Category: CNN Regional

By Paul Burton

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    FRAMINGHAM, Massachusetts (WBZ) — A Massachusetts family is finally feeling closure 25 years after losing their loved one in the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Paul Keating’s mother, Barbara Keating, was a passenger on American Airlines Flight 11 out of Boston when hijackers crashed the plane into the World Trade Center in New York City.

“It’s truly amazing that 24 years and two months later we get notified that my mom’s remains are identified,” Keating said.

For years, the family was told her remains would never be recovered.

“We were all told there would never be any remains. You were not to expect it,” he said.

But through DNA technology, Keating said last year, the New York City Medical Examiner’s office identified the remains of Barbara Keating.

The 72-year-old dedicated much of her life to helping children with Big Brother and Big Sister, working with kids who have Down syndrome.

“Besides having a big Irish Catholic family in Boston of seven, she worked her whole life with children,” he smiled.

To mark 25 years since the 9/11 attacks, the family held a ceremony Friday morning.

“We laid my mom to rest with my dad. We had a complete ceremony all over again and placed the urn in the ground,” he said.

Although it’s been 25 years, the family says having her remains now provides a sense of peace and closure.

“We get closure. It’s literally that simple. Yes, we knew she was on the flight. Yes, we knew she died. And 25 years ago, we buried her, but we didn’t,” Paul Keating said. “It didn’t seem complete. It just did not. This changes it for us.”

She is now buried next to her husband of 32 years. The family thanks the Herculean efforts of the New York City Medical Examiner’s office.

“Their work is outstanding and they are still doing it all day every day all day. So we can’t thank them enough,” he said.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Adam Thompson, Drew Aunkst

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    GLEN BURNIE, Maryland (WJZ) — Some drivers whose cars have been stuck inside the Empire Towers underground parking garage in Glen Burnie, Maryland, since July 9 may soon be able to get them back.

The office building has been closed for more than two months after it was evacuated over structural concerns. Officials said unpermitted construction work in the garage caused ceilings to sag and exposed rebar.

In an email obtained by CBS News Baltimore, attorneys for Empire Towers’ owners told vehicle owners they are optimistic that at least half of the cars will be removed this month, starting as early as Sept. 21.

However, some vehicles still cannot be removed, while others have been damaged. The attorneys said all owners will receive photos and videos of their vehicles for insurance purposes.

The building’s attorneys also wrote that vehicle owners will have to sign a waiver of liability as a “precondition to removing vehicles from an active construction zone in a compromised building.”

The requirement is concerning for some vehicle owners.

“We haven’t received a copy of this waiver,” said Liam McGeehan, who works in the building and has been without his car for months. “They mentioned that it was just for the people that are going to be removing the cars, but, you know, a lot of people in this building — they work for lawyers, where they are lawyers — so I would like to see this waiver.”

McGeehan said he is also frustrated by what he described as a “complete lack of communication.”

“There’s been no transparency,” he said. “We’ve just been getting trickle-fed updates from the building’s attorneys.”

Last month, management told tenants that Phase 1 of the emergency stabilization process was completed Aug. 14. The work involved placing approximately 1,500 vertical shoring posts inside the garage to support the concrete slabs.

Officials had previously said vehicles remaining in the parking garage would need to wait until Phase 2 was completed, which could take until the end of September.

Phase 2 involves structural engineers and contractors installing horizontal braces. The building owners have said Empire Towers and the parking garage will remain unsafe until the work is finished.

The building’s management announced last month that a $3,000 payment would be provided to help cover transportation expenses for those whose vehicles remain trapped in the parking garage.

People who have been without their vehicles for weeks because of the stabilization work are asked to email empiretowers@rosenbergmartin.com with their name, address, email address and phone number; the tenant’s name and suite number; a description of the vehicle, including its make, color, year, model and license plate number; and the vehicle’s location in the garage.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Alexa Liacko

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    MCDONOUGH, Georgia (WUPA) — For a McDonough mother, homeschooling was the right choice for her son. But she didn’t want him to grow up without a community, so she created one.

Young Laureates brings homeschool families together through an education model centered on community, culture and connection.

Its founder, Quatavia Wilkins-Johnson, started Young Laureates after homeschooling her son, Lucas Johnson. He enjoyed learning at home, but he wanted something more.

“Just kind of wanted to ask if I could have some friends….And so she started this school.”

Wilkins-Johnson said she wanted her son to have a different educational experience than the one she had growing up.

“I just didn’t want him to deal with, like, the stereotypes and biases that I experienced growing up,” said Wilkins-Johnson.

