Patel says FBI headquarters to ‘permanently close’ with move

FBI Director Kash Patel said the agency’s historic-but-aging headquarters in Washington would be “shut down permanently” as he shifts personnel into the building once occupied by the now-defunct U.S. Agency for International Development.

“After more than 20 years of failed attempts, we finalized a plan to permanently close the FBI’s Hoover headquarters and move the workforce into a safe, modern facility,” Patel said in a post Friday on X, adding that it would save taxpayer funds and better serve the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s requirements.

Built in the brutalist architectural style and opened on Pennsylvania Avenue in 1975, the J. Edgar Hoover building has long had detractors who said it was decrepit and no longer suited for the FBI. Yet the battle over whether and where to relocate the headquarters dragged on for years.

Assuming the long-promised move to the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center takes place, it will keep the agency’s top personnel near the Justice Department, White House and other federal institutions. But it’s a setback for Maryland, which in 2023 was promised the new headquarters after a lengthy search that resulted in Congress providing funding for construction in the suburb of Greenbelt, outside of Washington.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, and state officials last month filed suit to prevent the Greenbelt plan from being scrapped.

—Bloomberg News

Courtroom gasps as Ashlee Buzzard pleads not guilty to murder of 9-year-old Melodee

LOS ANGELES — Ashlee Buzzard, the California mother accused of killing her 9-year-old daughter, Melodee Buzzard, pleaded not guilty Friday morning during a brief but emotional arraignment in Santa Barbara County Superior Court.

Buzzard, 40, appeared in custody for the hearing, where a judge formally arraigned her on charges of first-degree murder, “lying in wait” and related firearm charges in the death of her daughter, whose remains were discovered Dec. 6 in a remote area of Utah.

The courtroom erupted as Buzzard entered the not guilty plea on all counts, as people seated in the gallery cried “oh my god,” video of the hearing shows. A court officer briefly called for order before the proceeding continued.

Buzzard will remain held without bail pending further proceedings, according to the Santa Barbara County district attorney’s office. Her preliminary hearing is scheduled for Jan. 7.

Authorities allege that Buzzard fatally shot Melodee during a multistate road trip in October before returning alone to Santa Barbara County.

Investigators believe the killing occurred on or around Oct. 9, shortly after the pair were last seen together on surveillance video near the Utah-Colorado border.

Melodee had been reported missing weeks earlier after failing to return home from what investigators described as an “unusual” cross-country trip with her mother. According to sheriff’s officials, Buzzard rented a vehicle for the trip and took deliberate steps to avoid detection, including wearing wigs and clumsy disguises. Buzzard was also captured on surveillance swapping license plates and backing into gas stations so cameras would not capture identifying information, investigators allege.

On Dec. 6, a couple discovered Melodee’s decomposed body along a remote stretch of State Route 24 near Caineville, Utah.

Ballistics evidence played a key role in the case, investigators said. Cartridge casings recovered near the Utah crime scene were matched through a federal database to an expended casing previously found during a search of Buzzard’s home in Vandenberg Village.

A live round of similar ammunition was also recovered from the rental car Buzzard used during the trip, according to law enforcement officials.

Buzzard was arrested at her Santa Barbara County residence Dec. 23.

—Los Angeles Times

Google is at last letting users swap out embarrassing Gmail addresses without losing their data

Google has finally answered users' cries, allowing Gmail users to swap out embarrassing teenage email addresses.

Gmail account holders can now change their existing @gmail.com address while retaining their data and services.

Once changed, old email addresses will remain active, and users will continue to receive emails sent to both the old and new addresses.

Saved data connected to earlier addresses, including photos, messages and emails, will not be affected.

The ability to change Google Account email addresses is gradually rolling out to all users, and is not immediately available to everyone, Google noted on its support page.

Gmail users who want to switch to more anonymous email addresses or felt burdened by the email addresses they chose as kids celebrated the update on social media.

"Feature needed: 2005. Feature arriving: 2025. Gap: two decades of suffering," one user posted on X.

"So all those years of 'cool' usernames and cringe emails can be erased… shame it can't delete the memories associated with them," another X user posted.

"Nah I'm keeping StonerBeast42069 forever!!" one Reddit user quipped.

Members of the transgender community and others who have changed their names were also happy as the new options let them distance themselves from their former names.

Competing services such as Microsoft Outlook have long allowed users to easily change their primary address by adding an "alias."

Google only allows accounts that end in @gmail.com to make changes, and the new address must also end in @gmail.com.

While users can reuse their old Google Account email address anytime, once changed, they cannot register another email address for the same account for the next 12 months.

—Los Angeles Times

8 killed in first major Syrian mosque attack since Assad's fall

DAMASCUS, Syria — At least eight people are dead after an explosion rocked a mosque in central Syria on Friday, Syrian health authorities say.

The attack is believed to be the first targeting a mosque in Syria since the overthrow of the longtime ruler Bashar Assad last year.

Eighteen others were injured in the blast in the Imam Ali Mosque in the central city of Homs, a Ministry of Health official said, according to the Syrian state news agency SANA.

The Interior Ministry described the attack as a "terrorist bombing" and said an investigation was initiated to track down the perpetrators.

The explosion occurred during the Muslim weekly Friday prayers, the ministry added. The blast was caused by explosive devices planted inside the mosque, SANA quoted a security source as saying.

Images carried by SANA showed havoc and blood stains inside the mosque as a result of the blast. The mosque is frequented by the Alawite minority community, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group.

A little-known hard-line jihadist group calling itself Saraya Ansar al-Sunna (Brigades of Sunni Supporters) claimed responsibility for the attack.

An online statement attributed to the group said its "jihadists" in collaboration with another unnamed group detonated several explosive devices in the mosque. It vowed further attacks. The authenticity of the statement could not be independently verified.

The same group had already claimed responsibility for a deadly attack on a church in Damascus in June. The group is suspected to have links to the terrorist Islamic State organization, or the Islamist militia HTS, which spearheaded the offensive to overthrow Assad.

—dpa