Judge tosses manslaughter charge in boat fire that killed 34
LOS ANGELES — A Los Angeles federal judge threw out an indictment Friday charging a dive boat captain with manslaughter in the deaths of 34 people in a 2019 fire aboard a vessel anchored off the Southern California coast. The ruling came on the third anniversary of one of the...
Fleeing Nicaraguans strain Costa Rica’s asylum system
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica — After four years of trying to continue his studies in Nicaragua, Elthon Rivera finally reached the same conclusion as thousands of his countrymen. The government shuttered his university, its director told him he was going into exile and warned that the police were coming for...
Sheriff: Man left dead animals at Parkland massacre memorial
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A Florida man has been charged with leaving dead animals on three separate occasions at a memorial for the 17 victims of the Parkland school massacre, officials said Friday. Robert Mondragon, 29, is being held without bail on three felony charges of defacing a monument for...
West Virginia officials investigating underground mine death
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — West Virginia officials on Friday were investigating the death of a coal miner at a Kanawha County mine. Blackhawk mining issued a statement Thursday reporting a fatality at the Coalburg Tunnel underground mine. The West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health and Safety identified the miner as 34-year-old...
Biden seeks $47B for Ukraine, covid, monkeypox, natural disasters
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is asking Congress to provide more than $47 billion in emergency dollars that would go toward the war in Ukraine, the response to the covid-19 pandemic, the ongoing monkeypox outbreak and help for recent natural disasters in Kentucky and other states. The request, which comes...
G-7 pledges to move forward with Russia oil price cap system
BERLIN — Finance ministers from the Group of Seven industrial powers on Friday pledged to impose a cap on the price of Russian oil in a bid to limit the Kremlin’s revenues and ability to fund its war in Ukraine, while also curtailing the war’s impact on energy prices and...
Trump White House lawyer arrives for Jan. 6 grand jury
WASHINGTON — The White House counsel under then-President Donald Trump arrived Friday for his appearance before a federal grand jury investigating efforts to undo the 2020 presidential election. Pat Cipollone was the top White House lawyer at the end of the Trump administration as Trump and outside allies pressed for...
Russia warns U.S. about sending long-range weapons to Ukraine
MOSCOW — A senior Russian diplomat sternly warned Washington Friday against supplying long-range weapons to Ukraine, noting that the U.S. is balancing on the edge of direct involvement in the conflict. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov also pointed to the country’s military doctrine that envisages the use of nuclear weapons...
Trump search inventory released, reveals new details on docs
WASHINGTON — FBI agents who searched former President Donald Trump’s Florida home last month found top secret records in an office and storage room, along with empty folders with classified banners on them and more than 10,000 government records without any classification markings at all, according to a more detailed...
4-year-old accidentally shot by grandmother inside Pa. home
A 4-year-old boy was accidentally shot in the stomach by his grandmother Thursday, according to a report from WPVI. It happened around 8:30 p.m. on the unit block of East Penn Street in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. According to WPVI, the grandmother owns the gun and has a valid...
Man arrested after fatal attack at German gay pride event
BERLIN — Police in Germany said Friday they have arrested a 20-year-old man in connection with a fatal attack on a 25-year-old man at a gay pride event in the western city of Muenster last month. The victim, identified in German media only by his first name Malte, had come...
Biden administration awards $1 billion for economic projects; Pa. to get nearly $63M
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo are announcing on Friday $1 billion worth of federal grants for manufacturing, clean energy, farming, biotech and other sectors that will go to 21 regional partnerships. The winners were chosen from 529 initial applicants vying for grants that were part...
Afghan mosque blast kills 18, including senior cleric
HERAT, Afghanistan — An explosion tore through a crowded mosque in western Afghanistan on Friday, killing at least 18 people, including a prominent cleric, Taliban officials and a local medic said. At least 21 people were hurt. The blast went off in the Guzargah Mosque in the western city of...
Biden to help unveil Obama White House portrait
WASHINGTON — It’s been more than a decade since President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, welcomed back George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, for the unveiling of their White House portraits, part of a beloved Washington tradition that for decades managed to transcend partisan politics. President Joe Biden...
Former Idaho lawmaker sentenced to 20 years’ prison for rape
BOISE — A former Idaho lawmaker convicted of raping a 19-year-old legislative intern has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for the crime. Aaron von Ehlinger must serve at least eight years before he will be eligible for parole, 4th District Judge Michael Reardon said during the sentencing hearing...
Michigan high court asked to OK ballot question on abortion
LANSING, Mich. — An abortion-rights group on Thursday asked the Michigan Supreme Court to approve a November ballot question on whether a right to abortion should be enshrined in the state constitution. Reproductive Freedom for All filed its request with the high court after the state canvassing board rejected the...
Doug Mastriano sues Jan. 6 committee over deposition authority
HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania’s Republican nominee for governor on Thursday sued the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, contesting its legal ability to force him to answer questions about it. The lawsuit filed by Doug Mastriano contends that the committee lacks appointees of House Minority...
Jan. 6 panel asks former Speaker Newt Gingrich for information
WASHINGTON — The House panel investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection is seeking information from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich about his communications with senior advisers to then-President Donald Trump in the days leading up to the 2021 attack on the Capitol. The committee’s chairman, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, wrote in...
Ginni Thomas emails urged lawmakers to overturn Biden’s win in Wisconsin
MADISON, Wis. — The wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas contacted at least two Wisconsin state lawmakers, including the chair of the Senate elections committee, urging them to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 election win in the tightly contested state, emails obtained Thursday by The Associated Press show....
Florida GOP chair found guilty in vote-siphoning scheme
SANFORD, Fla. — A local Republican Party chairman in central Florida was found guilty Thursday of a misdemeanor campaign finance violation that prosecutors say was part of a larger scheme to siphon off votes from a Democrat in a state senate race. Following the verdict, a judge in Seminole County...
Ex-NYPD officer Thomas Webster gets 10 years in prison for Jan. 6 attack
WASHINGTON — A retired New York Police Department officer was sentenced on Thursday to 10 years in prison for attacking the U.S. Capitol and using a metal flagpole to assault one of the police officers trying to hold off a mob of Donald Trump supporters. Thomas Webster’s prison sentence is...
NYPD union may sue teen punched out by cop in caught-on-camera clashVideo
NEW YORK — An NYPD union may sue the 19-year-old woman who tried to interfere with her boyfriend’s arrest for attempted-murder in Harlem — and was slugged by a city cop as a result. The Detectives Endowment Association is exploring a possible civil suit against Tamani Crum for slapping and...
Putin pays tribute to Gorbachev but won’t attend his funeral
MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin privately laid flowers at Mikhail Gorbachev’s coffin on Thursday, snubbing the weekend’s public funeral in a move reflecting the Kremlin’s uneasiness about Gorbachev’s legacy. Just before departing for a working trip to Russia’s western-most Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad, Putin visited a Moscow hospital where...
Watering while Black: anatomy of a pastor’s Alabama arrest
CHILDERSBURG, Ala. — Michael Jennings wasn’t breaking any laws or doing anything that was obviously suspicious; the Black minister was simply watering the flowers of a neighbor who was out of town. Yet there was a problem: Around the corner, Amber Roberson, who is white, thought she was helping that...
Tech tool offers police ‘mass surveillance on a budget’
Local law enforcement agencies from suburban Southern California to rural North Carolina have been using an obscure cellphone tracking tool, at times without search warrants, that gives them the power to follow people’s movements months back in time, according to public records and internal emails obtained by The Associated Press....
