Sorted by date Results 26 - 50 of 53
COLUMBUS, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas woman has been sentenced to life in prison for killing a man whose burned body was found after he reported the woman was threatening to kidnap her children from foster care. Crystal Galloway, 38, of Scammon, must serve a minimum of 50 years before becoming eligible for parole. The sentence was imposed Monday for first-degree murder in the May 2015 stabbing death of Robin Fought, The Joplin Globe (http://bit.ly/2p947ek ) reports. Galloway, who didn't speak at the hearing, also was sentenced to 13 months for a...
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Participants in the Kansas winter wheat tour say it is too early to know the full extent of storm damage on the state's crop. The first day of the annual tour on Tuesday covered wheat fields from Manhattan to Colby. The 70 participating scouts made 222 stops that day. It estimated the average yield at 43 bushels per acre for the first leg of the tour. That is down from 47.1 bushels per acre for the same area a year ago. Some effects of late April freezes were apparent in a big portion of central Kansas, but were o...
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday asked Congress to work with him on extending school choice programs nationwide to benefit millions of students, including low-income African-American and Hispanic children. While Trump gave no specifics on what legislation he is proposing, the statement was the clearest indication yet that he intends to follow through on his campaign promise to fund a $20 billion school choice program. "During my campaign for president, I promised to fight for school choice," Trump said. "Very important." S...
Many U.S. colleges and universities, seeing declining numbers of applications from overseas, are trying to reassure potential international students they will be welcome on campus despite what they see in the news. Schools are ramping up marketing efforts geared toward foreign students to combat growing fears that President Donald Trump's stance on immigration reflects a United States that is becoming less welcoming to foreigners. Nearly half the nation's 25 largest public universities saw undergraduate applications from abroad fall or stagnate...
IRVING, Texas (AP) — Two people died Wednesday in an apparent murder-suicide at a Texas community college, prompting an active-shooter alert that instructed students and employees to barricade themselves in rooms. It was the second deadly attack on a Texas campus this week. Irving police spokesman James McLellan said it doesn't appear anyone else was hurt in the shooting at North Lake College, a two-year public school in suburban Dallas. The college said classes will not resume until Friday. Irving police said on Twitter : "There appears to b...
WACO, Texas (AP) — Baylor University is the focus of a second federal investigation, this one focusing on how the university compiles and reports crimes that occur on campus. The Waco Tribune-Herald reports that a Baylor vice president, Brian Nicholson, sent an email notifying staff that the probe also will include other areas, such as drug and alcohol abuse prevention efforts. The investigation by the U.S. Department of Education follows another one the agency launched in October looking into Baylor's compliance with federal Title IX a...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Environmental and Alaska Native groups sued Wednesday to maintain a U.S. ban on oil and gas exploration in most of the Arctic Ocean and select areas of the Atlantic after President Donald Trump took steps to put the waters back in play for offshore drilling. The drilling ban was a key part of former President Barack Obama's environmental legacy, aimed at protecting polar bears, walrus, ice seals and Native villages that depend on the animals from industrialization and oil spills. Waters of the Atlantic continental s...
DENVER (AP) — A Colorado Senate committee on Wednesday passed a bill to save a state energy agency from extinction — but with caveats that would drastically reduce the agency's renewable energy portfolio and make it easier for some utilities to produce and stockpile natural gas. The latter provision has little to do with the Colorado Energy Office , whose funding expires June 30. But it's a goal pushed by the bill's sponsor, Republican Sen. Ray Scott, who represents a western Colorado region rich in natural gas. "What we are talking about is...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, who last week helped persuade President Donald Trump not to abandon the North American Free Trade Agreement, said Wednesday that the administration would renegotiate the pact with Canada and Mexico with a focus on what has worked and what hasn't. Trump appeared to be on the brink of pulling out of the trade agreement last week after strongly criticizing it during the 2016 campaign as a job-killer. But the former Georgia governor was one of several top officials who helped convince him not to...
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. services companies expanded at a faster pace in April, good news for the overall American economy. The Institute for Supply Management, a trade group of purchasing managers, said Wednesday that its services index rose last month to 57.5 from 55.2 in March. Anything above 50 signals the services sector is growing — something it's done for 88 straight months. Sixteen services industries reported growth last month, led by wholesalers and utilities. Only one industry grouping — covering agriculture, forestry, fishing and h...
HOUSTON (AP) — A man on death row for abducting a sheriff's deputy, keeping him handcuffed inside a patrol car trunk while demanding money from a bank and then killing the officer will serve life in prison instead after Texas' highest criminal court reduced his sentence Wednesday. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals said executing 55-year-old Pedro Solis Sosa for the 1983 slaying would carry "an unacceptable risk" that his punishment would be unconstitutionally cruel because of his intellectual disabilities. A life sentence for a 1983 c...
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Warranties and money-back guarantees, long used to entice buyers of products like hand tools and kitchen gadgets, are now being used to sell something more crucial: pricey new-generation drugs for diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and cancer. Deals being negotiated between drugmakers and the insurers who buy medicines now sometimes include extra rebates — or even full refunds — if drugs don't help patients as expected. It's part of an effort driven by insurers and government health programs to align the cost of care with...
