U.S./World category, Page 571
Russia’s hypersonic missile-armed ship to patrol global seas
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday sent a frigate armed with the country’s latest Zircon hypersonic missile on a trans-ocean cruise in a show of force as tensions with the West escalate over the war in Ukraine. Russia touts that the Zircon missile can evade any Western air defenses by...
Kevin McCarthy voted down time after time for House speaker
WASHINGTON — House Republicans flailed through a long second day of fruitless balloting Wednesday, unable to either elect their leader Kevin McCarthy as House speaker or come up with a new strategy to end the political chaos that has tarnished the start of their new majority. Yet McCarthy wasn’t giving...
Where is the Parkland school shooter? Florida won’t say
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The gunman who murdered 17 people at a Parkland high school nearly five years ago has spent the last nine weeks in the custody of the Florida of Corrections. Where? That’s anyone’s guess. In an unusually secretive move, the state has refused to disclose the location...
Desperation is driving latest surge of Cuban rafters arriving in the Florida Keys
In an end-of-year video message for social media, Cuba’s leader, Miguel Díaz-Canel, recently acknowledged that 2022 was “one of the most challenging of Cuba’s revolutionary history.” He then admitted that 2023 “could be even more difficult,” but that, he added, would be “an attractive challenge for all who feel revolutionary.”...
Iran releases Oscar-winning film actress held over protests
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran released a prominent actress from an Oscar-winning film on Wednesday, nearly three weeks after she was jailed for criticizing a crackdown on anti-government protests, local reports said. Iran’s semi-official ISNA news agency said Taraneh Alidoosti, the 38-year-old star of Asghar Farhadi’s Oscar-winning 2016 film,...
Philippine leader emphasizes economic ties on visit to China
BEIJING — Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is pushing for closer economic ties on a visit to China that seeks to sidestep territorial disputes in the South China Sea. The countries have both been rocked by economic crises linked to the COVID-19 pandemic, but are looking to recharge investments in...
U.K.’s Sunak vows to halve inflation, tackle illegal migration
LONDON — British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, in his first major speech of 2023 on Wednesday, pledged to halve inflation, grow the U.K. economy and stop illegal immigration. In a speech setting out the Conservative government’s priorities for the year ahead, Sunak focused on tackling the U.K.’s slowing economy and...
Analysis: Whoever wins, serving as House speaker will be more like ‘being mayor of hell’
WASHINGTON — Republican leader Kevin McCarthy surely could have seen defeat coming: The wave that swamped him has been building for years. In 2015, attacks from the right wing drove House Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio to quit in frustration. Boehner’s successor, Rep. Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, stuck...
College scam mastermind Rick Singer gets 3.5 years in prison
BOSTON — The mastermind of the nationwide college admissions bribery scheme that ensnared celebrities, prominent businesspeople and other parents who used their wealth and privilege to buy their kids’ way into top-tier schools was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison Wednesday. The punishment for Rick Singer, 62, is the...
White House gun violence program with philanthropies ends
NEW YORK — It was small, as Washington celebrations go — two senior Biden administration advisers gathered with program participants near the White House on a Thursday afternoon in December to mark the end of a little-known initiative with a budget of less than $8 million. The impact of The...
U.S. bishops’ rifts unlikely to ease after Pope Benedict’s death
NEW YORK — Many of the conservative prelates who dominate the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops were appointed by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. His recent death deprives them of a symbolic figurehead but is unlikely to weaken their collective power or end the culture wars that have divided the USCCB,...
Mega Millions jackpot climbs to $940M after no winner
DES MOINES, Iowa — The Mega Millions jackpot increased to an estimated $940 million after another drawing resulted in plenty of losers but not a single grand prize winner. The numbers drawn late Tuesday were: 25, 29, 33, 41, 44 and gold Mega Ball 18. The next drawing is scheduled...
NTSB: Airline worker pulled into engine in fatal accident
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — An airline ground crew worker was pulled into the engine of a plane during a fatal accident at an Alabama airport, authorities said. The National Transportation Safety Board released the additional information about the Saturday accident at the Montgomery Regional Airport that claimed the life of an...
