Associated Press stories, Page 1388

The New York Times Co. is buying sports news site The Athletic for $550 million, the latest move in its strategy to expand its audience of paying subscribers as the newspaper print ads business fades. The Times, unlike many local news outlets, has thrived in the past several years. It...

PHILADELPHIA — Investigators are looking into whether a 5-year-old who was playing with a lighter set a Christmas tree on fire, sparking a conflagration that killed 12 family members in a Philadelphia rowhome, officials revealed Thursday. That disclosure was included in a search warrant application as city and federal investigators...

Locked in a dispute over his covid-19 vaccination status, Novak Djokovic was confined to an immigration detention hotel in Australia on Thursday as the No. 1 men’s tennis player in the world awaited a court ruling on whether he can compete in the Australian Open later this month. Djokovic, a...

THE VILLAGES, Fla. — A fourth resident of a massive Florida retirement community has been arrested on a charge of voter fraud. Charles Barnes, 64, was arrested Tuesday and charged with voter fraud for casting more than one ballot, according to an arrest affidavit filed in court. The arrest affidavit...

Greg Robinson, who won two Super Bowl rings with the Denver Broncos while spending nearly four decades coaching in the NFL and college, has died. He was 70. Robinson’s wife, Laura, said he died Wednesday from a form of Alzheimer’s Disease. “A lot of special memories,” she said Thursday. “That’s...

NEW YORK — Five Americans died of rabies last year — the largest number in a decade — and health officials said Thursday that some of the people didn’t realize they had been infected or refused life-saving shots. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report on three...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice said Thursday he will ask the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for permission to offer a fourth dose of covid-19 vaccines to residents 50 and older as well as to essential workers. At a news conference, Justice pointed to Israel, which...

MOSCOW — Security forces killed dozens of protesters and 12 police died during extraordinarily violent demonstrations in Kazakhstan that saw government buildings stormed and set ablaze, authorities said Thursday. One police officer was found beheaded in escalating unrest that poses a growing challenge to authoritarian rule in the Central Asian...

Down to the last play of the regular season, this Alabama team managed to bounce off the ropes when it seemed most vulnerable. It is unlike some previous Nick Saban powerhouses that seemingly have been destined for the national title game — barring a shocker along the way — from...

WASHINGTON — It may not be the fight he sought, but taking on Donald Trump is President Joe Biden’s calling. Biden offered himself as a guardian of American democracy in a visceral speech Thursday discussing the horrors of the Jan. 6 insurrection that sought to overthrow his 2020 election victory....

TAMPA, Fla. — The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have officially severed ties with Antonio Brown, terminating the contract of the mercurial receiver who claimed he was fired in the middle of a game for not playing through an ankle injury. The Bucs announced the move Thursday, one day after Brown broke...

Peter Bogdanovich, the ascot-wearing cinephile and director of 1970s black-and-white classics like “The Last Picture Show” and “Paper Moon,” has died. He was 82. Bogdanovich died early Thursday morning at this home in Los Angeles, said his daughter, Antonia Bogdanovich. She said he died of natural causes Considered part of...

China has recommitted itself to completing its orbiting space station by the end of the year and says it is planning more than 40 launches for 2022, putting it roughly level with the United States. Launches would include those of two Shenzhou crewed missions, two Tianzhou cargo spacecraft and the...

Average long-term U.S. mortgage rates rose in the past week to start the new year. They reached their highest level since May 2020, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, yet remained historically low. Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac reported Thursday that the average rate on the benchmark 30-year home loan...

A team of scientists is sailing to “the place in the world that’s the hardest to get to” so they can better figure out how much and how fast seas will rise because of global warming eating away at Antarctica’s ice. Thirty-two scientists on Thursday are starting a more than...

Technology and health care companies helped pull stocks lower Thursday on Wall Street, driving the market indexes deeper into the red for the first week of the year. The S&P 500 slipped 0.1% after wobbling between gains and losses for much of the day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average also...

PHILADELPHIA — Investigators worked Thursday to determine the cause of a fire that tore through a Philadelphia rowhome, killing 12 people, including two sisters and several of their children. Specialists from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives took photos and then entered the charred, three-story brick duplex,...

EVANSTON, Ill. — Seth Lundy scored 23 points and his side-step fadeaway 3-pointer from the right side with 35 seconds left gave Penn State the lead for good as the Nittany Lions beat Northwestern, 74-70, on Wednesday night. Leading 68-65, Lundy broke free behind Northwestern’s press for a breakaway and-1...

MADISON, Wis. — Powerball tickets sold in Wisconsin and California were winners of the latest jackpot and will split $632 million, officials said. The Wisconsin Lottery didn’t immediately announce where the winning ticket in its state was sold. The winning ticket in California was sold at a 7-Eleven convenience store...

Afternoons with Grammy. Birthday parties. Meeting other toddlers at the park. Parents of children too young to be vaccinated are facing difficult choices as an omicron variant-fueled surge in covid-19 cases makes every encounter seem risky. For Maine business owner Erin Connolly, the most wrenching decision involves Madeleine, her 3-year-old...

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden accused Donald Trump and his supporters of holding a “dagger at the throat of democracy” in a forceful speech Thursday marking the anniversary of the deadly breach of the U.S. Capitol. He warned that though it didn’t succeed, the insurrection remains a serious threat to...

WASHINGTON — As a raging band of his supporters scaled walls, smashed windows, used flagpoles to beat police and breached the U.S. Capitol in a bid to overturn a free and fair election, Donald Trump’s excommunication from the Republican Party seemed a near certainty, his name tarnished beyond repair. Some...

1951 — The Indianapolis Olympians beat the Rochester Royals 75-73 in six overtimes, the longest game in NBA history. 1976 — Ted Turner, a millionaire communications executive and internationally known yachtsman, buys the Atlanta Braves for a reported $10-to-12 million. 1980 — The Los Angeles Rams, behind three field goals...

Antonio Brown says he was forced to play injured by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and that an MRI on Monday revealed damage to his ankle. While not specifying which ankle was hurt, Brown — through a statement released by his attorney Wednesday — said the MRI showed broken bone fragments,...

HARRISBURG — More than a dozen Republican candidates for governor appeared on stage together for the first time, in a question-and-answer session Wednesday sponsored by conservative groups and a statewide business association that inspired agreement and not debate. The questions — such as how would you to reverse brain drain...