Associated Press stories, Page 1418
NHL All-Stars sad to miss Olympics, but happy to be in Vegas
LAS VEGAS — Most of the world’s best hockey players are spending this weekend in opulent hotel suites in one of the planet’s top party towns instead of being confined to modest Olympic accommodations in freezing-cold Beijing. The NHL All-Stars still aren’t happy about missing their chance to compete for...
Column: Golf’s $800 million man says PGA Tour is greedyVideo
Phil Mickelson just ripped the PGA Tour for what he called “obnoxious greed.” Now that — pardon the expression — is rich. “I know I will be criticized,” Mickelson said earlier this week, soon after arriving in the golf-forsaken Saudi Arabian metropolis of King Abdullah Economic City — you cannot...
NASCAR bet more than $1 million to bring cars into ColiseumVideo
LOS ANGELES — NASCAR’s top stars have seen the Los Angeles Coliseum on television, and they know what it looks like as a football stadium. But as a racetrack? This they had to see right away, up close as soon as they arrived in Los Angeles. Much of the NASCAR...
Statehouses latest front in college athlete recruiting warsVideo
With millions of dollars pouring into endorsements for college athletes, the latest battleground in the recruiting wars is the statehouse: A handful of states are already considering changing barely dried rules to help their flagship schools land — or keep — top prospects. Over the past three years, at least...
Pitt’s Kenny Pickett auditions to be first QB drafted with strong Senior Bowl showingVideo
MOBILE, Ala. — The Senior Bowl quarterbacks are vying to be No. 1. In an NFL Draft where it seems unlikely for a passer to be the top overall pick, that means a competition among players like Pitt’s Kenny Pickett, North Carolina’s Sam Howell and Liberty’s Malik Willis to be...
Ravens still trying to reach new deal with Lamar JacksonVideo
OWINGS MILLS, Md. — The Ravens are working under quarterback Lamar Jackson’s timeline when it comes to a potential contract extension. Jackson’s contract status was at the forefront of a news conference held by Baltimore general manager Eric DeCosta. The 2019 NFL MVP is playing under a fifth-year option that...
Bengals rookie kicker Evan McPherson on record playoff runVideo
Joe Burrow knew Evan McPherson must be a special kicker if the Cincinnati Bengals were willing to spend a fifth-round pick on a position usually filled by undrafted players and journeymen. But the Bengals targeted McPherson and made him the only kicker taken in the 2021 draft, a decision that...
School lunch rules updated to help ease pandemic disruptions
Low-fat chocolate milk instead of only non-fat. Fewer whole-grain offerings. Less severe salt limits. The Biden administration issued transitional standards for school lunches Friday that are meant to ease the path for cafeterias to get back on a more healthful course as they recover from pandemic and supply chain disruptions....
Pentagon: Deadly Afghan airport attack was not preventable
The military investigation into the deadly attack during the Afghanistan evacuation has concluded that a suicide bomber, carrying 20 pounds of explosives packed with ball bearings, acted alone, and that the deaths of more than 170 Afghans and 13 U.S. service members were not preventable. The blast at Abbey Gate...
Kraken endure rocky path in 1st half of expansion seasonVideo
SEATTLE — If there was a single game that served as a snapshot of how the Seattle Kraken wanted their inaugural season to look, it came on the night of Jan. 23. The home arena was rocking during a 5-3 win over the Florida Panthers, at the time the best...
Locked out MLB players reject offer of federal mediation, further threatening to delay spring trainingVideo
NEW YORK — The start of spring training likely will be a casualty of MLB’s lockout, which will threaten Opening Day unless the drawn-out talks lead to a deal in less than a month. After months of bickering over the sport’s economics, baseball’s warring factions couldn’t even agree on whether...
Pence: Trump is ‘wrong’ to say election could be overturned
Former Vice President Mike Pence on Friday directly rebutted Donald Trump’s false claims that Pence somehow could have overturned the results of the 2020 election, saying that the former president was simply “wrong.” In a speech to the conservative Federalist Society in Florida, Pence addressed Trump’s intensifying efforts this week...