Transgender Missouri inmate executed for fatal stabbing
BONNE TERRE, Mo. — A Missouri inmate was put to death Tuesday for a 2003 killing, becoming what is believed to be the first transgender woman executed in the U.S. Amber McLaughlin, 49, was convicted of stalking and killing a former girlfriend, then dumping the body near the Mississippi River...
New documents detail Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson asking about electors
MADISON, Wis. — The former chairman of the Wisconsin Republican Party said Republican Sen. Ron Johnson spoke to him weeks before Joe Biden assumed the presidency about having the state’s GOP-controlled Legislature, rather than voters, choose Wisconsin’s presidential electors, according to newly released documents from closed-door testimony to the House...
FDA finalizes rule allowing mail-order abortion pills
WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday finalized a rule change that allows women seeking abortion pills to get them through the mail, replacing a long-standing requirement that they pick up the medicine in person. The Biden administration implemented the change last year, announcing it would no longer...
Kevin McCarthy fails in marathon votes for speaker, House adjournsVideo
WASHINGTON — Unable to elect Republican leader Kevin McCarthy as the new House speaker Tuesday, the Republicans adjourned for the day in disarray as the party tries to regroup from his a historic defeat after a long, messy start for the new Congress. The surprise move end to Day One...
Welfare scandal sharpens contrasts in long-poor Mississippi
JACKSON, Miss. — In Mississippi, where elected officials have a long history of praising self-sufficiency and condemning federal antipoverty programs, a welfare scandal has exposed how millions of dollars were diverted to the rich and powerful — including pro athletes — instead of helping some of the neediest people in...
Drone advances in Ukraine could bring dawn of killer robots
KYIV, Ukraine — Drone advances in Ukraine have accelerated a long-anticipated technology trend that could soon bring the world’s first fully autonomous fighting robots to the battlefield, inaugurating a new age of warfare. The longer the war lasts, the more likely it becomes that drones will be used to identify,...
Russia, shaken by Ukrainian strike, could step up drone use
KYIV, Ukraine — Emergency crews on Tuesday sifted through the rubble of a building struck by Ukrainian rockets, killing at least 63 Russian soldiers barracked there, in the latest blow to the Kremlin’s war strategy as Ukraine says Moscow’s tactics could be shifting. An Associated Press video of the scene...
As legal pot grows, more kids sickened by edibles at home
The number of young kids, especially toddlers, who accidentally ate marijuana-laced treats rose sharply over five years as pot became legal in more places in the U.S., according to a study published Tuesday. More than 7,000 confirmed cases of kids younger than 6 eating marijuana edibles were reported to the...
Move on from covid? Child care disruptions continue
Forty-seven. That’s how many days of child care Kathryn Anne Edwards’ 3-year-old son has missed in the past year. RSV, covid-19 and two bouts of the dreaded preschool scourge of hand, foot and mouth disease struck one after another. The illnesses were so disruptive that the labor economist quit her...
$785M Mega Millions prize is 6th largest in U.S. history
DES MOINES, Iowa — An estimated $785 million Mega Millions jackpot set for Tuesday night will give lottery players a chance to start the new year with a lucrative bang. The big prize is the sixth-largest jackpot in U.S. history and has grown so large because no one has matched...
New York City machete attack: Man arrested on attempted murder chargesVideo
NEW YORK — A man accused of attacking police with a machete near New York’s Times Square on New Year’s Eve was arrested on charges of attempting to murder police officers, authorities said Monday as they continued to investigate whether he was motivated by Islamic extremism. Trevor Bickford, 19, also...
Transgender woman’s scheduled execution would be U.S. first
ST. LOUIS — Unless Missouri Gov. Mike Parson grants clemency, Amber McLaughlin, 49, will become the first openly transgender woman executed in the U.S. She is scheduled to die by injection Tuesday for killing a former girlfriend in 2003. McLaughlin’s attorney, Larry Komp, said there are no court appeals pending....
