U.S./World category, Page 1193

BERLIN — A paternity test on a baby orangutan has come back with a surprising result. Basel Zoo in northwestern Switzerland said Thursday the test showed 5-month-old Padma wasn’t fathered by the male in her enclosure. Keepers routinely take DNA samples from newborn orangutans because the endangered great apes are...

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is “disappointed” the FBI couldn’t figure out what specifically motivated a gunman to carry out the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history. Trump’s comments Wednesday to The Daily Caller came a day after the FBI released its final report on the 2017 Las Vegas shooting...

CHICAGO — The painfully cold weather system that put much of the Midwest into a historic deep freeze was expected to ease Thursday, though temperatures still tumbled to record lows in some places. Disruptions caused by the cold will persist, too, including power outages and canceled flights and trains. Crews...

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump took to Twitter on Thursday to ratchet up his demands on his long-stalled border wall, appearing to sour on congressional talks aimed at striking a deal with Democrats that he could sign. In a barrage of morning tweets, Trump sent mixed messages in which he...

ATLANTA — A man accused of sexually assaulting a woman who captured the apparent attack on Facebook Live has been arrested and charged with forcible sodomy. News outlets report Atlanta police say 34-year-old Dominique Williams surrendered to police Tuesday. Williams is accused of assaulting the woman this month at the...

SUMTER, S.C. — Authorities say a South Carolina woman has been arrested after a video she posted on social media showed her pouring water on her sleeping 9-month-old daughter as “payback.” News outlets report the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office says 33-year-old Caitlyn Alyse Hardy was charged with cruelty to children....

HOUSTON — What started as an online fundraiser to provide President Donald Trump with donations for his southern border wall has morphed into a foundation whose members vow to build a wall themselves. The “We The People Will Build the Wall” campaign has surpassed $20 million since it was created...

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah of central Pahang state was crowned Thursday as Malaysia’s 16th king under a unique rotating monarchy system, nearly a month after the sudden abdication of Sultan Muhammad V. Garbed in aqua blue regalia, Sultan Abdullah, 59, took his oath of office...

JUNEAU, Alaska — Gov. Mike Dunleavy on Wednesday proposed constitutional changes that would limit legislative authority and give voters a say on taxes and any changes to the annual check residents receive from the state’s oil-wealth fund. One of the proposed amendments is aimed at ensuring the Alaska Permanent Fund...

RENO, Nev. — The U.S. Department of Energy revealed on Wednesday that it secretly shipped weapons-grade plutonium from South Carolina to a nuclear security site in Nevada months ago despite the state’s protests. The Justice Department notified a federal judge in Reno that the government trucked in the radioactive material...

SAN FRANCISCO — A colony of elephant seals took over a beach in Northern California during the government shutdown when there was no staff to discourage the animals from congregating in the popular tourist area, an official said. Now they’re not going anywhere. About 60 adult seals that gave birth...

WASHINGTON — House Democrats unveiled a new border security plan Wednesday that contains no money for physical barriers along the U.S.-Mexico divide, defying President Trump’s insistence on a wall of some kind to stave off another government shutdown. The Democrats’ proposal was their opening bid in bipartisan House-Senate negotiations aimed...

HUNTSVILLE, Texas — A 61-year-old Texas inmate was executed Wednesday evening for killing a Houston police officer more than three decades ago. Robert Jennings received lethal injection for the July 1988 fatal shooting of Officer Elston Howard during a robbery at an adult bookstore that authorities said was part of...

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul was awarded more than $580,000 in damages and medical expenses Wednesday in his lawsuit against the neighbor who tackled him and broke several of his ribs in a dispute over lawn maintenance. A jury in Bowling Green, Ky., deliberated less than two hours before delivering the...

LOS ANGELES — A California panel Wednesday recommended that Charles Manson follower Leslie Van Houten be paroled after serving more than four decades in prison. After a hearing at the women’s prison in Corona, Calif., commissioners of the Board of Parole Hearings found for the third time that the 69-year-old...

PHOENIX — A nurse suspected of raping an incapacitated woman who later gave birth at a long-term care facility in Phoenix has been indicted on charges of sexual assault and abuse of a vulnerable adult. The document filed Tuesday mirrors charges that prosecutors filed last week against 36-year-old Nathan Dorceus...

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Business advocates now resigned to the likelihood that Illinois will soon adopt a $15-an-hour minimum wage urged legislators Wednesday to make it a tiered approach based on geography, arguing there are vast cost-of-living differences between Chicago and more rural areas downstate. While Illinois’ statewide minimum wage has...

MELBOURNE, Fla. — A toddler who fell into a rhinoceros exhibit at a Florida zoo this month suffered bruises to her chest, stomach, back and behind her right ear after being bumped by two rhinos. A report on the incident released Wednesday shows the 21-month-old girl also had a bruised...

ALBANY, N.Y. — Allegations that four 12-year-old girls were strip-searched for drugs in an upstate New York middle school because they were hyper and giddy raised “serious concerns of racial and gender bias,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday, as he directed the state Education Department to investigate the incident. Binghamton...

MEXICO CITY — The population of monarch butterflies wintering in central Mexico is up 144 percent over last year, experts said Wednesday. The data presented by Andrew Rhodes, Mexico’s national commissioner for protected natural areas, was cheered but scientists quickly warned that it does not mean the butterflies that migrate...

MONROE, La. — The University of Louisiana Monroe has closed a building until a colony of bats can be removed. The university’s Public Relations Director, Hope Young, says Sugar Hall will be closed until the bats and that classes and administrative offices have been moved. Young says the bats entered...

MADISON, Wis. — Electronics giant Foxconn reversed course and announced Wednesday that the massive Wisconsin operation that was supposed to bring a bounty of blue-collar manufacturing jobs back to the Midwest — and was offered billions of dollars in incentives from the state — will instead be devoted mostly to...

WASHINGTON — The pipeline that produces air traffic controllers essential to the aviation system and the economy will reopen Monday, but union officials warn that it may be years before the system rebounds from consequences of the 35-day federal government shutdown. “We’re not sure what the damage really is,” said...

NEW YORK — Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman orchestrated a two-decade campaign to flood the United States with tons of cocaine as a ruthless leader of the Sinaloa cartel, a prosecutor said in closing arguments on Wednesday at Guzman’s U.S. trial. Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrea Goldbarg began her...