Midday Roundup: New Yorkers vote in primary today

Casting ballots. Voters in New York are lining up at polling places across the state to cast ballots in the Democratic and Republican presidential primaries. GOP front-runner and native New Yorker Donald Trump holds a double-digit lead in the state, according to opinion polls, and is expected to win a majority of the 95 delegates up for grabs tonight. Trump has been on the defensive for the last few weeks as Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has snared delegates from Colorado and Wyoming in balloting that did not include a typical statewide popular vote. But Trump retains a solid lead in the delegate count, with 756 to Cruz’s 559. On the Democratic side, most early polling showed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton beating rival Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., by a comfortable margin. But the latest poll has them in a virtual tie. Clinton claims New York as her adopted home and represented the state for two terms in the U.S. Senate. Sanders was born and raised in Brooklyn.

Spring offensive. Taliban militants claimed responsibility for the worst attack in Afghanistan’s capital in years. A suicide bomber and several gunmen attacked an Afghan intelligence unit in Kabul tasked with protecting senior officials. They killed at least 28 people and wounded more than 320 others. The militant group announced its spring offensive just a week ago. While analysts say the attack shows the Taliban’s resiliency in a country also facing the threat of Islamic State (ISIS) expansion, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said it proved the Taliban can’t face the country’s military in a “face-to-face battle.” After longtime Taliban leader Mohammad Omar died last year, the group splintered, with some factions interested in peace talks and others demanding a new offensive to retake territory and get a jump on ISIS.

Prisoner swap. The leaders of Russia and Ukraine have reportedly reached a deal on a prisoner swap that would free Ukrainian pilot Nadezhda Savchenko. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko announced the deal today during a televised news conference with the Danish prime minister. The deal became possible after Ukrainian courts sentenced two Russian officers to 14 years in jail for waging war in eastern Ukraine. The Russian defense ministry had claimed the men were not on active duty when they were captured. A Russian court sentenced Savchenko to 22 years in prison for allegedly shooting two Russian journalists in 2014. Ukrainian officials claimed Savchenko was abducted by Russian forces before the journalists were killed.

Mysterious murderer. Police in Midlothian, a small city about 25 miles southwest of Dallas, are searching for a man who broke into a church and allegedly murdered a woman who taught an early morning fitness class there. One of the students found Terri Bevers, 45, at about 5 a.m. at the Creekside Church of Christ. Security cameras at the church recorded footage of a man, dressed head-to-toe in police SWAT team gear, entering the church at about 3:50 a.m. Police don’t yet know whether the man was attempting to rob the church or whether he targeted Bevers specifically. Police Chief Carl Smith said the murder was very unusual for Midlothian: “We have a very safe community. In fact, it’s going to be the first event of my tenure here in almost 10 years. Nothing like this happened here before.”

Died. Doris Roberts, who played the overbearing mother-in-law on the popular sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond, died Sunday in Los Angeles. She was 90. Although best known in recent years for her Raymond role, for which she won four Emmys, Roberts had a long stage, television, and film career, starting in 1951. Her television appearances included shows like The Mary Tyler Moore Show, All in the Family, Angie, Barney Miller, The Love Boat, and Remington Steele. Her film credits included The Heartbreak Kid, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, Used People, and My Giant. Roberts was born in St. Louis but moved to New York as a child to live with her maternal grandparents after her father abandoned the family. She briefly studied journalism at New York University before devoting all her energy to acting.

And the winner is… The 100th anniversary of the Pulitzer Prizes include awards for The Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post. The acclaimed Broadway musical Hamilton, a historical tale of America’s Founding Fathers set to a hip-hop soundtrack, won for best drama. The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen, a thriller about a North Vietnamese spy who moves to California after the Vietnam War, won the fiction prize. AP took home the public service award for its investigative series about slave labor in the seafood industry. The LA Times won in the breaking news category for its reporting of the San Bernardino, Calif., shooting in November. And the Post won for a database that tracks fatal police shootings.