When high school students in the West Hartford Public Schools district study World War II in the coming year, they will learn about more than just the typical hallmarks like Japanese American detention camps. They will also hear about Sadao Munemori, a soldier who died protecting comrades from a grenade. The 22-year-old posthumously became the […]
GENEVA (AP) — Former Iraqi President Barham Salih is on track to become the next head of the U.N. refugee agency, according to a letter from U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres shared with The Associated Press on Friday. Salih, 65, is set to succeed longtime UNHCR veteran Filippo Grandi as the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. […]
DEDHAM, Mass. (AP) — One baby Jesus lays in a manger in the snow, wrapped in a silver emergency blanket with his wrists zip-tied. Mary stands nearby outside the Lake Street Church in Evanston, Illinois, wearing a plastic gas mask and flanked by Roman soldiers in tactical vests labeled “ICE.” In another Chicago suburb, not […]
BALTIMORE (AP) — Kilmar Abrego Garcia was due to check-in with immigration authorities on Friday, some 14 hours after he was released from detention on a judge’s orders. Abrego Garcia became a flashpoint of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown earlier this year when he was wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador. He […]
KENNER, La. (AP) — Vilma Cruz, a mother of two, had just arrived at her newly leased Louisiana home this week when federal agents surrounded her vehicle in the driveway. She had just enough time to call her oldest son before they smashed the passenger window and detained her. The 38-year-old Honduran house painter was […]
MIDLAND, Texas (AP) — The Chinese government is using an increasingly powerful tool to control and monitor its own officials: Surveillance technology, much of it originating in the United States, an Associated Press investigation has found. Among its targets is Li Chuanliang, a Chinese former vice mayor hunted by Beijing with the help of surveillance […]
WASHINGTON (AP) — A bipartisan group in Congress is urging the Education Department to add nursing to a list of college programs that are considered “professional,” adding to public outcry after nurses were omitted from a new agency definition. The Trump administration’s list of professional programs includes medicine, law and theology but leaves out nursing […]
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Two lawsuits seeking to redraw Wisconsin’s congressional districts were scheduled to be discussed in court Friday as a pair of three-judge panels, never-before-used in the state, meet for the first time. The Wisconsin Supreme Court last month ordered that the redistricting cases be first heard by the three-judge panels, employing a […]
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump successfully harnessed voter anxiety over the economy, immigration and crime last year to retake the White House — and lift plenty of other Republicans into office with him. But as the party tries to keep its grip on complete control in Washington, that strategy may be harder to replicate. […]
MIDLAND, Texas (AP) — Retired Chinese official Li Chuanliang was recuperating from cancer on a Korean resort island when he got an urgent call: Don’t return to China, a friend warned. You’re now a fugitive. Days later, a stranger snapped a photo of Li in a cafe. Terrified South Korea would send him back, Li […]
President Donald Trump issued a symbolic pardon for Tina Peters on Thursday, but it alone won’t free the former Colorado elections administrator who was convicted under state laws of orchestrating a data breach scheme driven by false claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Trump’s pardon power does not extend to state crimes like […]
A federal judge in Massachusetts on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to restore billions of dollars in canceled FEMA disaster mitigation funding, siding with 22 states and the District of Columbia that sued over the canceled grants this summer. President Donald Trump’s administration said in April it was “ending” the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities […]
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday aimed at blocking states from crafting their own regulations for artificial intelligence, saying the burgeoning industry is at risk of being stifled by a patchwork of onerous rules while in a battle with Chinese competitors for supremacy. Members of Congress from both parties, as well as civil […]
More than 18,000 Amtrak workers will receive a $900 bonus before the end of the year, the Federal Aviation Administration announced on Thursday evening. Funding for the bonuses will come from Amtrak’s executive leadership team bonus packages, the statement said. The federal administration urged executive leadership “to forgo 50% of the bonus packages that would […]
The head of the Federal Aviation Administration has not sold off his multimillion-dollar stake in the airline he led since 1999 despite a promise to do so as part of his ethics agreement, according to a Democratic senator. In a letter to Bryan Bedford this week, his confirmation but 150 days have now passed. In […]
The U.S. Mint unveiled the 250th anniversary of American independence next year. They depict the founding documents and the Revolutionary War, but so far, not President Donald Trump, despite a push among some of his allies to get his face on a coin. The Mint abandoned designs developed during Joe Biden’s presidency that highlighted women’s […]
LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas (AP) — The commission that oversees public television in Arkansas voted Thursday to sever ties with PBS, making it the first state to end its contract with the broadcast giant that provides popular television programs such as “Sesame Street,” “Nova” and “Antiques Roadshow.” The eight-member Arkansas Educational Television Commission, made up entirely […]
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve’s governing board unanimously approved the reappointment of nearly all of the Fed’s 12 regional bank presidents, a group that has come under scrutiny by the Trump administration. The Fed’s board approved the reappointment of 11 of the presidents, with the only exception being the Atlanta Fed, where current president […]
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Local officials in Florida’s capital city have voted to sell a city-owned golf course built on top of the graves of enslaved people to a once-segregated country club, despite vocal opposition from local residents and historians. Evidence of Florida’s slave-holding past lies just beneath the surface of the manicured greens of […]
WASHINGTON (AP) — The crime-fighting arm of the IRS spent less time tracking down tax evaders this year, instead picking up some new responsibilities, such as helping with immigration enforcement and supporting National Guard deployments in two Democratic-led cities. IRS Criminal Investigations Chief Guy Ficco spoke with The Associated Press about how the agency is […]
MIAMI (AP) — The oil tanker was steaming near the coast of Guyana recently when its location transponder showed it starting to zigzag. It was a seemingly improbable maneuver and the latest digital clue that the ship, the Skipper, was trying to obscure its whereabouts and the valuable cargo stored inside its hull: tens of […]
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — A grand jury declined for a second time to re-indict New York Attorney General Letitia James on Thursday, refusing to resurrect a mortgage fraud prosecution encouraged by President Donald Trump, according to a person familiar with the matter. It’s another major blow to the Justice Department after the dismissal of earlier […]
The Trump administration is expanding its crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion by ordering national parks to purge their gift shops of items it deems objectionable. The Interior Department said in a memo last month that gift shops, bookstores and concession stands have until Dec. 19 to empty their shelves of retail items that run […]
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. imposed sanctions on three nephews of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, among others, on Thursday as President Donald Trump looks to inflict further pressure on the South American nation. The new sanctions on Franqui Flores, Carlos Flores and Efrain Campo come a day after Trump announced that the U.S. had seized […]
