Associated Press stories, Page 2144

WASHINGTON — Spending on U.S. construction projects rose to an all-time high in January, helped by strong gains for home construction and government building projects. The Commerce Department said Monday that construction spending increased 1.8% in January, the strongest monthly rise in nearly two years, pushing totally spending to a...

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal of the federal ban on bump stocks, devices that allow semi-automatic firearms to fire rapidly like machine guns. The justices did not comment in declining to review a lower court-ruling that upheld the ban, which took effect nearly a year...

BOSTON — Jack Welch, who transformed General Electric Co. into a highly profitable multinational conglomerate and parlayed his legendary business acumen into a retirement career as a corporate leadership guru, has died. He was 84. His death was confirmed Monday by GE. The cause of death was renal failure, his...

MANILA, Philippines — A recently dismissed security guard freed his hostages and walked out of a shopping mall in the Philippine capital on Monday, ending a daylong hostage crisis in an upscale commercial district near the police and military headquarters, officials said. The former guard at the commercial complex, identified...

The Elisabeth Moss-led thriller “The Invisible Man” rode a wave of good reviews to a very visible spot atop the box office this weekend. Universal Pictures on Sunday estimated that the film from writer-director Leigh Whannell earned $29 million from North American theaters. Internationally, the Blumhouse production picked up an...

SEATTLE — Health officials in Washington state said Sunday night that a second person had died from the coronavirus — a man in his 70s from a nursing facility near Seattle where dozens of people were sick and had been tested for the virus. Researchers said earlier the virus may...

SHREVEPORT, La. — The Hope Medical Group for Women in northern Louisiana fields phone calls every day from anxious pregnant women who ask if abortion is still legal and if the clinic, one of only three that provides abortions in the state, is still open. Despite the protesters who sometimes...

When Bahija Karim arrived in Idaho as an Afghan refugee in 2005, she knew little about American culture. She didn’t speak English. A volunteer directed her to Artisans for Hope, a local crafts initiative for refugees. There, she was taught crafting skills and English. Artisans for Hope took Karim on...

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea fired two unidentified projectiles from a coastal area Monday as it resumed weapons demonstrations following a monthslong hiatus. The launches came two days after North Korea’s state media said leader Kim Jong Un supervised an artillery drill aimed at testing the combat readiness of...

SAN DIEGO — A federal judge has ruled that Ken Cuccinelli was unlawfully appointed to lead the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency and, as a result, lacked authority to give asylum seekers less time to prepare for initial screening interviews. Cuccinelli, a former Virginia attorney general and an immigration...

DOYLESTOWN — A man shot and wounded by police during a standoff near Philadelphia last month has died, authorities said. The Bucks County district attorney’s office said Thomas Edward Zeller, 61, was pronounced dead Sunday afternoon at Abington Hospital-Jefferson Health. The Montgomery County coroner’s office was scheduled to do an...

NEW YORK — New York confirmed Sunday the state’s first positive test of the new virus that has sickened tens of thousands of people across the globe. A woman in her late 30s contracted the virus while traveling in Iran, according to a statement from Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office. She...

WASHINGTON — Pete Buttigieg, who rose from relative obscurity as an Indiana mayor to a barrier-breaking, top-tier candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, ended his campaign on Sunday. The decision by the first openly gay candidate to seriously contend for the presidency — and among the youngest ever — came...

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — The president of West Virginia University released a letter Sunday emphasizing the university’s commitment to safety after two recent shootings near the Morgantown campus, one of them involving a fatality. WVU President Gordon Gee wrote to the community that the campus of more than 26,000 students is...

NEW YORK — As stocks around the world tumble on worries about a fast-spreading coronavirus, investors have been clamoring for the superheroes of the financial world to ride to the rescue once again. Yet this time, there are doubts: Can central banks really fix this crisis as they have so...

JERUSALEM — For the third time in under a year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking reelection, and once again the Israeli leader is on the ropes. After two inconclusive elections last year, opinion polls forecast another stalemate — a troubling scenario for Netanyahu, who will go on trial on...