Associated Press stories, Page 209

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A volcano near Alaska’s largest city is showing new signs of unrest, with experts saying the likelihood of an eruption at Mount Spurr in the next few weeks or months has increased. The Alaska Volcano Observatory said Wednesday that it had measured during recent overflights “significantly elevated...

LUBBOCK, Texas — An explosion inside a maintenance hole on the Texas Tech University campus in Lubbock set off fires and power outages, leading school officials to issue evacuation orders for several buildings and cancel classes for the rest of the week, university police said. The explosion happened Wednesday evening...

DALLAS — A former pastor of a Texas megachurch who resigned after a woman accused him of sexually abusing her in the 1980s has been indicted in Oklahoma on child sexual abuse charges, that state’s attorney general’s office said Wednesday. Robert Preston Morris, 63, has been charged with five counts...

“The Apprentice,” the long-running reality TV show that boosted Donald Trump’s profile, will begin streaming on Amazon’s Prime Video, the company announced Monday. The show’s first seven seasons will be available on Amazon’s streaming platform, with the first season premiering Monday and subsequent seasons arriving every week until late April....

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — Golf without Tiger Woods was inevitable simply because of age. He turns 50 at the end of this year and once leaned on the adage that “Father Time remains undefeated.” But for Woods, it has been the mother lode of injuries that is keeping him...

McALLEN, Texas — The Trump administration resumed family detention of immigrants last week in a South Texas facility after a Biden-era pause, a legal nonprofit group providing services to migrant families said Wednesday. Fourteen immigrant families with children as young as one year old were in the detention facility in...

LAKE CHARLES, La. — Quadir Copeland scored 18 points, and McNeese defeated Lamar, 63-54, in a cold-shooting, defensive battle Wednesday, giving the Cowboys back-to-back Southland Tournament championships. The top-seeded Cowboys (27-6) will be making their fourth appearance in the NCAA Tournament. The Cowboys led wire-to-wire. The gap was 31-22 with...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A launch pad problem prompted SpaceX to delay a flight to the International Space Station on Wednesday to replace NASA’s two stuck astronauts. The new crew needs to get to the International Space Station before Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams can head home after nine months...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Elijah Malone scored 12 of his 14 points in the second half, helping No. 16 seed Colorado deal No. 8 seed West Virginia’s at-large NCAA Tournament hopes a massive blow with a 67-60 victory in the second round of the Big 12 Tournament on Wednesday. RJ...

TALLAHASSEE — Gun rights advocates have fought to overturn a Florida law banning gun purchases by people under 21 ever since the day the measure was signed in 2018 as a result of the Parkland school shooting, one of the deadliest mass killings in the U.S. With new leadership in...

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Agriculture Department is ending two pandemic-era programs that provided more than $1 billion for schools and food banks to purchase food from local farmers and producers. About $660 million of that went to schools and childcare centers to buy food for meals through the Local Foods...

NEW YORK — Stock indexes rose Wednesday after Wall Street got some relief from an encouraging inflation update. But even on a rare up day for the market, President Donald Trump’s trade war still knocked stocks around. The S&P 500 gained 0.5% after skidding between an early gain of 1.3%...

WASHINGTON — A fossil of a partial face from a human ancestor is the oldest in western Europe, archaeologists reported Wednesday. The incomplete skull — a section of the left cheek bone and upper jaw — was found in northern Spain in 2022. The fossil is between 1.1 million and...

WASHINGTON — Stock markets are plunging, consumers and businesses have started to sour on the economy, and economists are marking down their estimates for growth this year, with some even seeing rising odds of a recession. The tech-heavy Nasdaq stock index slipped into a correction last week, defined as a...

WASHINGTON — In what he called the “most consequential day of deregulation in American history,” the head of the Environmental Protection Agency announced a series of actions Wednesday to roll back landmark environmental regulations, including rules on pollution from coal-fired power plants, climate change and electric vehicles. “We are driving...

McALLEN, Texas — The Trump administration is dropping a civil lawsuit against the largest provider of housing for unaccompanied migrant children over allegations of repeated sexual abuse and harassment of minors in its facilities. The dismissal was filed on Wednesday after the federal government announced they would no longer use...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — President Donald Trump has pardoned a former Republican Tennessee lawmaker who was two weeks into a 21-month prison sentence for an illegal campaign finance scheme that he pleaded guilty to in 2022, before he tried unsuccessfully to take back his plea. Former Sen. Brian Kelsey announced the...

BOISE, Idaho — Prosecutors say Bryan Kohberger’s defense team will argue at his murder trial that someone else could have planted a knife sheath with Kohberger’s DNA at the home where four University of Idaho students were killed in 2022. Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson made the claim in a...

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s neglected southwestern province of Balochistan has been the scene of a yearslong insurgency, with a dramatic uptick in attacks in recent years underscoring the struggles the government in Islamabad faces in dealing with myriad security threats. The seizure Tuesday of a passenger train by the outlawed Baluch...

PANAMA CITY — They crossed oceans to get to the U.S., fleeing conflict, religious persecution, poverty and government crackdowns in countries such as Afghanistan, Somalia, Cameroon, China, Pakistan and Iran. After flying to Central and South America, they bused through countries where they didn’t speak the language and walked through...

MADISON, Wis. — The mayor of Wisconsin’s capital city said Wednesday she has placed the municipal clerk on leave as investigators work to determine how she failed to count almost 200 absentee ballots in the November election. Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said in a statement that the city has launched...

President Donald Trump has said he wants his education chief, Linda McMahon, to “put herself out of a job” and close the Education Department. McMahon, after being confirmed by the Senate on March 3, told employees it was the department’s “final mission” to eliminate bureaucratic bloat and turn over the...