Associated Press stories, Page 1163

NEW YORK — The chill in the housing market is rippling out to the carpenters, landscapers and other small businesses that lose out when fewer homeowners are renovating their properties. Inflation was already causing some homeowners to delay big renovation projects as prices for building materials, fixtures and appliances jumped....

HARTFORD, Conn. — Two decades after her release from prison, Teresa Beatty feels she is still being punished. When her mother died two years ago, the state of Connecticut put a lien on the Stamford home she and her siblings inherited. It said she owed $83,762 to cover the cost...

Neal Brown took himself out of the equation after West Virginia’s offense struggled last season. The fourth-year coach handed play-calling duties in January to newly hired offensive coordinator Graham Harrell, who was prolific in the same role at Southern Cal and North Texas and as a quarterback under Mike Leach...

TOKYO — The brazen assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe with a handmade gun shocked a nation unused to high-profile political violence. But there has been another surprise in the weeks since the murder as details have emerged about an alleged assassin who was well-off until his mother’s...

PHOENIX — An Arizona constable who got the job earlier this year when her predecessor quit over frustration about serving eviction notices was shot and killed while carrying out that same duty. Two other people died in the shooting, along with the gunman, authorities said. The shooting happened just after...

VENICE, Italy — Chinese dissident and artist Ai Weiwei warns against hubris with his first glass sculpture, made on the Venetian island of Murano. The artwork’s title is intended as a warning to the world: “Memento Mori” — or Latin for “Remember You Must Die.” Ai did not have to...

A school district in southwest Missouri has decided to bring back spanking as a form of discipline for students, but only if their parents agree. The decision by the Cassville School District to resume the practice it dropped in 2001 comes as many public health experts contend corporal punishment is...

Top Colorado Democrats on Friday asked President Joe Biden to declare a new national monument in the heart of their state’s Rocky Mountains. In a letter to Biden, the state’s two Democratic senators, Democratic governor and Democratic congressman who represents the area asked for Biden to create a Camp Hale...

The Biden administration said Friday there’s sufficient supplies of monkeypox vaccine available now but the shots aren’t getting to some of the people who need them most. About 10% of monkeypox vaccine doses have been given to Black people, even though they account for one-third of U.S. cases, according to...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has begun scattering millions of packets of oral rabies vaccine from helicopters and planes over 13 states from Maine to Alabama. The major aim is to keep raccoons from spreading their strain of the deadly virus to states where it hasn’t been found or isn’t...

BEIRUT — A Lebanese submarine has found the remains of at least 10 migrants who drowned when their boat sank earlier this year off the coast of Lebanon with about 30 people on board, the navy announced Friday. The boat, carrying dozens of Lebanese, Syrians and Palestinians trying to migrate...

FURNAS COUNTY, Neb. — Authorities in Nebraska are trying to determine who released 16 million gallons of water by opening a dam on an irrigation channel one night this month — and why. The puzzling water release from the Cambridge Canal reduced the flow to some 18,000 acres of crops...

MANILA, Philippines — A Philippine ferry carrying 82 passengers and crew caught fire as it was approaching a port south of Manila on Friday, and at least 73 of those aboard have been rescued, including many who jumped into the water, the coast guard and survivors said. Search and rescue...

Covid-19 vaccine maker Moderna is suing Pfizer and the German drugmaker BioNTech, accusing its main competitors of copying Moderna’s technology in order to make their own vaccine. Moderna said Friday that Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine Comirnaty infringes on patents Moderna filed several years ago protecting the technology behind its preventive...

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Secret Service said Friday that it has recovered $286 million in fraudulently obtained pandemic loans and is returning the money to the Small Business Administration. The Secret Service said an investigation initiated by its Orlando office found that alleged conspirators submitted Economic Injury Disaster Loan applications...

WASHINGTON — Fourteen of the 15 boxes recovered from former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate early this year contained classified documents, many of them top secret, mixed in with miscellaneous newspapers, magazines and personal correspondence, according to an FBI affidavit released Friday. No space at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate was authorized...

WASHINGTON — Inflation eased last month as energy prices tumbled, raising hopes that the surging costs of everything from gasoline to food may have peaked. According to a Commerce Department report Friday that is closely watched by the Federal Reserve, consumer prices rose 6.3% in July from a year earlier...

KYIV, Ukraine — A team from the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency is expected to visit the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine soon but more shelling was reported in the area overnight. The visit comes after the plant was temporarily knocked offline, fueling fears of a catastrophe in a...

ANKARA, Turkey — Turkish pop star Gulsen has been arrested on charges of “inciting hatred and enmity” with a joke she made about Turkey’s religious schools, the country’s state-run news agency reported. The 46-year-old singer and songwriter, whose full name is Gulsen Colakoglu, was taken away from her home in...

NUTTER FORT, W.Va. — A man being sought by U.S. Marshals and other law enforcement agencies was fatally shot at a northern West Virginia funeral service for his father Wednesday after he pulled a gun on officers attempting to apprehend him, authorities said. The shooting occurred in the Harrison community...

ATLANTA — The prosecutor investigating whether Donald Trump and others illegally tried to influence the 2020 election in Georgia is seeking to compel testimony from more allies of the former president, including former chief of staff Mark Meadows and lawyer Sidney Powell. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis filed petitions...

WASHINGTON — The U.S. economy shrank at a 0.6% annual rate from April through June, the government said Thursday in an upgrade from its initial estimate. It marked a second straight quarter of economic contraction, which meets one informal sign of a recession. Most economists, though, have said they doubt...