After struggling to find a homeschool community that felt like the right fit, Wilkins-Johnson decided to build one herself.

Young Laureates allows students to learn at home while coming together several times a week for projects and classroom-style learning. Wilkins-Johnson said representation is an intentional part of the environment.

“I don’t think a lot of people know how important it is for kids to — I get emotional — for kids to, like, walk in and see themselves. Like, I don’t know if you noticed the books, everything is intentional.

The school also emphasizes an emotionally supportive curriculum designed to meet students where they are.

For Shardae Crawford, that sense of belonging has made a difference for her daughter.

“It’s really important for students to go to a place where they feel seen, just to know you matter. Your thoughts matter. Your words matter. I know my daughter told me. I feel like I finally have a place where I feel like I belong.”

That feeling of belonging has also drawn other families to Young Laureates after leaving the public school system.

Shakira Davis said she was looking for a place where her son could build his confidence. He was diagnosed with dyslexia and struggled in a public school setting.

“I was searching for an empowerment place where he can build his self-esteem. Came over here, and his confidence, his speech has improved…I mean, 100%.”

What started with a wish for her son has grown into a larger community — something Wilkins-Johnson said she never expected.

“To see them coding and building video games, and no one’s saying they can’t. It’s just I, I don’t even…I can’t put it in words,” said Wilkins-Johnson.

For Lucas, the community means he no longer feels like he’s learning alone. “I have people to talk to, and I wasn’t doing everything in a room alone.”

Other students said the experience has helped them become more comfortable connecting with others.

Alexander Thornell said he has learned, “to finally, like, be more open to people instead of like just staying home.”

Nala Mayifuila said the experience has helped her become more confident. “I feel like I’m more independent now,” she said.

Young Laureates may offer a different kind of educational model, but Wilkins-Johnson said the lessons she hopes students take away go beyond academics.

“I want them to belong,” said Wilkins-Johnson.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Brian Unger

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    ATLANTA (WUPA) — Inside a welding booth, a four-year degree can only get you so far. You can either do this expertly, or you can’t. And 25-year-old JhiKayla Mathis can.

Mathis, who is from Columbus, Georgia, is at the top of her class at Tulsa Welding School’s Atlanta-area campus, carrying a 4.0 grade-point average in a field she once never imagined entering.

“I always wanted to go follow in the medical field with my family, as the women in my family,” Mathis said.

Instead, inspired by her grandfather, she picked up a welding torch. She is preparing to enter a job market where women remain very much the exception.

“I feel like I have to work 20 times harder, because you know, it is a male-dominated field,” Mathis said. “There’s not a lot of women in here. There’s not a lot of Black women. So I try to go as hard as I can.”

At Tulsa Welding School’s Atlanta campus, President Tamekia Morris is betting on women like Mathis — a pool of talent the skilled trades have largely overlooked.

“If we really want to talk about closing this gap and the shortage in the workforce, in the skilled trades, we have to tap into the untapped market, which are women,” Morris said.

Women currently make up about 16% of the student body at the Atlanta campus, according to Morris. Nationally, the gap is much larger. Women accounted for just 4.3% of construction trade workers in 2025, according to an analysis of federal Current Population Survey data by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. Women represented just 3.1% of carpenters, 3.1% of plumbers, pipe fitters and steamfitters, and 3.5% of electricians.

At the same time, metro Atlanta needs more skilled workers. More than 201,000 people work in skilled trades in the metro area, accounting for about 7% of all jobs, according to WorkSource Metro Atlanta. The Metro Atlanta Chamber’s 2026 Talent Supply Report identifies skilled trades and industrial maintenance as occupations where demand consistently outpaces the available supply of workers.

That demand is being fueled by the construction of homes, roads, factories, and an extraordinary expansion of data centers. According to the latest industry report from commercial real estate firm CBRE, Atlanta has overtaken Northern Virginia to become North America’s leading market for data-center capacity under construction.

All of it requires people who know how to build things.

“For so long this was not an option for us, right?” Morris said. “Our parents didn’t raise us to think about welding and HVAC and electrical.”

For Morris, that observation is personal. Growing up in Miami, she planned on becoming a doctor and followed the traditional educational path she had been taught to pursue.

“We just did what we were taught,” Morris said. “Go to school, graduate high school, leave at 18 and go away for college. So I did that.”

Morris earned a college degree and a master’s degree, but medical school never happened. Instead, she found her way into education, initially helping students obtain externships in medical offices. Nearly two decades later, she is leading a school that trains students for careers she says she was never encouraged to consider herself.

