Two beloved nuns who spent decades helping the poor in rural Mississippi were found stabbed to death in their home after they failed to show up for work at a medical clinic.

The nuns, who worked as nurse practitioners, were identified as Paula Merrill, 58, and Margaret Held, 68. Cops arrived at their home in the town of Durant and found signs of a burglary and that their car was gone, local media said. “Just good women, women of prayer. They were outgoing, loving, caring,” said the Rev. Greg Plata, a priest at St. Thomas Catholic Church, where the sisters attended Mass.(nypost.com)…[+]

ANKARA, Turkey — Kurdish militants on Friday attacked a police checkpoint in southeast Turkey with an explosives-laden truck, killing at least 11 police officers and wounding 78 other people, officials and the state-run news agency said.

The attack struck the checkpoint 50 meters (yards) from a main police station near the town of Cizre, in the mainly Kurdish Sirnak province that borders Syria, the Anadolu Agency reported.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which was the latest in a string of bombings targeting police or military vehicles and facilities. Authorities have blamed the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, for those attacks. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim confirmed the death toll, saying it was a suicide attack carried out with an explosives-laden truck. He vowed to “destroy the terrorists.”(nypost.com)…[+]

The man hired to remake Donald Trump’s image roughed up and threatened his wife during their marriage, she claimed in court documents obtained by The Post.

Stephen K. Bannon, the new CEO of the Trump campaign, grabbed then-wife Mary Louise Piccard “by the throat and arm,” and threatened “to take the girls and leave,” referring to their twin daughters, according to a declaration she filed in their divorce case, which began in the mid-1990s.

“I took the phone to call the police and he grabbed the phone away from me throwing it across the room, and breaking it as he [was] screaming that I was a ‘crazy f—ing c–t!,’” according to the document.(nypost.com)…[+]

Hillary Clinton admitted “there’s a lot of smoke” when it comes to the Clinton Foundation, but the Democratic presidential candidate insisted “there’s no fire.”

The comments were Clinton’s first response to the bombshell Associated Press report that found 85 of the 154 nongovernment fat cats who got access to the then-secretary of state donated to her family charity or promised to back its programs.

“This AP report? Put it in context, excludes nearly 2,000 meetings I had with world leaders, plus countless other meetings with US government officials when I was secretary of state. It looked at a small portion of my time,” Clinton said in a phone interview Wednesday night with CNN’s Anderson Cooper.(nypost.com)…[+]

AMATRICE, Italy — Rescue crews raced against time Thursday looking for survivors from the earthquake that leveled three towns in central Italy, but the death toll rose to 247 and Italy once again anguished over trying to secure its medieval communities built on seismic lands.

Dawn broke over the rolling hills of central Lazio and Le Marche regions after a night of uninterrupted search efforts. Aided by sniffer dogs and audio equipment, firefighters and rescue crews using their bare hands pulled chunks of cement, rock and metal apart from mounds of rubble where homes once stood, searching for signs of life.(nypost.com)…[+]

STOCKHOLM — U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said on Thursday he expected the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, would close before President Barack Obama leaves office in January. “That is my hope and expectation,” he told a news conference in Sweden. The White House has been trying to close the facility since Obama took office but has been stymied by opposition in Congress.(nypost.com)…[+]

A woman was stabbed and slashed inside a Brooklyn building on Tuesday, sources said. Police found the 38-year-old woman barely alive lying on the steps of a building on 7th Avenue near 60th Street in Sunset Park at around 9 a.m. Her throat had been cut, along with her head and her hands. She also suffered several stab wounds to her chest and various other parts of her body. She was taken Lutheran Hospital where she underwent more than five hours of surgery and is currently listed in critical condition. Police initially believed the incident to be domestic in nature and were searching for the woman’s boyfriend.(nypost.com)…[+]

Standing amid piles of waterlogged debris in Baton Rouge, President Obama on Tuesday promised a sustained national effort to rebuild flood-ravaged southern Louisiana — “even after the TV cameras leave” — on a visit aimed in part at stemming campaign-season criticism that he’s been too slow to respond to the disaster.

As he toured a battered neighborhood, Obama reassured residents that the federal response would be robust and tried to buck up beleaguered residents, many of whom have said they feel their plight has been ignored both by national officials and the mainstream media.(nypost.com)…[+]

/abonnement/A powerful 6.2-magnitude earthquake rocked central Italy early Wednesday, killing at least 70 people and reducing at least three towns to rubble, as homes collapsed on sleeping residents. The temblor, which struck at 3:36 a.m. local time, was centered about 5.5 miles below the ground about 10 miles from the town of Norcia in the lush central province of Umbria. The death toll, which was rising rapidly, was reported to be 73, Italian broadcaster RAI reported.“The town isn’t here anymore,” said Sergio Pirozzi, the mayor of Amatrice, one of the hardest-hit towns, along with Accumoli near near Rieti, about 80 miles northeast of Rome, and Pescara del Tronto farther east…[+]

The 29-year-old son of Mexican druglord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman has reportedly been freed after he was kidnapped a week ago in the coastal resort town of Puerto Vallarta. Jesus Alfredo Guzman, who was snatched along with five others by seven armed men, is now safe in Sinaloa, Mexico, according to Agence France-Presse. “They were negotiating all this time, but now [the kidnapped men] are free and well,” a source told the news agency.The ordeal began when the seven stormed into a restaurant before separating the patrons and spiriting the most captives away with them.(nypost.com)…[+]