The head of the U.S. Postal Service expressed frustration Thursday with ongoing criticism by election officials of how it handles mail ballots while also seeking to reassure voters that it’s ready to handle an expected crush of those ballots this fall.

U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told reporters that it’s difficult for the Postal Service to address “generalities” about perceived problems and said some election officials don’t fully understand its efforts to deliver ballots in time to be counted.

He said the service will collect and deliver mail ballots more frequently in the days before the Nov. 5 presidential election and would keep processing centers open the Sunday before Election Day. The Postal Service, he said, would take extraordinary measures to “rescue” ballots that are mailed late and at risk of missing state deadlines to be received by election offices.

Elections officials have said for weeks that they are concerned about the Postal Service’s readiness. They’ve cited ballots arriving late or without the postmarks required by some state laws during the primary season.

“We engage in heroic efforts intended to beat the clock,” DeJoy told reporters during a virtual news conference.

DeJoy and state and local election officials do agree on one thing: They are urging voters who want to use mail ballots to return them as early as possible and at least seven days before a state’s deadline. DeJoy also encouraged voters to go to post office counters to get their ballots postmarked.

“I want to see high turnout and low drama,” Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat and the president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, said Thursday.

Ky. sheriff accused of fatally shooting judge

A judge in a rural Kentucky county was shot and killed in his courthouse chambers Thursday, and the local sheriff was charged with murder, police said.

The preliminary investigation indicates Letcher County Sheriff Shawn M. Stines shot District Judge Kevin Mullins multiple times following an argument inside the courthouse, according to Kentucky State Police. Mullins, who held the judgeship for 15 years, died at the scene, and Stines surrendered without incident

Kentucky Supreme Court Chief Justice Laurance B. VanMeter said he was “shocked by this act of violence” and that the court system was “shaken by this news.”

Letcher County’s judge-executive signed an order closing the county courthouse on Friday. The courthouse is in Whitesburg, which is 146 miles southeast of Lexington.

Mullins, 54, was hit multiple times in the shooting, Kentucky State Police said. Stines, 43, was charged with one count of first-degree murder.

The investigation is continuing, police said.

Ohio sheriff under fire for anti-Harris posting

An Ohio sheriff is under fire for a social media post in which he said people with Kamala Harris yard signs should have their addresses recorded so that immigrants can be sent to live with them if the Democrat wins the presidency. Good-government groups called it a threat and urged him to remove the post.

Portage County Sheriff Bruce Zuchowski, a Republican in the thick of his own reelection campaign, posted a screenshot of a Fox News segment that criticized Democratic President Joe Biden and Vice President Harris over their immigration record and the impact on small communities like Springfield, Ohio, where an influx of Haitian migrants has caused a political furor in the presidential campaign.

Likening people in the U.S. illegally to “human locusts,” Zuchowski wrote on a personal Facebook account and his campaign’s account: “When people ask me... What’s gonna happen if the Flip-Flopping, Laughing Hyena Wins?? I say ... write down all the addresses of the people who had her signs in their yards!” That way, Zuchowski continued, when migrants need places to live, “we’ll already have the addresses of their New families ... who supported their arrival!”

DOJ opens civil rights probe of Miss. sheriff

The Justice Department has opened a civil rights investigation into a Mississippi sheriff’s department whose officers tortured two Black men in a racist attack that included beatings, repeated use of stun guns and assaults with a sex toy before one of the victims was shot in the mouth, officials said Thursday.

The Justice Department will investigate whether the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department has engaged in a pattern or practice of excessive force and unlawful stops, searches and arrests, and whether it has used racially discriminatory policing practices, according to Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke.

Five Rankin sheriff’s deputies pleaded guilty in 2023 to breaking into a home without a warrant and engaging in an hourslong attack on Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker. A sixth officer, from the Richland Police Department, was also convicted in the attack

Some of the officers were part of a group so willing to use excessive force they called themselves the Goon Squad. All six were sentenced in March, receiving terms of 10 to 40 years.

State Department rips GOP subpoena

The State Department lashed out Thursday at House Republicans over a subpoena for testimony about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, accusing them of repeatedly calling for hearings on days they knew Secretary of State Antony Blinken was unavailable to appear.

Rep. Michael McCaul, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he was trying to accommodate Blinken, who faces the threat of being held in contempt of Congress if he doesn’t appear.

The Texas Republican had first set a hearing for Thursday, while Blinken was in Egypt and France. He then changed the date to Tuesday, when Blinken will be at the annual U.N. General Assembly gathering of world leaders in New York and attending President Joe Biden’s speech at the time of the hearing.

“They have unilaterally selected a date when we have told them in advance that he will be not in Washington, D.C., because he will be elsewhere carrying out important meetings to advance the foreign policy interests of the United States,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.

Remains found in SUV that ignited pipeline fire

Human remains were found inside an SUV that authorities say hit an above-ground valve on a pipeline in suburban Houston, causing a fire that has burned for four days, officials said Thursday.

As authorities worked to identify who had driven the vehicle, residents who were forced to flee the towering blaze returned to assess the damage on Thursday. They found mailboxes and vehicles partially melted by the intense heat, a neighborhood park charred and destroyed and fences burned to the ground.

“Devastated, upset, scared. We don’t know what we’re going to do now,” said Diane Hutto, 51, after finding her home severely damaged by water that firefighters poured on it to keep it from catching fire. Hutto’s home is located only a few hundred feet from the pipeline.

By Thursday, the fire had dramatically shrunk in size before being completely extinguished by early evening.

Alaska man accused of SCOTUS threats

A 76-year-old convicted drug dealer from Alaska has been arrested after threatening to kill, drown, torture and lynch six Supreme Court justices and two of their family members, the Justice Department said Thursday.

The indictment left the justices unnamed, though the court is dominated by a six-member conservative majority. It remained unclear whether the man, Panos Anastasiou, came close to carrying out his threats, and public records indicate that he is not affiliated with any political party.

Anastasiou is accused of sending more than 465 threatening messages from March 10, 2023, to July 16 of this year using the court’s public website. He pleaded not guilty Wednesday to nine counts of making threats against a federal judge and 13 counts of making threats in interstate commerce. If convicted on all counts, he could face up to 155 years in prison.

The messages “contained violent, racist and homophobic rhetoric coupled with threats of assassination via torture, hanging and firearms, and encouraged others to participate in the acts of violence,” the indictment said.

Russian bomb kills 1 at Ukrainian nursing home

A Russian-guided aerial bomb hit a five-story nursing home for older people in the northern city of Sumy, Ukraine, on Thursday, killing at least one person and injuring 12 others, according to the Ukrainian Interior Ministry.

It was the latest in a series of air attacks targeting Sumy in recent weeks, after Ukraine’s offensive into the nearby Russian region of Kursk.

The region of Sumy, just across the border, has been used as a base by the Ukrainian army to launch its cross-border assaults into the Kursk region. Ukrainian troops regularly travel back to Sumy after missions on Russian territory, and convoys of military vehicles can often be seen in the area on their way to Kursk.

Russia has responded to the offensive with waves of strikes on the Sumy region, including some that targeted urban centers and caused civilian casualties. Nine people were seriously injured in Thursday’s attack and taken to the hospital, according to the head of the regional military administration, Volodymyr Artiukhin.

— News service reports