U.S./World category, Page 588
Ex-NYPD officer Thomas Webster gets 10 years in prison for Jan. 6 attack
WASHINGTON — A retired New York Police Department officer was sentenced on Thursday to 10 years in prison for attacking the U.S. Capitol and using a metal flagpole to assault one of the police officers trying to hold off a mob of Donald Trump supporters. Thomas Webster’s prison sentence is...
NYPD union may sue teen punched out by cop in caught-on-camera clashVideo
NEW YORK — An NYPD union may sue the 19-year-old woman who tried to interfere with her boyfriend’s arrest for attempted-murder in Harlem — and was slugged by a city cop as a result. The Detectives Endowment Association is exploring a possible civil suit against Tamani Crum for slapping and...
Putin pays tribute to Gorbachev but won’t attend his funeral
MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin privately laid flowers at Mikhail Gorbachev’s coffin on Thursday, snubbing the weekend’s public funeral in a move reflecting the Kremlin’s uneasiness about Gorbachev’s legacy. Just before departing for a working trip to Russia’s western-most Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad, Putin visited a Moscow hospital where...
Watering while Black: anatomy of a pastor’s Alabama arrest
CHILDERSBURG, Ala. — Michael Jennings wasn’t breaking any laws or doing anything that was obviously suspicious; the Black minister was simply watering the flowers of a neighbor who was out of town. Yet there was a problem: Around the corner, Amber Roberson, who is white, thought she was helping that...
Tech tool offers police ‘mass surveillance on a budget’
Local law enforcement agencies from suburban Southern California to rural North Carolina have been using an obscure cellphone tracking tool, at times without search warrants, that gives them the power to follow people’s movements months back in time, according to public records and internal emails obtained by The Associated Press....
U.S. advisers endorse updated covid shots for fall boosters
U.S. health advisers on Thursday endorsed new covid-19 boosters that target today’s most common omicron strains, saying if enough people roll up their sleeves, the updated shots could blunt a winter surge. The tweaked shots made by Pfizer and rival Moderna promise Americans a chance at their most up-to-date protection...
Twitter readies edit feature for premium users
Permanently misspelled tweets might soon be a thing of the past. Twitter said Thursday it will roll out an editing feature to subscribers of its premium Twitter Blue service later this month. In an update on its plans to introduce an edit button, the social media company said it has...
Poland demands $1.3 trillion war reparations from Germany
WARSAW, Poland — Poland’s top politician said Thursday that the government will seek equivalent of some $1.3 trillion in reparations from Germany for the Nazis’ World War II invasion and occupation of his country. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of the Law and Justice party, announced the huge claim at the release...
Trump documents: No immediate ruling on outside legal expertVideo
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — A federal judge heard arguments Thursday on whether to appoint an outside legal expert to review government records seized by the FBI last month in a search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida home. There was no immediate ruling, but the judge had indicated last...
California governor declares heat wave state of emergencyVideo
LOS ANGELES — California’s governor declared a state of emergency Wednesday to increase power production and he urged residents to reduce electricity use as a heat wave spread over the West and officials warned there could possible outages if conditions worsen. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s declaration followed a “Flex Alert” by...
Trump legal team says storage of government documents is no ‘cause for alarm’
WASHINGTON — The storage of sensitive government documents at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida “should have never been cause for alarm,” his lawyers argued in a court filing Wednesday. “The purported justification for the initiation of this criminal probe was the alleged discovery of sensitive information contained...
Columbus chief: Man fatally shot by police may have held vape pen
COLUMBUS, Ohio — A man fatally shot by police in Ohio’s capital city appeared to be holding a vape pen in his hand, the city police chief said as an investigation was underway into the shooting. Donovan Lewis, 20, died at a hospital as a result of the shooting early...
Trump lawyer John Eastman advised to plead the Fifth in Georgia probeVideo
ATLANTA — Lawyers for John Eastman, a lead architect of some of Donald Trump’s efforts to remain in power after the 2020 election, said Wednesday they advised their client to assert attorney-client privilege and invoke his constitutional right to remain silent when testifying before a special grand jury investigating possible...
