Month: February 2024

By MICHELLE L. PRICE Associated Press NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law and handpicked choice to help lead the Republican National Committee said she thinks Republican voters would support having the political organization pay the former president’s ballooning legal fees. Lara Trump said Wednesday while campaigning for her father-in-law’s ahead of the South

By SEUNG MIN KIM and COLLEEN LONG Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House is considering using provisions of federal immigration law repeatedly tapped by former President Donald Trump to unilaterally enact a sweeping crackdown at the southern border. That’s according to three people familiar with the deliberations. The people spoke to The Associated

By RIO YAMAT Associated Press Russia’s main domestic intelligence agency has arrested a woman with dual U.S. and Russian citizenship on charges of treason. The Federal Security Service says the 33-year-old from Los Angeles is accused of collecting money for the Ukrainian military. The woman’s longtime employer in California identified her as Ksenia Khavana while

MIAMI (AP) — South Florida rapper Kodak Black has been freed from jail after a federal judge sentenced him to time served for a probation violation, though a drug trafficking case from 2022 remains ongoing. The Miami federal judge handed down the sentence Wednesday, nearly two weeks after a drug possession charge was dismissed in

By MICHAEL GOLDBERG Associated Press/Report for America JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — After years of refusing to expand Medicaid, some of Mississippi’s Republican leaders now say they are open to the policy. But only if they can require new enrollees to have a job. That approach could hinge on presidential politics and an ongoing legal battle

By GENE JOHNSON Associated Press SEATTLE (AP) — Prosecutors in Washington state said Wednesday they will not file felony charges against a Seattle police officer who struck and killed a graduate student from India while responding to an overdose call — a case that attracted widespread attention after another officer was recorded making callous remarks

DETROIT (AP) — Toyota is recalling about 280,000 pickup trucks and SUVs in the U.S. The recall is to fix a transmission problem that can let the vehicles creep forward while in neutral. It covers certain Toyota Tundra pickups and Lexus LX 600 SUVs from the 2022 through 2024 model years. Also included are 2023

By KEVIN McGILL Associated Press NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal judge says the New Orleans Police Department’s progress in complying with an 11-year-old reform agreement has “accelerated dramatically.” But at a Wednesday hearing, U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan gave no indication when she would feel comfortable relaxing court oversight of the department. The city

CHICAGO (AP) — United Airlines says it plans to resume flights to Israel next month, reviving a route that was suspended in October at the start of the Israel-Hamas war. The airline said Wednesday that it will start flights from Newark, New Jersey, to Tel Aviv with a stop in Munich on March 2 and

By SCOTT BAUER and TODD RICHMOND Associated Press MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The school district in Green Bay, Wisconsin, has released the recording of its first Black superintendent’s appearance on an Atlanta radio show in which he made blunt comments about race relations, criticized the community and derided one of the district’s principals. The tape

By BRUCE SCHREINER Associated Press FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — The Kentucky Senate has endorsed a proposed constitutional change to limit a governor’s end-of-term pardon powers. The action reflects outrage still burning over pardons granted by then-Gov. Matt Bevin on his way out of office more than four years ago. The measure seeks to amend the

By COLLEEN SLEVIN Associated Press DENVER (AP) — An American founder of a Haitian orphanage who is accused of sexually abusing four boys there more than a decade ago has been ordered to be sent from Colorado to Florida to face prosecution. Michael Geilenfeld, 71, was arrested in Colorado on Jan. 20 after being indicted

By STEVE KARNOWSKI Associated Press ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — A federal judge on Wednesday affirmed a $5 million arbitration award against MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell in favor of a software engineer who challenged data that Lindell said proves China interfered in the 2020 U.S. presidential election and tipped the outcome to Joe Biden.

By DARLENE SUPERVILLE Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Jimmy Carter has another distinction to his name. The 99-year-old is the first of the U.S. presidents to be honored with an official White House Christmas ornament while still living. The ornament was unveiled Wednesday and is the latest in an annual series that the

NEW YORK (AP) — Federal prosecutors say a leader of a Japan-based crime syndicate conspired to traffic uranium and plutonium from Myanmar in the belief that Iran would use it for nuclear weapons. Prosecutors said Wednesday that Takeshi Ebisawa and his confederates showed samples of nuclear materials transported from Myanmar to Thailand to a Drug

By MATTHEW BROWN Associated Press BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday struck down a moratorium on coal leasing from federal lands in a move that could open the door to future coal sales from vast, publicly owned reserves of the fuel that’s a major source of climate-changing greenhouse gases. The ruling

By ANITA SNOW Associated Press PHOENIX (AP) — The Republican prosecutor of Arizona’s most populous county took a thinly veiled swipe at a Democratic counterpart in the East on Wednesday, saying she would not agree to extradition of a suspect in the death of a woman who was fatally bludgeoned in a New York City

By MARCIA DUNN AP Aerospace Writer CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — An old Earth-observing satellite has fallen out of orbit and harmlessly burned up. The European Space Agency says its satellite broke apart over the Pacific on Wednesday, halfway between Hawaii and Alaska. No damage or injuries were reported. Launched in 1995, the spacecraft was

By LAURAN NEERGAARD AP Medical Writer WASHINGTON (AP) — A study of older adults in China offers a closer look at the dominolike sequence of brain changes that lead to Alzheimer’s. Scientists don’t know exactly how Alzheimer’s forms but it quietly ravages the brain long before symptoms appear. Compared with people who remained healthy, researchers

By JAMIE STENGLE Associated Press Audrii Cunningham, the 11-year-old Texas girl whose body was found in a river this week, died from homicidal violence that included blunt head trauma, a medical examiner’s office said Thursday. Don Steven McDougal, 42, a family friend who authorities say was supposed to be taking Audrii to the school bus

HONOLULU (AP) — Hawaii state and county officials are requesting about $1 billion from the Legislature to help cover Maui wildfire recovery expenses in the near term. The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reports that the state had budgeted $199 million for such expenses but now expects it may need $561 million under a “worst-case” scenario. The budget

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Former NFL running back Marshawn Lynch has resolved a Las Vegas drunken driving case without a trial or DUI conviction. A city judge accepted an agreement Wednesday requiring the 37-year-old to attend DUI traffic school, pay a $1,140 fine, complete 200 hours of community service and remain out of trouble for

By JESSE BEDAYN Associated Press/Report for America DENVER (AP) — On the heels of two egregious cases of funeral home owners mishandling bodies and cremated remains, Colorado lawmakers aimed Wednesday at trying to shore up the state’s lax regulations that failed to prevent the horrific incidents. A bipartisan House committee unanimously voted in a hearing

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — The transcripts of a 2006 grand jury that investigated Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual assaults of underage girls would be released to the public under a bill heading to Florida’s governor after it was unanimously passed by the Legislature. The bill passed the Senate on Wednesday after earlier passing the House. It would

By LEAH WILLINGHAM Associated Press CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — West Virginia’s Republican-controlled House of Delegates has voted to allow teachers and other school staff who undergo training to carry guns in K-12 public schools. Republican Del. Dave Foggin of Wood County, a physics teacher, said during Wednesday’s debate on the bill that he can’t think