Associated Press stories, Page 1419
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...
House to vote on bill to boost U.S. computer chip production
House Democrats are poised to approve legislation Friday that they say positions the United States to better compete with China economically and on the global stage by strengthening the domestic semiconductor industry, shoring up strained supply chains and bolstering international alliances. Criticizing China has become a bipartisan playbook in Washington,...
U.S. employers shrug off omicron, add 467,000 jobs in January
U.S. employers added a burst of 467,000 jobs in January despite a wave of omicron infections that sickened millions of workers, kept many consumers at home and left businesses from restaurants to manufacturers short-staffed. The government’s report Friday also drastically revised up its estimate of job gains for November and...
Rams’ Matthew Stafford hopes to follow in Clayton Kershaw’s footsteps
LOS ANGELES — Matthew Stafford got a call this week from a childhood friend who knows a little something about waiting a long time to win his first championship. Clayton Kershaw is hoping to be at SoFi Stadium next Sunday when Stafford leads the Los Angeles Rams (15-5) in search...
Jaguars name Doug Pederson as next coach
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The Jacksonville Jaguars hired Doug Pederson as their head coach Thursday night, ending a wild and winding search that ended up where it started more than a month ago. Pederson, who led the Philadelphia Eagles to their lone Super Bowl title, was Jacksonville’s first candidate interviewed when...
Indiana teen sentenced to 100 years for killing 2 siblings
VERSAILLES, Ind. — A southeastern Indiana teenager has been sentenced to 100 years in prison for the suffocation deaths of his two young siblings months apart in 2017, when he was 13 years old. A Ripley County judge ordered the sentence Tuesday for Nickalas Kedrowitz. Jurors convicted him in August...
Browns owner: Hue Jackson ‘never accepted’ blame for losing
CLEVELAND — Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam denied paying former coach Hue Jackson for losing games and said his one-time employee is only good at “pointing fingers” and needs to accept some blame for his dreadful NFL record. Earlier this week, Jackson intimated in a series of posts on Twitter...
GOP now looks to censure Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, not oust them
SALT LAKE CITY — Republican officials meeting in Utah advanced a watered-down resolution Thursday that would formally censure GOP Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for their perceived disloyalty to former President Donald Trump but not seek to expel them from the party. The resolution’s passage through a subcommittee followed...
Gorgeous day at Pebble and Tom Hoge has a scorecard to matchVideo
PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — Tom Hoge enjoys being at Pebble Beach even in a frigid wind and relentless rain. He loved it even more Thursday in brilliant sunshine, especially with nine birdies on his card. Hoge began his day along the Pacific Ocean with a 30-foot birdie putt on No....
Gov. Wolf vetoes bill to prevent municipal firearms restrictions
HARRISBURG — A bill to help gun owners and gun-rights groups seek civil damages from governmental bodies that pass firearms restrictions was vetoed on Thursday by Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf. The legislation would have given a pathway to the courts for people adversely impacted by ordinances, rules or other actions...
Team event up 1st as Olympic figure skating beginsVideo
BEIJING — The team competition in Olympic figure skating always has been a three-team scramble for the podium. There’s the Russians, who won gold at the event’s 2014 debut in Sochi and silver in Pyeongchang. There’s the Canadians, who took silver before winning gold four years later. And there’s the...
Medicare opens up access to free at-home covid-19 tests
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration, seeking to fill a frustrating gap in coverage for covid-19 tests, Thursday announced that people with Medicare will be able to get free over-the-counter tests much more easily in the coming weeks. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said Medicare will cover up to...
Olympic spotlight back on China for a covid-tinged GamesVideo
BEIJING — Long before the global pandemic upended sports and the world in general, the 2022 Winter Olympics faced unsettling problems. It started with the fact that hardly anybody wanted to host them. Beijing ended up solving that problem, but only after four European cities thought about it and dropped...
Elway defends himself, says Flores interview was no shamVideo
ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — John Elway is refuting Brian Flores’ claim in a lawsuit that his interview with the Denver Broncos in 2019 was a sham and conducted only to satisfy the NFL’s Rooney Rule. “While I was not planning to respond publicly to the false and defamatory claims by Brian...
Storm expected to glaze Pennsylvania, New England in iceVideo
A major winter storm that already cut electric power to about 350,000 homes and businesses from Texas to the Ohio Valley was set to leave Pennsylvania and New England glazed in ice and smothered in snow Friday, forecasters said. The storm disrupted flights at major hubs in the U.S. on...
Report: Mickelson accuses PGA Tour of ‘obnoxious greed’Video
KING ABDULLAH ECONOMIC CITY, Saudi Arabia — Phil Mickelson claims the “obnoxious greed” of the PGA Tour and its ownership of media rights are why players are tempted by the prospects of rival tours, such as one backed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, Golf Digest reported. Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau...
Hall of Fame coach Bill Fitch dies, led Celtics to ’81 titleVideo
CLEVELAND — Bill Fitch, who guided the Boston Celtics to one of their championships during a Hall of Fame coaching career spanning three decades, has died. He was 89. A two-time NBA Coach of the Year, Fitch died Wednesday in Lake Conroe, Texas. Fitch’s daughter, Marcy Ann Coville, told Indiana...
Ex-Chicago officer who killed Laquan McDonald leaves prison earlyVideo
CHICAGO — Former Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke left prison on Thursday after serving less than half of his nearly seven-year sentence for killing Black teenager Laquan McDonald — an early release that was widely viewed as a setback in the city’s efforts to improve relations between its police...
U.S. says new intel shows Russia plotting false flag attack
WASHINGTON — The U.S. has obtained intelligence indicating that the Russian government developed a plan to stage a false attack that would depict the Ukrainian military or its intelligence forces assaulting Russian territory to help establish a pretext for military action against Ukraine, a senior Biden administration official said Thursday....
A plunge in Facebook’s parent company weighs on tech stocksVideo
A historic plunge in the stock price of Facebook’s parent company helped yank other tech stocks lower on Wall Street Thursday, abruptly ending a four-day winning streak for the market. The 26.4% wipeout in Meta Platforms, as Facebook’s owner is now known, erased more than $230 billion in market value,...
Dolly Parton to host Academy of Country Music Awards
Country music icon Dolly Parton will be hosting this year’s Academy of Country Music Awards in Las Vegas, bringing her star power to the show’s new streaming home on Prime Video. Parton, along with soon to be announced co-hosts, will emcee the new format for the awards show, which will...
Tesla recalls over 800K vehicles for seat belt chime problem
DETROIT — Tesla is recalling more than 817,000 vehicles in the U.S. because the seat belt reminder chimes may not sound when the vehicles are started and the driver hasn’t buckled up. The recall covers the 2021 and 2022 Model S sedan and Model X SUV, as well as the...
Oil vessel explodes off Nigeria’s coast; casualties feared
ABUJA, Nigeria — An oil production vessel has exploded off the coast of Nigeria, an official of the Shebah Exploration and Production Company Limited said Thursday, amid fears of the deaths of crew members. Ten crew were on board when the explosion occurred on Wednesday in Nigeria’s southwest Delta state,...
Bank of England hikes interest rates again as prices surge
LONDON — The Bank of England raised interest rates for the second time in three months on Thursday, putting the United Kingdom far ahead of the rest of Europe and the U.S. in moving to tame surging inflation that is squeezing consumers and businesses. The bank’s monetary policy committee voted...
