Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 36
RINGWOOD, N.J. (AP) — Fire crews battled small wildfires across the Northeast U.S. on Monday, including a blaze in New York and New Jersey that killed a parks employee over the weekend and postponed Veterans Day plans. A quarter-inch of rain fell overnight from Sunday into Monday in a forest area straddling the border between the two states, giving a slight respite to firefighters. The fire is one of several burning on the East Coast amid a lack of much rainfall since September. An employee of the New York State Parks, Recreation, and H...
NEW YORK (AP) — A makeshift aquarium that popped up this summer in a puddle beneath a leaky fire hydrant has been paved over, to the dismay of neighbors who turned the area into a hangout spot and goldfish shrine. The city's Department of Environmental Protection has long said the dribbling hydrant created a safety hazard. Workers filled the earthen area that formerly held the puddle Friday morning, and yellow tape cordoned off a patch of freshly poured concrete around the repaired hydrant, leaving it looking like the city's smallest-ever c...
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee state authorities said Wednesday they are investigating the company that owns a plastics factory where 11 workers were swept away by cataclysmic flooding unleashed by Hurricane Helene. As the nearby Nolichucky River swelled from rainfall, employees in the Impact Plastics factory in Erwin, a small community in rural Tennessee, kept working. Several asserted that they weren't allowed to leave in time to avoid the storm's impact. It wasn't until water flooded into the parking lot and the power went out that the p...
NEW YORK (AP) — Patrick Bertoletti gobbled up 58 hot dogs to win his first men's title Thursday at the annual Nathan's Famous Fourth of July hot dog eating contest, taking advantage of the absence of the event's biggest star. In the women's competition, defending champion Miki Sudo won her 10th title and set a new world record by downing 51 links. Joey "Jaws" Chestnut, the reigning men's champion and winner of 16 out of 17 previous competitions, didn't attend this year over a sponsorship tiff. Instead he competed later in the day against four s...
NEW YORK (AP) — Dozens of protesters took over a building at Columbia University in New York early Tuesday, barricading entrances and unfurling a Palestinian flag from a window in the latest escalation of demonstrations against the Israel-Hamas war on college campuses nationwide. The school promised they would face expulsion. The occupation at Columbia — where protesters shrugged off an ultimatum to abandon a tent encampment Monday or be suspended — unfolded as other universities stepped up efforts to clear out encampments. Police swept throu...
NEW YORK (AP) — Colleges around the U.S. implored pro-Palestinian student protesters to clear out tent encampments with rising levels of urgency Monday as police arrested more demonstrators at the University of Texas and Columbia University said it was beginning to suspend students who defied an ultimatum to disband the encampment there. Dozens of law enforcement officers, many in riot gear, confronted protesters who returned to the University of Texas at Austin on Monday. They quickly arrested six demonstrators and took others into custody one...
LAS VEGAS, N.M. (AP) — Weather conditions described as potentially historic were on tap for New Mexico on Saturday and for the next several days as over 1,400 firefighters and a fleet of airplanes and helicopters worked feverishly to bolster lines around the largest fire burning in the U.S. Many families already have been left homeless and thousands of residents have evacuated due to flames that have charred large swaths of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in northeastern New Mexico. Residents on the fringes of the shifting fire front were holdin...
LAS VEGAS, N.M. (AP) — Wind-whipped flames raced across more of New Mexico's pine-covered mountainsides on Monday, closing in on a town of 13,000 people where some residents hurried to pack their cars with belongings, others hustled to clear brush from around their homes, and police were called in to help evacuate the state's psychiatric hospital. Firefighting crews battled on several fronts to keep the fire, the largest burning in the U.S., from pushing into more populated areas as it fed on the state's drought-parched landscape. The fire h...
New Mexico faces a long and potentially devastating wildfire season, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said Saturday, as Southwestern wildfires cause destruction and force people from their homes. Hundreds of structures were lost in a growing number of wind-driven blazes across drought-stricken New Mexico, Lujan Grisham said Saturday. Over 20 active wildfires were burning in at least 16 of the state's 33 counties, in the wake of winds that gusted up to 90 mph (145 kph) on Friday, Lujan said during a briefing streamed online. "So half the state has a...
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Alec Baldwin fatally shot a cinematographer on a New Mexico film set with a gun a crew member had assured the actor was safe, a tragic mistake that came hours after some workers walked off the job to protest conditions and production issues. An assistant director, Dave Halls, grabbed a prop gun off a cart at a desert movie ranch and handed it to Baldwin during a Thursday rehearsal for the Western film "Rust," according to court records made public Friday. "Cold gun," Halls yelled, declaring the weapon didn't carry live r...
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — The assistant director of the movie that Alec Baldwin was making when he fatally shot a cinematographer was fired from a previous job in 2019 after a gun went off on a set and slightly wounded a member of the film crew, a producer said Monday. The disclosure emerged as producers of Baldwin's movie officially halted filming, and court records showed that investigators seized more than two dozen items from the set on the day after the shooting. In an email statement to The Associated Press, a producer for the movie "...
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Overnight summer camps will be allowed in all 50 states this season, but COVID-19 rules and a pandemic labor crunch mean that many fewer young campers will attend, and those who do will have to observe coronavirus precautions for the second consecutive year. The Southeast is the first region to kick off camps this month, with other parts of the country to follow in July. "Camp might look a little different, but camp is going to look a lot better in 2021 than it did in 2020, when it didn't happen," said Matt Norman of A...
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — The 300-million-year-old shark's teeth were the first sign that it might be a distinct species. The ancient chompers looked less like the spear-like rows of teeth of related species. They were squatter and shorter, less than an inch long, around 2 centimeters. "Great for grasping and crushing prey rather than piercing prey," said discoverer John-Paul Hodnett, who was a graduate student when he unearthed the first fossils of the shark at a dig east of Albuquerque in 2013. This week, Hodnett and a slew of other r...
