U.S./World category, Page 1158
Mayors push Senate to return to Washington for gun bill vote
WASHINGTON (AP) — More than 200 mayors, including two anguished by mass shootings in Texas and Ohio, are urging the Senate to return to the Capitol to act on gun safety legislation amid criticism that Congress is failing to respond to back-to-back shootings that killed 31 people. In a letter...
New UN warming report sees hungry future that can be avoided
WASHINGTON — On the ground, climate change is hitting us where it counts: the stomach — not to mention the forests, plants and animals. A new United Nations scientific report examines how global warming and land interact in a vicious cycle. Human-caused climate change is dramatically degrading the land, while...
Attacker kills 4 in series of stabbings in California cities
GARDEN GROVE, Calif. — Investigators believe a man who stabbed four people to death and wounded two others targeted his victims at random during a bloody rampage across two Southern California cities, authorities said. The 33-year-old man from the city of Garden Grove was “full of anger” when he carried...
S.C. teen ousted from school, charged after racist gun videos emerge
A South Carolina teenager has been expelled and charged after videos surfaced of him making threats against black people while shooting at inanimate objects. According to The State, the 16-year-old boy, who referred to himself as “Parker” in two videos, sent the clips to several of his classmates at Cardinal...
Largest U.S. immigration raids in a decade net 680 arrests
MORTON, Miss. — U.S. immigration officials raided seven Mississippi chicken processing plants Wednesday, arresting 680 mostly Latino workers in the largest workplace sting in at least a decade. The raids, planned months ago, happened just hours before President Trump visited El Paso, Texas, the majority-Latino border city where a man...
Train station experiment reveals one way to counteract bias against Muslims
An experiment conducted in German train stations involving paper cups and escaping oranges has found that people are less likely to help a woman if she appears to be Muslim — but they’re more likely to help that same woman if she somehow proves that she shares their social values....
Massive tarantula migration to start this month in ColoradoVideo
Why do thousands of tarantulas cross the road? To get to the side where their mates live. The annual spider migration is about to commence in southeast Colorado and Highway 109 south of La Junta is a good place to watch, according to the town’s tourism team. Large populations of...
Yellowstone officials warn of dangerous behavior with bison
CHEYENNE, Wyo. — A man reaches over a railing to pet a bison on the head in yet another example of dangerous behavior by visitors to Yellowstone National Park. A video shows the bison stepped away from the man standing on a crowded boardwalk near a thermal area. Nobody was...
Canadian police say 2 bodies found, believed to be teen fugitivesVideo
TORONTO — Canadian police said Wednesday they believe two fugitives suspected of killing a North Carolina woman and her Australian boyfriend as well as another man have been found dead in dense brush in northern Manitoba. Authorities located two male bodies and are confident they are 19-year-old Kam McLeod and...
32 busted in federal drug crackdown in San Francisco
SAN FRANCISCO — Federal prosecutors said Wednesday that they charged nearly three dozen people, mostly Honduran nationals, after investigators uncovered twin international trafficking operations that poured heroin, meth and cocaine into a notorious San Francisco neighborhood crawling with rampant drug use. The drug charges are the first step in a...
Puerto Rico high court overturns Pedro Pierluisi as governor
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Puerto Rico’s Supreme Court on Wednesday overturned the swearing in of Pedro Pierluisi as the island’s governor less than a week ago, clearing the way for Justice Secretary Wanda Vázquez to take up the post after weeks of turmoil. The unanimous ruling said Pierluisi must...
U.S. hopes for North Korea nuclear talks despite missile tests
WASHINGTON — The U.S. is still hoping to hold another round of nuclear talks with North Korea despite the country’s recent missile tests, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Wednesday. Those talks could be held within a “a couple of weeks,” Pompeo said, speaking shortly after returning from Asia and...
Florida woman bites intruder who forced his way into home
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A nearly toothless South Florida woman says she bit a man who forced his way into her apartment. Alice Coleman tells WSVN she woke up early Monday morning to a fire alarm going off. The 61-year-old says that when opened the door, a man pushed his...
