Sorted by date Results 26 - 45 of 45
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — Lawrence city commissioners appear open to a proposal to significantly reduce the fines for possession of small amounts of marijuana in the city. During a work session Tuesday, the commission reviewed a draft ordinance that proposed reducing the minimum fine for possessing 32 grams or less of marijuana from $200 to $50 for first-time offenders. The Lawrence Journal-World reports commissioners indicated they were interested in reducing the fine to $1 for first- and second-time offenders. Court costs would remain $63. M...
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — A Republican lawmaker in Arkansas, which has some of the strictest abortion prohibitions in the country, wants the state to go even further with a measure that would prohibit the procedure 18 weeks into a pregnancy. The proposed 18-week ban filed this week would further prohibit abortions in a state where the procedure is already banned at 20 weeks. The latest measure includes an exception for medical emergencies, but not for rape or incest. "We need to make a statement that life is precious...We're well into the s...
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. food regulators say they weren't able to identify a contamination source for a food poisoning outbreak that prompted them to warn people to avoid romaine lettuce this fall . The Food and Drug Administration says it wasn't able to determine how a water reservoir on a Santa Barbara County, California, farm became contaminated with E. coli. It also says the water reservoir doesn't explain how lettuce from other farms may have been contaminated. The FDA says leafy greens' short shelf-life makes it difficult to investigate s...
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — An effort to add 40 more conditions that would qualify patients to use medical marijuana in Arkansas has failed before a legislative committee. The proposal expanding the qualifying medical conditions failed before the House Rules Committee on Wednesday after it did not receive a motion to advance the bill to the House floor. The measure would have added asthma, attention deficit disorder, autism, bipolar disorder, Parkinson's disease, traumatic brain injury and several others conditions to the qualifying conditions f...
Think of it as decontaminating yourself. Hospitalized patients who harbor certain superbugs can cut their risk of developing full-blown infections if they swab medicated goo in their nose and use special soap and mouthwash for six months after going home, a study found. It's a low-tech approach to a big problem: About 5 percent of patients have MRSA — antibiotic-resistant Staph bacteria — lurking on their skin or in their noses, putting them at high risk of developing an infection while recovering from an illness or an operation. These can aff...
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — New Mexico is reversing course on its plans to charge some patients covered by Medicaid a monthly insurance premium of $10 and co-payments of $8 on certain brand-name drugs and visits to the emergency room for routine medical care. Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced the decision Wednesday to seek a reversal of provisions instituted by her Republican predecessor that were designed to conserve state spending on Medicaid. Lujan Grisham says the new federally approved charges and limitations on eligibility t...
(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.) (THE CONVERSATION) Valentine cards are filled with expressions of unequivocal adoration and appreciation. That’s fitting for the holiday set aside to express love and reaffirm commitment to one’s romantic partner. But what if there’s more going on below the surface of these adoring declarations? How might thoughts and feelings that people are not even aware of shape their romantic relationships? We are two psychology resea...
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA's Opportunity, the Mars rover that was built to operate for just three months but kept going and going, rolling across the rocky red soil, was pronounced dead Wednesday, 15 years after it landed on the planet. The six-wheeled vehicle that helped gather critical evidence that ancient Mars might have been hospitable to life was remarkably spry up until eight months ago, when it was finally doomed by a ferocious dust storm. Flight controllers tried numerous times to make contact, and sent one final series of recove...
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — President Donald Trump's support for the coal industry — and for a particular power plant — will face a test this week when a utility board he appoints considers whether to close a coal-fired Kentucky plant whose suppliers include a mine owned by one of his campaign donors. An environmental assessment by the Tennessee Valley Authority recommends shuttering the remaining coal-fired unit at the Paradise Fossil Plant along the Green River in Muhlenberg County, an area that was once the country's top coal producer and was i...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Asserting congressional authority over war-making powers, the House passed a resolution Wednesday that would force the administration to withdraw U.S. troops from involvement in Yemen, in a rebuke of President Donald Trump's alliance with the Saudi-led coalition behind the military intervention. Lawmakers in both parties are increasingly uneasy over the humanitarian crisis in Yemen and skeptical of the U.S. partnership with that coalition, especially in light of Saudi Arabia's role in the killing of Washington Post c...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Paul Manafort intentionally lied to investigators and a federal grand jury in the special counsel in the Russia probe, a judge ruled Wednesday. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson was another loss for the former Trump campaign chairman, who faces years in prison in two separate criminal cases stemming from special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. It hurts Manafort's chance of receiving a reduced sentence, though Jackson said she would decide the exact impact during his sentencing next month. The f...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Even before seeing a final deal or agreeing to seal it, President Donald Trump labored on Wednesday to frame the congressional agreement on border security as a political win, never mind that it contains only a fraction of the billions for a "great, powerful wall" that he's been demanding for months. Trump is expected to grudgingly accept the agreement, which would avert another government shutdown and give him what Republicans have been describing as a "down payment" on his signature campaign pledge. He said Wednesday that h...