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — A private Christian camp in northern New Mexico won’t be hosting immigrant children from the U.S.-Mexico border for the foreseeable future, camp officials said Thursday. “At this point we’re not moving forward as an (Emergency Intake Site) location,” chief financial officer Patrick Price told The Associated Press. Earlier this week, a page on the Glorieta Camps website had stated that the organization was asked by the White House and U.S. Health and Human Services Department to house and feed potentially 2,400 unaccompa...
FARMINGTON, N.M. (AP) — At age 86, agriculture teacher Gerald Bonds, of Farmington, New Mexico, has seen plenty of crises during his career. He sees no reason to call it quits over the coronavirus pandemic. Bonds is in his 58th year of teaching at Farmington High School and, like most teachers in his state, has been instructing his students remotely — an arrangement he despises. "I hate it. I want to see the students face to face and talk to them," Bonds said in a video interview. Confronted with the technology headaches of distance lea...
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — The Federal Communications Commission has granted broadcast licenses ideal for high-speed wireless internet to rural tribal governments in New Mexico, Arizona and elsewhere. The 2.5 GHz licenses have been granted to 154 Native American communities so far, the commission announced in a statement Friday. "Few communities face the digital connectivity challenges faced by rural tribes. By prioritizing tribal access to this mid-band spectrum, we are ensuring that tribes can quickly access spectrum to connect their schools, h...
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — A coalition of school districts is challenging the authority of Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham's education secretary to drastically limit in-person instruction, dictate COVID-19 testing procedures and ensure employment for school staff whether they return to work or not. A lawsuit filed Tuesday in state court asked a state judge to limit a litany of measures implemented during the pandemic, from mandating COVID-19 testing of staff to dictating how and when student lunches are distributed. "This is about local c...
EL PASO, Teas (AP) — A man shot in the Aug. 3 attack targeting Hispanics in an El Paso Walmart died after months in the hospital, raising the death toll from the attack to 23, according to a hospital official. "After a nearly nine-month fight, our hearts are heavy as we report Guillermo 'Memo' Garcia, our last remaining patient being treated from the El Paso shooting, has passed away," said Del Sol Medical Center CEO David Shimp. Garcia and his wife Jessica Coca Garcia were fundraising for their daughter's soccer team in the Walmart parking l...
EL PASO, Texas (AP) — A powerful winter storm in the central United States dropped snow as far south as El Paso, Texas, on Wednesday while areas of the Deep South had severe weather through the night, including tornadoes and torrential rains. Winter storm warnings or advisories were in effect from northeastern Oklahoma to the Great North Woods of Maine, the National Weather Service said. Meanwhile, the Storm Prediction Center forecast storms with the potential of generating hail, 60 mph (95 kph) winds and twisters from Mississippi through A...
EL PASO, Texas (AP) — A powerful winter storm in the central United States dropped snow as far south as El Paso, Texas, on Wednesday while areas of the Deep South were at risk of severe weather including tornadoes and torrential rains, forecasters said. Winter storm warnings or advisories were in effect from northeastern Oklahoma to the Great North Woods of Maine Wednesday evening, the National Weather Service said. Meanwhile, the Storm Prediction Center said storms that could generate hail, 60 mph (95 kph) winds and twisters were possible a...
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) — An exodus of migrants fleeing drug cartel violence and corruption in Mexico has mired hundreds of immigrants in ramshackle tent camps across the border from El Paso and brought new chaos to a system of wait lists for asylum seekers to get into the U.S. Migrant tent camps have been growing in size at several border crossings in Ciudad Juarez, driven by a surge in asylum seekers from regions in southern Mexico gripped by cartel violence. One camp in Juarez is populated by about 250 Mexican asylum seekers, who are l...
EL PASO, Texas (AP) — Walmart has quietly hired off-duty officers at its stores in El Paso, Texas, where a gunman police say targeted Mexicans opened fire in a store in August and killed 22 people. Walmart plans Thursday to reopen the store where the attack happened and amid ongoing lawsuits over safety. Walmart didn’t have a guard in the store the day of the mass shooting. The reopening will happen unceremoniously, Walmart spokeswoman Delia Garcia said, and will follow a brief meeting with employees. She declined comment on security mea...
EL PASO, Texas (AP) — An Indian immigrant who lost a third of his weight during a 70-day hunger strike over the rejection of his asylum claim won temporary release Thursday after a year in U.S. detention. Ajay Kumar, 33, bowed with his hands clasped together in a traditional Indian greeting as he walked away from a detainee processing center in El Paso, Texas, with a tracking device around his ankle — a condition of his release. He was accompanied by human rights activists, who had been galvanized by medical personnel force-feeding him. The...
EL PASO, Texas (AP) — The Trump administration is ready to open a tent court on the border to help handle tens of thousands of cases of asylum seekers forced to wait in Mexico, with hearings held entirely by videoconference. The court, or "soft-sided" facility as U.S. officials call it, is scheduled to begin operations Monday in Laredo, Texas. Another is expected to open soon in Brownsville in the Rio Grande Valley, the busiest corridor for illegal crossings. The administration introduced its "Remain in Mexico" policy in San Diego in January an...
SANTA TERESA, N.M. (AP) — Work crews in Arizona and New Mexico forged ahead Friday with construction of taller border fencing funded through a national emergency declaration by President Donald Trump. The work on his hallmark campaign promise involves mostly replacement fencing along a 46-mile stretch of desert west of Santa Teresa, New Mexico, and on 2 miles of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Arizona. At the New Mexico site, about 20 workers placed rebar frames for concrete footers along the path of the wall. A 50-foot crane towered o...