If she had it to do over again, Morris said she might make a different choice.

“I probably would not have gone that route,” she said. “It’s just what we were taught.”

Mathis is already taking a different path. When she graduates next month, she plans to go back to school to become an underwater welder. Asked why she would choose an even more specialized field, Mathis had a quick answer.

“No women in the field,” she said. “Might as well go dominate that too.”

Mathis says learning to weld has changed the way she sees herself and helped other women see what is possible.

“If they see me here doing this and another woman in here doing this, they’re like, ‘Okay, I can do it,'” she said.

The school has a saying: “The more you burn, the more you learn” — meaning the more time students spend behind a welding torch, the better they get. The welding program can be completed in seven months, putting students on a relatively quick path into a workforce that badly needs them.

In an economy hungry for people who can build, women like Mathis and Morris are demonstrating there is more than one career path — and changing ideas about who can walk it.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Montse Ricossa

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    MILWAUKEE (WDJT) — When you ask a child what they want to be when they grow up, you often expect astronaut, teacher, firefighter, or another answer that likely changes every few years.

But there’s one woman who, from the start, knew she wanted to become a nurse. Kathleen Topp has been known as ‘Cookie’ all her life, since her older sister couldn’t say her name. She works at Children’s Wisconsin’s day hospital, where children come in for infusions, chemotherapy, or different blood products.

About 3,000 children come through every year, looking to beat cancer. While it’s a terrible diagnosis, the kids, Cookie says, have a great outlook. “They could be receiving the worst chemotherapy ever, or super sick, and they’re still laughing, giggling, running around the place,” she shared. It’s an experience she’s familiar with.

“Being able to be on the other side of it is a nice perspective for me because I know how they’re feeling,” she said. That’s because she got her own diagnosis at 12 years old, when she first noticed she had “little weird spots” on her legs, which she described as appearing like mosquito bites. That was coupled with fevers and losing weight.

For weeks, doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with Cookie. She explained the frustration over the unknown, wanting to be in summer camp with her friends.

Eventually, doctors found out she had cutaneous T-cell lymphoma. It required nine rounds of chemotherapy, followed by a bone marrow transplant, thanks to her older sister.

“I just kind of took it minute by minute, day by day, and kind of got through [it].” — Cookie

Montse Ricossa:

How did that experience shape high school and picking what you wanted to do as your career?

Cookie Topp:

Before I was diagnosed, I was terrified of the hospital. Like anything; needle shots, doctors really, really freaked me out. And then, of course, I got diagnosed, and I was like, ‘I’m gonna have to face my fears very quickly because this is gonna become my norm’… I kind of remember looking at my mom and, like, having this realization. I’m like, ‘Mom, I want to be a nurse, but I want to be like a nurse here.’ I want to be a nurse, like these nurses that literally got me through the worst days in my life.”

Cookie went to school for nursing, always wanting to get back to the place she knew so well. She noted her first day of work “felt like I was home.” That home is the MACC Fund Center, treating children who were in her same position some years ago.

When Cookie tells kids about her diagnosis, she said first they express “surprise. And then you kind of just see this sigh of relief. They’re like, okay, like there’s something visible in front of me that is proof that this — there is an end and there is a positive outcome here.” An outcome that keeps getting better, thanks to organizations like the MACC Fund, and nurses like Cookie.

“I feel like if I have any chance to be that someone for another one of these families or a patient that’s going through the worst time of their life, then I want to be that. I want to be the light in this dark tunnel that they’re in, and show them that there is a path out of this.”

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Mia Bearden

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    WAUSAU, Wisconsin (WDJT) — Republican nominee for governor Tom Tiffany says he is lucky to be alive after the plane he was traveling in lost power Saturday night and was forced to make an emergency landing in Lake Wausau.

Tiffany held a news conference Sunday, recounting the moments when the four-seat plane lost power as it approached Wausau Downtown Airport.

Tiffany said the pilot, 73-year-old Leonard Boltz, warned him they were going down.

“Len said to me, ‘We are going down. Pull your seatbelt tight,'” Tiffany said.

Boltz was able to land the plane in Lake Wausau. Tiffany said the pilot quickly raised the landing gear before hitting the water, a decision he believes may have saved their lives.

“If you leave your landing gear down, when you do a water landing, your plane can cartwheel,” Tiffany said. “He was savvy enough and quick enough to think about, ‘We have to pull that landing gear up.’ He did that and might’ve saved us as a result.”

As the plane began to submerge, Boltz was able to call 911.