USA Today HQ search concludes without incident after report of man with weapon
McLEAN, Va. —Police have cleared the northern Virginia office building that houses USA Today without incident after receiving a report of an armed man. Fairfax County Police Chief Edwin Roessler said Wednesday afternoon that SWAT teams had concluded their search and found no evidence that any crime had occurred. Police...
Police patrol Rome’s Spanish Steps to enforce sitting ban
ROME — Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn perched there without a care in the 1953 film “Roman Holiday.” But the Spanish Steps in Rome are no longer a place for sitting. Enforcing an ordinance that took effect last month, police officers patrolled the famed stone staircase Wednesday to tell locals...
Ex-dean with oversight of Larry Nassar gets 1 year in jail
LANSING, Mich. — A former Michigan State University dean with oversight of now-imprisoned sports doctor Larry Nassar was ordered Wednesday to serve up to a year in jail after being convicted of neglect of duty and misconduct in office that stemmed from claims he sexually harassed students. William Strampel learned...
Woman regrets putting live octopus on her face for a photo
Hindsight is 20/20. A woman in Washington state is now regretting her photo op decision to put a live octopus on her face, KIRO-TV News in Seattle reports. Jamie Bisceglia told the station she was hoping to enter a photo contest as part of a fishing derby in Tacoma, Wash....
Berlin to tighten rules for electric scooter users
BERLIN — Berlin plans to stop electric scooters from being left haphazardly on sidewalks and other anti-social behavior that’s drawn the ire of residents in the German capital since the vehicles were made legal two months ago. City transport officials said Wednesday after a meeting with scooter providers that they’ll...
Germany seizes 1.5 tons of cocaine, 2nd big haul in weeks
BERLIN — Customs officials in Hamburg have found 1.65 tons of cocaine on a container ship that arrived from Brazil, soon after Germany’s biggest-ever single seizure of the drug. The port city’s customs office said Wednesday the new shipment was found last week in a container of tobacco cartons loaded...
11-year-old boy creates #ElPasoChallenge
Shaken to the core by the killings in an El Paso, Texas, Walmart, an 11-year-old hometown boy — Ruben Martinez —is trying to bring some light to this horrifically dark event. ABC.com reports: “The day after the shooting, when Ruben began to ask his mom (Rose Gandarilla) even more questions...
Trump faces protests as he visits Dayton, El Paso
DAYTON, Ohio — Protesters greeted President Donald Trump’s arrival in Dayton Wednesday, blaming his incendiary rhetoric for inflaming political and racial tensions in the country, as he visited survivors of last weekend’s mass shootings and saluted first responders. The president and first lady Melania Trump began their visit at the...
Immigration raids under way at Mississippi food plants
MORTON, Miss. — U.S. immigration officials have launched raids at several Mississippi food processing plants. A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official said Wednesday that search warrants were executed at seven locations across the state targeting several companies. They include the Morton plant of poultry producer Koch Foods Inc., which...
Cambodian rescued after 4 days wedged in mountain rock
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — A Cambodian man who became wedged between rocks while collecting bat droppings for sale has been rescued after being trapped for almost four days. Police said Sum Bora slipped Sunday while trying to retrieve his flashlight, which he had accidentally dropped in the small rocky hollow....
El Paso, with deep Mexican American past, rallies amid painVideo
EL PASO, Texas — The massacre that killed 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso struck a city that has long been the cradle of Mexican American culture and immigration and suffered through bloody episodes of racial violence in the past. The white gunman apparently wrote an anti-Hispanic rant...
Dayton, site of latest mass shooting, warily awaits Trump
DAYTON, Ohio — Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley’s stricken community will have a visitor Wednesday in President Donald Trump, who in the wake of two mass shootings over the weekend has made calls for unity on the heels of his divisive political talk. White House officials said Trump’s visits to Texas...
