 2000 to attend al-Qaida training camps, where he dined with the organization’s founder, Osama bin Laden. Prosecutors say he later sent money to one of his training camp commanders and went to the Taliban’s front line.

Warsame later settled in Minneapolis, where he continued to provide information to al-Qaida associates.

Prosecutors painted him as a jihadist who called his time in one training camp “one of the greatest experiences” of his life. They said that even after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, he passed along information to al-Qaida operatives about border entries and whereabouts of jihadists — and only stopped when he was arrested in December 2003.

But his attorneys depicted him as a bumbling idealist whom other fighters in the camps in Afghanistan viewed as ineffective and awkward.

Warsame’s case took unusually long to work through the U.S. court system partly because everyone — including the judge, defense attorneys and prosecutors — needed security clearances.

Retired agent Harry Samit, who was the lead FBI investigator on the case and is now director of special investigations for the professional assessment company Pearson VUE in Bloomington, recalled in an interview Friday that Warsame’s case was the second major al-Qaida case to break in Minnesota. It came after that of Zacarias Moussaoui, who took flight simulator training in Minnesota and remains the only person to stand trial in a U.S. court in the 9/11 attacks.

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Moussaoui was jailed on an immigration violation when hijacked planes slammed into the World Trade Center and Pentagon and crashed in a Pennsylvania field.

Samit, whose books on the Minnesota cases will be published starting this summer, said the FBI got word as it was preparing for Moussaoui to stand trial that another al-Qaida operative was in Minneapolis. He said he is certain that Warsame was a sleeper agent who was waiting for instructions from his commanders before he was found.

While Warsame was “kind of a goofy, not very threatening guy,” Samit said, he and other agents who questioned him also concluded that he was “pure of heart and he was dedicated to the cause.” He said that was apparently enough for al-Qaida leaders who sent him Minnesota, where at a minimum they used him to raise money.

When Warsame was deported, the retired agent said, the FBI gave Canadian authorities a “full accounting” of what it knew and why the bureau still considered him a threat. So he said wasn’t surprised to learn this week, after all these years, that Warsame might still remain a danger to society.

There were no horseshoes, four-leaf clovers or rabbit’s feet spotted on the Rocori bench Friday afternoon. But Lady Luck sure was wearing black and red.

The Spartans scored eight unearned runs to beat Byron 9-3 in the Class 3A softball final at the University of Minnesota.

It is the first state title for Rocori (20-5) which entered as the fifth seed but beat No. 4 Becker 2-1 in a 14-inning quarterfinal and upset top-seeded Mankato East 2-0 in the semis.

“You have to put the ball in play to win games, making them make mistakes putting the pressure on them and that’s what we did,” said Sophia Hess, who had two of the team’s eight hits.

Tied at 3 in the fifth, Rocori’s Jessica Boos singled to plate Jordyn Illies, who led off the inning by reaching on an error and taking second on a wild pitch. Boos scored two batters later on a throwing error.

Two more runs scored on a sixth-inning error as Rocori widened its lead.

Byron finished with five errors, four hits and struck out 12 times against Boos.

“Rocori played loose and I don’t think we did,” said coach Jacob Harmon.

An infield throwing error on a ground ball allowed two Rocori runners to score in the second and a dropped fly ball in the third made it 3-0 Spartans.

That lead did not last two outs.

Sixth-seeded Byron (17-7) got one back in the fourth with an RBI ground-rule double by Kaydence Fjerstad before Ella Brennan lined a two-run single to score two more Bears.

“We bounced back nice, but then it kind of snowballed on us and got of hand,” Harmon said. “Not all their hits were great hits. A lot of bloopers that fell in, just getting a piece of the changeup or this or that. Those balls didn’t fall for us.”

With the game tied, Boos said the Spartans kept their poise.

“It was a 0-0 game from there and we just knew what we had to do, and we got runners, we kept hitting the ball … we strung them together.”

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By BARBARA ORTUTAY, Associated Press

The blowup between the president of the United States and the world’s richest man has played out on social media in real time, the latest, perhaps ultimate example of how X has become Elon Musk’s personal platform, his own reality show where anyone can tune in to watch the mercurial twists and turns of his unpredictable personality.

And tune in they did.

The feud has birthed countless memes, hot takes and speculation, with some X users bringing out the popcorn emojis while rejoicing that the site has returned to its “fun” roots — back when it was called Twitter. While it’s not yet clear if the feud will have any permanent effects on X’s audience size or advertising business, its owner reposted a meme late Thursday suggesting that, at least for now, it was good for getting active users to tune into the platform. CEO Linda Yaccarino agreed.

“X operates as a personality-driven platform, and Musk’s high-profile conflicts can fuel engagement at least in the short term,” said Sarah Kreps, director of Cornell University’s Tech Policy Institute. “The platform has leaned into spectacle as a growth strategy, and controversy often drives traffic.”

Elon Musk attends news conference with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House, Friday, May 30, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Donald Trump, of course, posted through the breakup on his own personal platform, Truth Social with three updates targeting Musk directly on Thursday. But Truth Social’s audience is just a fraction of X’s, and social media experts at this stage don’t see it siphoning the former Twitter’s user base as a result of the feud. Trump was banned from Twitter in 2021 following the Jan. 6 riots on the Capitol and he returned more than 2.5 years later after Musk reinstated his account. On X, he has nearly 106 million followers — compared with less than 10 million on Truth Social, where he’s continued to post following the feud — at least 10 times on Friday.

“It’s a niche platform with limited reach outside Trump’s core base,” Kreps said. “That said, if Trump were to fully re-engage there and disengage from X entirely, it could fragment the right-wing audience somewhat. But barring major user migration, X still dominates in political discourse.”

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump, left, claps as Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk prepares to depart after speaking at a campaign event at the Butler Farm Show, on Oct. 5, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

Trump hasn’t indicated that he’d leave X — and Musk hasn’t said he’d consider banning him — but the president has not posted on the site since June 3, although the official White House account has continued to send updates.

On BlueSky, meanwhile, many users seemed to delight in watching the drama unfold on the platform they (mostly) left behind, posting screenshots from X, Truth Social as well as their own share of memes and commentary. But the site, which has welcomed users disillusioned with Musk’s politics and policies on X, is unlikely to become a huge draw for Trump die-hards.

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“It’s too early to measure any long-term shifts in user behavior, but political audiences on X have tended to be resilient, even in the face of controversy,” Kreps said. “Trump supporters are unlikely to abandon the platform en masse unless there’s sustained antagonism or a perceived shift in content moderation policy. Right now, this looks more like a personality clash than an ideological break so user migration feels speculative at this stage.”

As for X’s advertising business, Emarketer analyst Jasmine Enberg said she doubts the feud will have a material effect.

“Advertisers who were spending small sums on the platform due to Musk’s proximity to Trump may rethink their commitments,” she said. “At the same time, the breakup between Musk and Trump hasn’t eliminated the threat of legal or business repercussions given the FTC investigation into the alleged ad boycott, so there’s still incentive for those brands to stay.”

According to The New York Times, which cited unnamed sources, the Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether roughly a dozen advertising and advocacy groups violated antitrust law by coordinating boycotts among advertisers that didn’t want their brands to appear next to hateful or other objectionable content.

In the end, Musk “remains a divisive figure, regardless of his position in the White House,” Enberg said, and any efforts by X to make the platform less divisive — such as a recent program designed to elevate content that people agree on —“can only go so far with brands and consumers if he continues to use X as his own personal megaphone to amplify controversial content.”