WASHINGTON (AP) — A former U.S. Air Force counterintelligence specialist who defected to Iran despite warnings from the FBI has been charged with revealing classified information to the Tehran government, including the code name and secret mission of a Pentagon program, prosecutors said Wednesday. The Justice Department also accused Monica Elfriede Witt, 39, of betraying former colleagues in the U.S. intelligence community by feeding details about their personal and professional lives to Iran. Four hackers linked to the Iranian government, c...
RENO, Nev. (AP) — The longtime director of the international center at the University of Nevada in Reno is the latest woman to accuse Nobel Peace Prize winner and former Costa Rican President Oscar Arias of sexual misconduct. Carina Black said in interviews this week that Arias boxed her in against a wall inside an elevator at the university in 1998 and then tried to kiss her. She said it happened after she spent a day escorting Arias to meetings and an evening speaking engagement at the university. "I just smacked him in the face and pushed h...
WASHINGTON (AP) — It's not just about President Donald Trump's border wall. The border security issues that sparked a 35-day government shutdown are but one element of a massive $330 billion-plus spending measure that wraps seven bills into one, funding nine Cabinet agencies, including the departments of Justice, State, Agriculture, and Commerce. It also contains a variety of other provisions, touching on Medicaid, pesticides and even the permitted length of sugar beet trucks in rural Oregon. While full details haven't been released, h...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The government surpassed a dubious milestone this week: Its debt topped $22 trillion — that's trillion, with a "t'' — for the first time. Piles of federal debt have been growing ever higher for years, fueled by accumulating annual deficits, which themselves have been driven by tax cuts, government spending increases and the mounting costs of Medicare and Social Security and interest on the debt itself. Under President Donald Trump, the national debt has topped $20 trillion (September 2017) $21 trillion (March 2018) and now $...
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Lawmakers in at least seven states have introduced legislation to address the unsolved deaths and disappearances of numerous Native American women and girls. The legislation calls for state-funded task forces and other actions amid deepening concerns that law enforcement agencies lack the data and resources to understand the scope of the crisis . On some reservations, federal studies have shown Native American women are killed at more than 10 times the national average. "This is not about a trend that is popular this y...
A man accused of killing his ex-girlfriend and dumping her body in a suitcase in Connecticut is a citizen of Portugal who has been in the U.S. illegally for more than a year, federal authorities said Wednesday as the victim's loved ones gathered for her funeral. Javier Da Silva Rojas, who had been living in New York City, was taken into custody Monday and charged with kidnapping resulting in death in the killing of 24-year-old Valerie Reyes, of New Rochelle, New York. The charge carries the possibility of the death penalty. Da Silva, also 24, e...
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — A suicide car bomber claimed by an al-Qaida-linked group attacked a bus carrying members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard paramilitary force Wednesday, killing at least 27 people and wounding 13 others, state media reported. Tehran immediately linked the attack in Iran's restive southeastern Sistan and Baluchistan province to an ongoing U.S.-led conference in Warsaw largely focused on Iran, just two days after the nation marked the 40th anniversary of its 1979 Islamic Revolution. The bombing also raised the specter of p...
NEW YORK (AP) — In the world of corrections, there are inmates who pose security risks, and then there's El Chapo. Drug lord Joaquin Guzman has an unparalleled record of jailbreaks, having escaped two high-security Mexican prisons before his ultimate capture and extradition to the United States. So with Guzman convicted Tuesday of drug trafficking and staring at an expected life sentence, where will the U.S. imprison a larger-than-life kingpin with a Houdini-like tendency to slip away? Experts say Guzman seems the ideal candidate for the f...
