Month: January 2024

BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) — Ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s has reached its first contract agreement with workers at a retail shop in the Vermont city where the company was founded after the employees petitioned to unionize last year. About 40 workers at the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream shop in Burlington announced last April

By SOPHIA TAREEN and KATHLEEN FOODY Associated Press CHICAGO (AP) — A Texas transportation company is taking the nation’s third largest city to federal court, ratcheting up a legal battle over the migrant crisis that’s left U.S. cities struggling for more than a year. The lawsuit against Chicago comes amid a larger political battle involving

By STEVE LeBLANC Associated Press BOSTON (AP) — Police arrested an American Airlines flight attendant on Thursday on suspicion of trying to secretly record a 14-year-old female passenger using a bathroom aboard an airplane he was working on last September. Police also allege Estes Carter Thompson III, 37, of Charlotte, North Carolina, had recordings of

By ALEX VEIGA AP Business Writer LOS ANGELES (AP) — The average long-term U.S. mortgage rate fell this week to its lowest level since May, welcome news for prospective homebuyers facing rising home prices and intense competition for relatively few properties on the market. The average rate on a 30-year mortgage dropped to 6.6% from

By ADAM BEAM Associated Press SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A California judge has ruled that the state does not have permission to borrow billions of dollars for a water project. The decision by Sacramento Superior Court Judge Kenneth C. Mennemeier could threaten a key source of funding for a plan to build a tunnel to

By AARON BEARD AP Basketball Writer The arrival of the 3-point shot created more volatility at the top for The Associated Press men’s college basketball poll. The shot became an official part of the game for the 1986-87 season. It’s led to more upsets as even the best teams became vulnerable to hot-shooting upstarts. As

VALLEJO, Calif. (AP) — The ordeal of a Northern California woman whose kidnapping from her boyfriend’s home was first dismissed as a hoax by law enforcement is getting renewed attention as the subject of a new Netflix docuseries. “American Nightmare” details the March 23, 2015, abduction of Denise Huskins by a masked intruder who broke

By MATTHEW BARAKAT Associated Press LEESBURG, Va. (AP) — A judge has postponed the sentencing of a former Virginia school system superintendent, saying he needed more time to consider setting aside the guilty verdict altogether. Former Loudoun County Superintendent Scott Ziegler was convicted in September on a misdemeanor count of violating the state’s conflict of

By FARNOUSH AMIRI Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Hunter Biden has agreed to appear before House Republicans for a private deposition next month, ending months of defiance from the president’s son, who had insisted on testifying publicly. The House Oversight Committee announced Thursday that the two parties have agreed for Hunter Biden to sit for

By PHILIP MARCELO Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — The remains of a Long Island man killed at the World Trade Center on 9/11 have been identified more than two decades later. New York City’s medical examiner announced Thursday that John Ballantine Niven is the 1,650th victim whose remains have been identified from the deadliest

By R.J. RICO Associated Press ATLANTA (AP) — Officials say the longstanding and at times violent protests against Atlanta’s planned police and firefighter training center are partially responsible for a nearly $20 million rise in costs connected with the project. Atlanta Deputy Chief Operating Officer has told City Council members on Wednesday that the 85-acre

By JIM VERTUNO Associated Press AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sought to end a whistleblower lawsuit by former top staff members on Thursday, announcing his agency would not contest the facts of the case and would accept any judgement. The lawsuit was brought by a group of former top deputies. They

By MARCIA DUNN AP Aerospace Writer CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — SpaceX has launched Turkey’s first astronaut along with a Swede and Italian to the International Space Station. It’s the third private flight to the space station arranged by a Houston company. The Falcon rocket blasted off from Florida on Thursday, carrying the three aviators

By JONATHAN MATTISE, ADRIAN SAINZ and KRISTIN M. HALL Associated Press NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A new layer of ice formed over parts of Tennessee on Thursday after a deadly storm blanketed the state in snow and sent temperatures plummeting earlier this week — part of a broader bout of bitter cold sweeping the country

By JEFF AMY Associated Press ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is telling world business leaders that the state must increase its supply of electricity produced without burning fossil fuels to meet industries’ demand for clean energy. The Republican spoke Thursday on a panel focused on electric vehicles at the World Economic Forum in

ELLSWORTH, Maine (AP) — A wealthy attorney who twice ran for governor in Maine is out of jail after completing his sentence for possessing thousands of images of child sexual abuse. Eliot Cutler was sentenced to nine months under a plea agreement and was released Thursday about a month-and-a-half early for good behavior. The criminal

UVALDE, Texas (AP) — A scathing Justice Department report Thursday into law enforcement failures during the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas, included a minute-by-minute accounting of missteps by police at the scene. Heavily armed officers did not kill the 18-year-old gunman until about 77 minutes after the first officers arrived at the school.

By The Associated Press Surgeons externally attached a pig liver to a brain-dead human body and watched it successfully filter blood, a step toward eventually trying the technique in patients with liver failure. The University of Pennsylvania announced the novel experiment Thursday, a different spin on animal-to-human organ transplants. In this case, the pig liver

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico and Chile have asked the International Criminal Court to investigate possible crimes against civilians in Gaza and the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel. Mexico’s Foreign Relations Department said in a statement that it filed the request “because of a growing concern about the recent escalation in violence, especially against

By MARGERY A. BECK Associated Press LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen covered everything from the state’s response to recent winter storms to his support for a bill to limit transgender students’ access to bathrooms in his state of the state address. But it was the Republican’s plan to slash local government property

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — A New Hampshire man who pleaded guilty to making a threatening phone call to a member of Congress has been sentenced in federal court to three years of probation. Twenty-four-year-old Allan Poller was a Keene State College student when he was accused of calling the office of a U.S. House member

By JAMEY KEATEN Associated Press DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) — The International Committee of the Red Cross has been losing influence, funding and staff. Now, disparaging remarks from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are the latest headache for the Geneva-based humanitarian aid group. It did arrange the release of 109 Israeli hostages last fall. Netanyahu has

By MELANIE LIDMAN Associated Press TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Hundreds of people gathered in Tel Aviv to mark the first birthday of Kfir Bibas, the youngest Israeli hostage held in Gaza. Relatives called the occasion on Thursday the “saddest birthday in the world.” Israeli children’s music stars performed a song written in his honor,

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A former professional basketball player whose ex-girlfriend was sentenced to prison last year for fraud is now facing his own federal indictment, accusing him of falsifying applications for pandemic relief loans. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that the indictment of 40-year-old Lorenzo Gordon comes three months after his former girlfriend, Brittish

By KEVIN FREKING Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — A bill to create a bipartisan commission that would tackle the nation’s soaring debt and make policy recommendations to Congress has won approval from a House committee. House Republicans are making the bill a priority. The chairman of the House Budget Committee says “everything’s on the table”