MIAMI (AP) — Former NBA player Stan Love, the brother of Beach Boys singer Mike Love and the father of Miami Heat player Kevin Love, has died. He was 76.
Others aren’t so sure.“I really can’t go back,” said a Haitian woman who asked to be identified only as Nicole because she fears deportation. “It’s not even a decision.”
She works at a meatpacking plant, deboning cattle carcasses for more than $20 an hour. She received Homeland Security’s message, but insists it can’t refer to someone who has followed the laws as she had, pointing to a phrase exempting people who have “otherwise obtained a lawful basis to remain.”Cattle are penned at a feedlot, April 15, 2025, in Cactus, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)Cattle are penned at a feedlot, April 15, 2025, in Cactus, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
Deep in the Panhandle, where cattle graze in seemingly endless prairie punctuated with rusting oil pumpjacks, is the town of Cactus.A wooden mosque with a gold-domed top is set amid streets of battered mobile homes and churches for Roman Catholics, Baptists and Nazarenes. There’s a Somali restaurant, a shop for Central American groceries, and a Thai takeout place.
At Golden Lotus Market, you can pick up Vietnamese instant coffee and a cereal drink from Myanmar. A flyer taped to the store’s entrance and written in English, Spanish and Burmese announces a new youth sports league: “Do you like to play baseball?”
“You meet all walks of life here,” said Ricardo Gutierrez, who was raised in Cactus. “I have Burmese friends, Cubans, Colombians, everyone.”Pavlo Romanovskyi, chief of a Ukrainian drone laboratory who lost a leg in battle, talks to a fellow soldier in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region on Feb. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
It is this dire situation that has driven wounded soldiers back to the front, where little has changed since they first left their civilian lives to defend their families from an invading neighbor.For them, lying in a hospital bed was unbearable compared to standing alongside their brothers-in-arms to defend Ukraine. But they all agree on one thing — when the war ends, they won’t spend another day in uniform; joining the army was never their first choice.
Andrii Serhieiev, right, a soldier with Ukraine’s 53rd Brigade who lost a leg in combat, and another soldier install explosives near the front line in Ukraine’s Donetsk region on Feb. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)Andrii Serhieiev, right, a soldier with Ukraine’s 53rd Brigade who lost a leg in combat, and another soldier install explosives near the front line in Ukraine’s Donetsk region on Feb. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)