U.S./World category, Page 1189

BEIRUT — U.S.-backed forces in Syria announced the beginning Saturday of the possible final battle for the last village controlled by the Islamic State. In a brief statement posted on its website, the Syrian Democratic Forces said the push began on Saturday night and was focused on the village of...

CINCINNATI — She kept her eyes on the dapper, wavy-haired man who smiled, winked and exuded self-confidence as the courtroom proceedings moved along. “I don’t know what it is he has, but he’s fascinating,” the teenage spectator explained to me at the time. “He’s impressive. He just has a kind...

SAN DIEGO — Describing San Diego’s border with Mexico as “an area of high illegal entry,” the Trump administration announced this week it is waiving environmental reviews to speed up replacement of 12.4 miles of the secondary border fence. This project was funded by a 2018 bill that allocated $251...

MIAMI — The actions of a Broward Sheriff’s Office deputy with a history of making false arrests drew a complaint from the Broward Public Defender’s Office after bodycam video from a July 2017 incident emerged last month. Deputy James Cady confronts Allen Floyd, a black father calmly holding his infant,...

LOS ANGELES — Years before his plane plunged into an Orange County suburb, killing him and four others on the ground, Antonio Pastini was disciplined twice by federal regulators for flying in dangerous conditions and lying about his credentials, records show. A spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration told the...

PHOENIX — The embattled operators of an Arizona long-term care facility agreed Friday to be regulated by the state, effectively nixing a plan to close down the unit where an incapacitated woman gave birth after being raped. The state received written confirmation that Hacienda HealthCare would enter into a voluntary...

LOS ANGELES — More than 120 visitors and staff who were snowbound in a Sierra Nevada resort for five days have been freed, authorities said Friday. Up to 7 feet of snow trapped the guests and staff at Montecito Sequoia Lodge in Sequoia National Forest starting Sunday following a storm,...

NEW YORK — The National Enquirer’s alleged attempt to blackmail Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos with intimate photos could get the tabloid’s parent company and top editors in deep legal trouble and reopen them to prosecution for paying hush money to a Playboy model who claimed she had an affair with...

NEW YORK — Gov. Andrew Cuomo warned Friday about what he called “political pandering” to critics of Amazon’s proposed secondary headquarters amid a report that the company is reconsidering its planned New York City headquarters. But opponents said they’d keep fighting a project they consider corporate welfare. The back-and-forth came...

RICHMOND, Va. — Confronted with a triple threat to the party’s top ranks, Virginia Democrats are trying to thread the needle, demanding anew that Gov. Ralph Northam resign but giving the benefit of the doubt — for the time being — to the lieutenant governor and attorney general. Key Democratic...

BALTIMORE — Officials say a staffer has been shot at a Baltimore high school. The Baltimore Police Department tweeted Friday afternoon that a man had been shot at Frederick Douglass High School and a suspect was taken into custody at the scene. Baltimore school officials tweeted that the school is...

LONDON — London Zoo says one of its female Sumatran tigers has been killed by a potential mate while the two animals were being introduced. The zoo says 10-year-old Melati died Friday during her first encounter with Asim, a 7-year-old male. The two tigers had been kept in adjoining enclosures...

MIAMI — Federal prosecutors have formally charged a fugitive in the 2015 highway robbery of 10 gold bars worth almost $5 million. U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami announced Thursday that Pedro Santamaria, 56, has been indicted on robbery and gun charges. The FBI is offering up to $10,000 for information...

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s White House counselor Kellyanne Conway says she was grabbed and shaken by a woman at a Mexican restaurant in Bethesda, Md., late last year. In a CNN interview broadcast Friday, Conway claimed the woman came up to her from behind, grabbed her arms and shook...

Last week’s polar vortex resulted in record natural gas consumption in the United States, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The polar vortex, in which colder-than-normal temperatures blanketed much of the Midwest and Northeast, including Western Pennsylvania, set a single-day record for natural gas demand on Jan. 30, topping...

RIO DE JANEIRO — A fire tore through the sprawling training complex of one of Brazil’s biggest soccer clubs Friday, killing 10 people and leaving three teenagers injured, firefighters said. Firefighters were called in just after 5 a.m. to battle a blaze at the Ninho de Urubu training ground of...

KALISPELL, Mont. — Veterinarians in Montana revived a cat named Fluffy that nearly froze to death after being found in a snowbank covered from head to tail in ice and snow. Dr. Jevon Clark of the Animal Clinic of Kalispell said Thursday that Fluffy was unresponsive and her body temperature...

LONDON — Police say an American Airlines pilot has been arrested at Britain’s Manchester Airport on suspicion of being drunk. The Greater Manchester Police force said Friday that police “received a report that an airline pilot may have been under the influence of alcohol” at the airport in northwestern England...

BEIRUT — Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency is reporting that a man has set himself on fire in front of a private school that refused to provide him with transfer documents for his daughter due to unpaid fees. NNA said the man, whose name was not released, succumbed to his...

WASHINGTON — A divided Supreme Court stopped Louisiana from enforcing new regulations on abortion clinics in a test of the conservative court’s views on abortion rights. The justices said by a 5-4 vote late Thursday that they will not allow the state to put into effect a law that requires...

DETROIT — Former U.S. Rep. John Dingell, the longest-serving member of Congress in American history who mastered legislative deal-making and was fiercely protective of Detroit’s auto industry, has died. The Michigan Democrat was 92. Dingell, who served in the U.S. House for 59 years before retiring in 2014, died Thursday...

LOS ANGELES — Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said Thursday he was the target of “extortion and blackmail” by the publisher of the National Enquirer, which he said threated to publish revealing personal photos of him unless he stopped investigating how other private photos and messages were obtained by the tabloid....

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump alleged in his State of the Union that the United States was on a dangerous course to socialism. On Thursday, democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) proposed a “Green New Deal” - which was instantly supported by several Democratic presidential candidates. The package isn’t socialism,...

NEW YORK — A veterinarian who surgically implanted liquid heroin in puppies on behalf of Colombian drug traffickers was sentenced to six years in prison Thursday. One of the puppies went on to become a drug-detection dog named Heroina. The sentence for Andres Lopez Elorez was announced in Brooklyn by...

EDISON, N.J. — Authorities say a pedestrian who tried to take a shortcut by scooting underneath a parked tractor-trailer was critically injured when the driver started up the vehicle and drove away. Edison police say the 30-year-old Princeton man and a friend were walking back to a hotel around 9:30...