Tiffany said he and Boltz then swam toward the airport, eventually reaching a shallow area where they waited for help.

Emergency responders later arrived by boat and rescued both men.

Tiffany and Boltz were taken to an area hospital. Tiffany said he hit his head on the dashboard and needed 12 stitches.

“We were really fortunate for what they did, and I can’t thank them enough for helping us in this situation,” Tiffany said. “The gravity of this is just hitting me at this point.”

Tiffany became emotional as he described the moments in the water and their effort to swim to safety.

He said he plans to return to campaigning but will not be able to fly for a few days.

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating what caused the plane to lose power.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Andrew Ramos

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    NEW YORK (WCBS) — A community in Brooklyn is heartbroken after a beloved bodega cat was apparently stolen.

The Innab family, who owns the Eighth Street Mini Market in Park Slope, had just opened up for the day on Thursday when the 3-month-old kitten, named Jabal, wandered outside.

“My dad noticed that the cat wasn’t inside, and he got very worried, so after that he looked at the surveillance,” Moe Innab said.

Surveillance video captured the moment when a couple walked by. The man is seen swooping in, cradling Jabal, who seems to be squirming in the man’s arms. They then quickly took off.

“To just steal a random cat outside, and it obviously wasn’t a stray cat,” Innab said. “It’s something I wouldn’t think of somebody doing in this neighborhood.”

Innab says his father had just gotten Jabal to replace the bodega’s former mascot, Victoria, after she died. The kitten had a collar and was weeks away from getting microchipped.

Neighbors were saddened to hear the news.

“You gotta be a bad person to do that. It’s like really mean and everyone loved that cat,” neighbor Seb Mitchell said.

“There’s so many animals that need places to live, so to take it from a loving owner is so ridiculous and horrible,” neighbor Hope Thompson said.

“Every time I went into that deli, there would be a line of people just going and petting the cat and saying hi to it,” Mitchell said. “It was like a celebrity.”

The family is offering a $500 reward for Jabal’s safe return, no questions asked.

“We all make mistakes. I’m no one to judge, you know. Maybe they weren’t in their right mind,” Innab said.

Anyone with information is urged to contact the Eighth Street Mini Market directly.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By John Ramos

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    ALAMEDA, California (KPIX) — A letter marked “return to sender” has been delivered to an Alameda church. But the date of the postmark has people scratching their heads, and it has begun a nationwide search for who to send it to.

It’s often said that God works in mysterious ways. It turns out, so does the U.S. Postal Service. Last month, it returned a letter to Christ Episcopal Church in Alameda, originally postmarked on October 26, 1955.

“Uh, it came back in the mail on August 20th, 2026, for ‘insufficient address,'” said church Rector Stephen McHale.

The envelope contained the baptismal certificate for a child named Pamela Jean Haslam, born to parents Robert and Lois Haslam. But the keepsake document is coming a bit late. The post office is only about a mile and a half from the church, so Rev. McHale said it’s a mystery to him why it took so long to be delivered.

“The other mystery I’m very curious about is where in the Alameda Post Office this envelope was sitting for 71 years,” he said, with a smile, “and how they decided to drop it back in the mail?”

The church, which has been around since 1869, takes record keeping seriously, and they even have Pamela’s baptism ceremony listed on their books. But she died in 1996 at the age of 41, so, the question now is, to whom to send the document now? McHale put out a call on Facebook and it looks like her son may have been discovered living in Michigan. But at this point all they have is a mailing address.

“So, we are going to be sending him a photo copy of this document,” he said, laughing, “because we don’t trust the United States Postal Service anymore, to deliver in a timely way.”

Others may have just given up, but the church takes a long view of history. Its original building, and two other churches, were burned down by an arsonist on New Year’s Eve 1960. But a few things survived, including the marble baptismal font.

“This may be the original font in which Pamela was baptized,” said Rev. McHale.

He said, to him, the letter is a reminder that the church’s traditions go back for thousands of years, and it feels like part of its mission is to persevere despite the passage of time.

“We certainly take a long time to change, yes,” he said. “But we plan for the long run, yeah.”

Does that include taking 71 years to deliver the mail?

“Well, I’m glad it wasn’t a check for me!” he said.

The Bible says Moses wandered in the desert for 40 years. That’s only about half as long as it took to deliver the letter.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t say it’s a miracle,” McHale said. “Because this is the Post Office’s job. But it’s kind of delightful that we got it back.”

The envelope’s address seems to be a location on the old Alameda air base, so the reverend suspects the parents may have been a military family posted there. They are asking anyone with information about Pamela or her parents to contact them.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.