U.S./World category, Page 534

LEXINGTON, N.C. — An airplane crashed into a tractor-trailer on Wednesday on a North Carolina highway, killing the pilot and sparking a small fire, the N.C. State Highway Patrol said. The Federal Aviation Administration said a twin-engine Beechcraft Barron crashed into the tractor-trailer on Interstate 85 South, near the Davidson...

PHOENIX — Arizona’s Republican-controlled Senate approved a massive expansion of the state’s school voucher system on Wednesday, a contentious proposal the sponsor says is aimed at low-income students but that also adds wealthier parents who could use public money to pay for private schools. The measure would make as many...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — School districts that ignored Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ order banning mask mandates will face a $200 million penalty under a budget bill passed Wednesday by the Florida House. The funding stripped from those districts would be spread among the state’s other districts. Republican Rep. Randy Fine angrily...

FRANKFORT, Ky. — The Kentucky Senate passed a bill Wednesday to bar older transgender girls from participating in school sports that match their gender identity. The 27-8 vote followed an emotional plea from a lawmaker who shared her own family story and warned that the bill is hurtful because “you’re...

MINNEAPOLIS — Minnesota prosecutors have apparently backed away from their pursuit of a longer-than-usual sentence for the suburban Minneapolis police officer who said she confused her handgun for her Taser when she killed Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black motorist. Kim Potter, 49, is scheduled to be sentenced Friday following her...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — It should have been a time of celebration: Brittan Heller would soon graduate from college and head to one of the nation’s top law programs. But when a classmate with unrequited feelings for Heller wasn’t admitted to that same school, he turned his rage on her. He...

BRUNSWICK, Ga. — Prosecution witnesses retook the stand Wednesday in the federal hate crimes trial of three white men convicted of murdering Ahmaud Arbery. The first witness was FBI intelligence analyst Amy Vaughan, who went through evidence from the defendants’ text messages and social media posts. On the first day...

WASHINGTON — The latest filing from special counsel John Durham in his investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe has been seized on by the conservative media and Donald Trump himself as vindication of the former president’s oft-repeated claims that he was “spied” on. One headline said Durham had...

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — The arrest of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández and the images that followed — a leader shackled and paraded before the cameras like a common criminal — were a stunning reversal for a man who for years seemed impervious to growing allegations of corruption. While president...

PETROPOLIS, Brazil — The death toll from devastating mudslides and floods that swept through a mountainous region of Rio de Janeiro state has reached 78, Gov. Claudio Castro said Wednesday afternoon. The city of Petropolis was slammed by a deluge Tuesday, and Castro said almost 400 people were left homeless....

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is ordering the release of Trump White House visitor logs to the House committee investigating the riot of Jan. 6, 2021, once more rejecting former President Donald Trump’s claims of executive privilege. The committee has sought a trove of data from the National Archives, including...

SAUGERTIES, N.Y. — A young girl reported missing in 2019 was found hidden under a staircase by officers searching a home in New York’s Hudson Valley, police said Tuesday. The child was found in good health Monday night in a Saugerties home about 130 miles east of Cayuga Heights, where...

MOSCOW — A new trial against Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny opened Tuesday at the penal colony where he faces another lengthy prison term, a further step in a yearlong, multi-pronged crackdown on Russia’s most ardent Kremlin critic, his allies and other dissenting voices. Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s longtime foe,...

NEW YORK — Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin lost her libel lawsuit against The New York Times on Tuesday when a jury rejected her claim that the newspaper maliciously damaged her reputation by erroneously linking her campaign rhetoric to a mass shooting. A judge had already declared that if the...

LOS ANGELES — The family of a cinematographer shot and killed on the set of the film “Rust” is suing Alec Baldwin and the movie’s producers for wrongful death, their attorneys said Tuesday. Lawyers for the family of Halyna Hutchins announced the lawsuit filed in New Mexico in the name...

MIAMI — A prominent Mexican scientist who led a double life with two families on separate continents pleaded guilty Tuesday to a charge of being co-opted by Russian agents into surveilling a U.S. government informant residing in Miami. Hector Cabrera Fuentes was arrested in 2020 at Miami International Airport as...

NEW YORK — Britain’s Prince Andrew has agreed to settle a lawsuit filed by Virginia Giuffre, who said she was sexually trafficked to the British royal by the financier Jeffrey Epstein when she was 17. The deal described in a court filing Tuesday in New York avoids a trial that...

TUCSON, Ariz. — A man has been arrested for allegedly stealing a fossilized dinosaur claw valued at $25,000 from a vendor in Tucson last month and then trying to resell it, according to authorities. The claw was stolen Jan. 30 from a vendor at the city’s annual Gem and Mineral...

MOREHEAD CITY, N.C. — A small plane carrying eight people crashed into the ocean off North Carolina’s Outer Banks and left behind multiple debris fields where crews searched for the missing passengers, the Coast Guard said. One body has so far been recovered and identified, Carteret County Sheriff Asa Buck...

A Maryland man who worked at Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory in West Mifflin pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges after prosecutors say he delivered restricted data on the design of U.S. nuclear warships to an undercover federal agent he believed was representing a foreign government. Jonathan Toebbe, 43, of Annapolis, used...