Associated Press stories, Page 1692

POWELL, Ohio — Authorities were investigating Friday after a cheetah attacked a worker at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium. The incident happened Thursday when two animal program staff members were walking the harnassed 4-year-old cheetah, Isabelle, when a worker from the Heart of Africa region approached, the zoo said. “At...

Gunmen have attacked a school in northwestern Nigeria and kidnapped 39 students just weeks after a similar mass abduction in the region, authorities said Friday. The latest kidnapping took place late Thursday night at the Federal College of Forestry Mechanization, Afaka, in the Igabi local government area of Kaduna state,...

INDIANAPOLIS — Aleem Ford scored 17 points and No. 6 seed Wisconsin made a stop on the last play to escape with a 75-74 win over No. 11 seed Penn State in the second round of the Big Ten Tournament on Thursday night. The Badgers (17-11) led by 18 in...

WASHINGTON — One year after the nation was brought to a near-standstill by the coronavirus, President Joe Biden pledged in his first prime-time address Thursday night to make all adults eligible for vaccines by May 1 and raised the prospect of “independence from this virus” by the Fourth of July....

NEW YORK — Tucker Carlson’s belittling of a reporter for The New York Times this week for publicly discussing how she had been harassed reveals both a toxic online culture and bad blood between the newspaper and Fox News Channel and its most popular personality. The targeting of reporter Taylor...

RALEIGH, N.C. — A former Army physician serving life prison sentences for the brutal murders of his wife and two young daughters more than 50 years ago should be released because of his deteriorating health, his attorneys told a judge on Thursday. Jeffrey MacDonald was convicted in 1979 in the...

CASPER, Wyo. — President Joe Biden’s bid to tackle climate change is running straight through the heart of the U.S. oil and gas industry — a much bigger, more influential foe than Democrats faced when they took on the coal industry during the Obama years. Coal dominated U.S. power generation...

PORTLAND, Ore. — Luis Palau, an evangelical pastor who was born in Argentina and went on to work with Billy Graham before establishing his own powerhouse international ministry, died Thursday. He was 86. The Luis Palau Association said he died at his home in Portland, Oregon. He had announced in...

Pennsylvania’s Public Utility Commission on Thursday approved the lifting of its year-old moratorium preventing utilities from terminating service to all non-paying customers, adopted as Gov. Tom Wolf began ordering shutdowns to fight the spreading coronavirus. The moratorium will lift April 1 for the state’s lower-income utility customers, but the commission...

LONDON — Christie’s says it has auctioned off a digital collage by an artist named Beeple for nearly $70 million, in an unprecedented sale of a digital artwork that fetched more money than physical works by many better known artists. The piece, titled “Everydays: The First 5,000 Days,” sold for...

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Hendrick Motorsports celebrates each race win with a Victory Bell t hat is carted across the campus for every employee to ring. If not for the pandemic, the bell would have made two trips so far this season. The Hendrick folks believe the count should actually be...

HOUSTON — New Houston Texans coach David Culley reiterated Thursday that the team has no intention of trading Deshaun Watson despite the star quarterback’s request to be dealt. Culley, hired in January to replace Bill O’Brien, was asked more than a half-dozen times about Watson’s future with the team. Every...

PORTLAND, Ore. — Portland, Oregon, will pay more than $2 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit arising from the police killing of a Black teenager in 2017, but family members of Quanice Hayes say they are still upset that the officer who pulled the trigger was not disciplined. City...

WASHINGTON — The White House says the $1,400 direct payments for most Americans funded by the American Rescue Plan will start showing up in bank accounts as early as this weekend. Press secretary Jen Psaki says the government will make the first direct deposits this weekend. She says payments will...

READING — The state of Pennsylvania will pay $475,000 to the estate of a man who died underneath a bulldozer that Pennsylvania State Police had used to chase him for growing a handful of marijuana plants, according to a settlement revealed in court Thursday. Gregory Longenecker, 51, had fled into...

CLEVELAND — An appeals court in Cleveland ruled Thursday that the white Cleveland police officer who killed Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old black child playing with a pellet gun outside a recreation center, should not get his job back. The 8th District Court of Appeals in its ruling dismissed an appeal...

Mount St. Mary’s earned its sixth bid to the NCAA Tournament on Tuesday night by beating Bryant in the Northeast Conference Championship game, setting off a postgame celebration that included joy, anticipation, hugs — and covid-19 testing. Before the Mountaineers made the 7 1/2-hour bus trip from Smithfield, Rhode Island,...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Avery Johnson III hit the go-ahead bucket for Oklahoma State with less than a minute to go, and Sean McNeil’s tying 3-pointer came a split-second after the final buzzer, allowing the No. 12 Cowboys to escape with a 72-69 win over No. 10 West Virginia in...

Ken is turning 60, two years after his best friend Barbie did. Mattel launched a reproduction of the original Ken doll on Thursday to commemorate his 1961 debut. That slender doll with blond felt hair wears a red bathing suit and comes with red sandals and a yellow towel. Over...

WASHINGTON — Marking a year of loss and disruption, President Joe Biden on Thursday signed into law the $1.9 trillion relief package that he said will help the U.S. defeat the coronavirus and nurse the economy back to health. The signing came hours before Biden delivers his first prime-time address...

NEMI, Italy — A looted mosaic that once decorated a ship of the Roman Emperor Caligula and ended up as a coffee table in New York City finally returned home Thursday, as details emerged about the lucky break in the investigation that got it there. Officials unveiled the mosaic at...

JACKSON, Miss. — Mississippi Republican Gov. Tate Reeves signed a bill Thursday to ban transgender athletes from competing on girls or women’s sports teams. Mississippi is the first state this year to enact such a ban, after a federal court blocked an Idaho law last year. Mississippi’s Senate Bill 2536...

SAN RAMON, Calif. — Uber and Lyft have teamed up to create a database of drivers ousted from their ride-hailing services for complaints about sexual assault and other crimes that have raised passenger-safety concerns for years. The clearinghouse unveiled Thursday will initially list drivers expelled by the ride-hailing rivals in...