Yacht reportedly built for Jeff Bezos is too big for Dutch bridge
A giant, $500 million yacht reportedly being built for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos faces a delivery problem: It may require dismantling a beloved, historic bridge in Rotterdam that is blocking its passage to the sea. Reports this week that the Dutch city had already agreed to take apart the recently...
Michael Avenatti convicted of stealing from Stormy Daniels
NEW YORK — Michael Avenatti was convicted Friday of cheating porn actor Stormy Daniels out of nearly $300,000 she was supposed to get for writing a book about an alleged tryst with former President Donald Trump. Avenatti, who acted as his own lawyer, stared straight ahead as the guilty verdicts...
GOP censures Cheney, Kinzinger, moves to pull out of debates
Republican Party officials on Friday voted to punish GOP Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for their work on the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection and advanced a rule change that would prohibit candidates from participating in debates organized by the Commission on Presidential Debates. GOP officials took...
Lethal U.S. raid on IS encounters a doll, crib, bomb, bullets
When helicopters carrying some 50 U.S. commandos thumped onto the ground in Syria an hour after midnight, the raiders confronted a houseful of extremists and children. Baby comforts were inside — a stuffed bunny, a blue plastic swing, a crib. So was the paraphernalia of violence — such as the...
News Corp says it was hacked; believed to be linked to China
News Corp, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, said Friday that it had been hacked and had data stolen from journalists and other employees, and a cybersecurity firm investigating the intrusion said Chinese intelligence-gathering was believed behind the operation. The news company, whose publications and businesses include the New York...
Covid falling in 49 of 50 states as deaths near 900,000
With the brutal omicron wave rapidly loosening its grip, new cases of covid-19 in the U.S. are falling in 49 of 50 states, even as the nation’s death toll closes in on another bleak round number: 900,000. The number of lives lost to the pandemic in the U.S. stood at...
GOP’s Pennsylvania election inquiry: Courts, conspiracies and more costs
A Republican inquiry into Pennsylvania’s 2020 presidential election inspired by former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud has spawned several court cases as it expands into multiple courses of inquiry, grows in cost and shows signs it will drag well into 2022. The Republican pursuit has received a...
Val Arkoosh ends Senate campaign amid tough Democratic field
Val Arkoosh, a trained anesthesiologist who chairs the board of Pennsylvania’s third-most-populous county, on Friday ended her campaign for U.S. Senate, leaving a tough Democratic Party primary field. In a video message, Arkoosh stressed the importance of a Democrat winning the Senate seat being vacated by retiring two-term Republican Sen....
Congress questions independence of NFL’s Washington probe
An investigation into sexual harassment of women employed by Washington’s NFL franchise was not as independent as the team and the league claimed, members of Congress said Friday. The House Committee on Oversight and Reform released documents that showed the league and the team, now known as the Commanders, agreed...
UK’s Boris Johnson ends week of turmoil in weakened position
This was the week British Prime Minister Boris Johnson hoped to get a grip on his government after weeks of scandal. By Friday, he was struggling to hang on after a scathing report on lockdown-breaching parties and the departure of several top aides. Johnson was rocked Thursday by the resignation...
China’s pandemic Olympics begin, with lockdown and boycotts
BEIJING — China, which used its first Olympics to amplify its international aspirations, invited the world back Friday — sort of — for the pandemic era’s second Games, this time as an emboldened and more powerful nation whose government’s authoritarian turn provoked some countries’ leaders into staying home. Chinese president...
Ahmaud Arbery killer’s father retracts plea before hate crime trial
BRUNSWICK, Ga. — One of the three men convicted of murder in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery has taken back his guilty plea ahead of their federal hate crime trial. Greg McMichael reversed course late Thursday after the trial judge rejected the terms of an agreement federal prosecutors had reached...
Strained U.S. hospitals seek foreign nurses amid visa windfall
With American hospitals facing a dire shortage of nurses amid a slogging pandemic, many are looking abroad for health care workers. And it could be just in time. There’s an unusually high number of green cards available this year for foreign professionals, including nurses, who want to move to the...