Jackson water crisis forces residents to find alternativesVideo
JACKSON, Miss. — The water pressure at James Brown’s home in Jackson was so low the faucets barely dripped. He couldn’t cook. He couldn’t bathe. But he still had to work. The 73-year-old tree-cutter hauled bags of ice into his truck at a gas station on his way to a...
Reported sexual assaults across U.S. military increase by 13%
WASHINGTON — Reports of sexual assaults across the U.S. military jumped by 13% last year, driven by significant increases in the Army and the Navy as bases began to move out of pandemic restrictions and public venues reopened, The Associated Press has learned. Mirroring the increase in those reports is...
Justice Department is likely to wait past midterms to reveal any charges against Trump, sources sayVideo
WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors are likely to wait until after the November election to announce any charges against Donald Trump, if they determine he broke laws, according to people familiar. The unprecedented prospect of bringing charges against a former U.S. president is creating intense scrutiny of the Justice Department in...
Ex-Ohio schools chief charged with kidnapping 2 kids in West Virginia
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — A former Ohio schools superintendent has been charged in West Virginia with luring two children into his vehicle with money, police said. William J. Morrison III, 59, of Huntington, was charged with two felony counts of kidnapping after his arrest last week, Huntington police said in a...
Judge nixes no-prison deal in 2018 limo crash that killed 20
SCHOHARIE, N.Y. — A judge rejected a plea agreement that would have meant no prison time for the operator of a limousine company involved in a crash that killed 20 people in upstate New York. Wednesday’s turnabout drew applause and tears from victims’ relatives and plunged limo company boss Nauman...
Box of reptiles mailed to the wrong address in New York
PORT CHESTER, N.Y. — Several live lizards were wrongly delivered to a residence in a village north of New York City. “Needless to say the addressee was quite startled when they opened the box,” Port Chester police wrote on Facebook. Police received the call about the reptiles just after noon...
Kremlin offers mixed view of Gorbachev’s historic role
MOSCOW — The Kremlin treaded carefully Wednesday while reacting to Mikhail Gorbachev’s death, praising his prominent role in reshaping 20th-century history, but noting his “romantic” view of the West. The Kremlin’s ambivalence was reflected in the uncertainty about funeral arrangements. An iconic central venue chosen for Saturday’s farewell ceremony has...
EU to tighten travel rules for Russians, but no visa ban
PRAGUE — European Union countries agreed Wednesday to make it harder for Russian citizens to enter the 27-nation bloc, but they failed to find a consensus on imposing an outright tourist ban in response to Russia’s war on Ukraine. At talks in the Czech Republic, EU foreign ministers were desperate...
Updated covid boosters OK’d; shots could begin in days
WASHINGTON — The U.S. on Wednesday authorized its first update to covid-19 vaccines, booster doses that target today’s most common omicron strain. Shots could begin within days. The move by the Food and Drug Administration tweaks the recipe of shots made by Pfizer and rival Moderna that already have saved...
UN weather agency predicts rare ‘triple-dip’ La Nina in 2022
GENEVA — The U.N. weather agency is predicting that the phenomenon known as La Nina is poised to last through the end of this year, a mysterious “triple dip” — the first this century — caused by three straight years of its effect on climate patterns like drought and flooding...
High-stakes year begins for kids still learning to read
ATLANTA — Five of the 19 students in teacher Chelsea Grant’s third grade classroom are reading below grade level. When it’s time to read aloud on a recent Friday, the students show vastly different levels of skill and confidence. “Remember you read with expression, feeling and fluency,” Grant told her...
U.S. life expectancy plunged again in 2021, down nearly a year
NEW YORK — U.S. life expectancy dropped for the second consecutive year in 2021, falling by nearly a year from 2020, according to a government report being released Wednesday. In the first two years of the covid-19 pandemic, the estimated American lifespan has shortened by nearly three years. The last...