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google is warning users to beware of a phishing scam spread by a fraudulent invitation to share a Google Doc. According to online reports — in particular, a detailed user thread on Reddit — clicking on the share link was taking users to a site that asked permission for a fake app calling itself "Google Docs" to access their accounts. If they agreed, the app would then send additional phishing emails to the users' contacts. Google says it has disabled offending accounts, removed fake pages and updated its Safe Brows...
NEW YORK (AP) — Facebook is stepping up its efforts to keep inappropriate and often violent material — including recent high-profile videos of murders and suicides, hate speech and extremist propaganda — off of its site. On Wednesday, the world's biggest social network said it plans to hire 3,000 more people to review videos and other posts after getting criticized for not responding quickly enough to murders shown on its service. The hires over the next year will be on top of the 4,500 people Facebook already tasks with identifying crimi...
(THE CONVERSATION) Verily – the life sciences research arm of Google parent company Alphabet – wants to track the health of 10,000 people. On April 19, the group announced that it was starting to recruit for Project Baseline, in partnership with Duke and Stanford. Over the course of four years, Project Baseline will sequence participants’ genomes, test their blood, survey them and track biometric data such as heart rate and activity level on a Study Watch – basically, a Fitbit on steroids. What I find perhaps most interesting is their plan to...
(THE CONVERSATION) Big Wall Street companies are using a complicated technology called blockchain to further increase the already lightning-fast speed of international finance. But it’s not just the upper crust of high finance who can benefit from this new technology. Most simply, a blockchain is an inexpensive and transparent way to record transactions. People who don’t know each other – and therefore may not trust each other – can securely exchange money without fear of fraud or theft. Major aid agencies, nonprofits and startup compani...
LARAMIE, Wyo. (AP) — The mountain pine beetle epidemic that swept through the area a few years ago has left its mark, with thousands of acres of trees dead and dying across southeast Wyoming. The beetle's population has declined locally, but scientists are continuing to study the tiny insect in preparation for the next epidemic. A University of Wyoming graduate student is hoping to shed light on the beetle's natural predators while also improving the methods used to study the beetle. "The bark beetle and its natural enemies spend most of t...
LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) — Call it a statistical error: Police say two University of Kentucky students crawled through an air duct to steal a statistics exam from their professor's office but were caught because he was working late. The Lexington Herald-Leader reports (http://bit.ly/2oYEcu4 ) university police cited Henry Lynch II and Troy Kiphuth, both 21, for third-degree burglary and referred the case to Fayette County Circuit Court. University spokesman Jay Blanton told the newspaper the instructor left his office about midnight Tuesday to g...
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Sheriff's deputies had spotted a man walking barefoot down a New Mexico road with his feet full of cactus, so they offered him a ride. Turns out, the man had escaped from the state penitentiary by walking out the front door. So instead of a homeless shelter, the deputies put him back behind bars. The deputies found 30-year-old Raymond Lopez to be the runaway inmate pictured in manhunt flyers. Lopez has been booked at the county jail on charges of escape and concealing identity. Lopez told deputies after he had been c...
ST. LOUIS (AP) — Police said Wednesday they were investigating after a woman attending a St. Louis Cardinals baseball game was grazed in the arm by a stray bullet that apparently originated outside Busch Stadium. The 34-year-old victim was inside the ballpark Tuesday during the game against the Milwaukee Brewers when she felt pain in her arm. She went to a first-aid station for treatment and a bullet was later found near her seat. She had an abrasion on one of her elbows. Todd Porter, 54, of O'Fallon, Illinois, was at the game with his son a...
MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — A black rhinoceros horn stolen from a locked room at the University of Vermont is likely destined for the international black market, said a law enforcement agent with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who has worked on rhino horn trafficking cases in the United States and Europe. Special agent Robert Rothe said Wednesday a drill was used to disable a lock on the door at the university's Torrey Hall in Burlington, where the black rhino horn had been hanging for decades. The theft was discovered April 27. The Wildlife S...
NEW YORK (AP) — Commuters were holding their noses when foul-smelling water rained from the ceiling at New York's Penn Station. Witness video Wednesday showed water overflowing from trash receptacles arranged in a roped-off area in the Long Island Rail Road concourse. Workers outside a restaurant feverishly mopped against the encroaching flood. WNBC reports (http://bit.ly/2pG7RoP ) the liquid contained sewage from a skyscraper above the station. The management company said only that a pipe had leaked and the situation was under control in t...
BOZEMAN, Mont. (AP) — A donkey named Oliver joined several therapy dogs offering stress relief during Finals Week at Montana State University in Bozeman. The 8-year-old brown and white donkey was standing inside the front entrance of the university library on Tuesday. Owner Stephanie Bar tells the Bozeman Daily Chronicle (bit.ly/2qyjVZz) that since it was Oliver's first time at MSU, she wanted to make sure he got a lot of attention. Students petted Oliver, hugged him and took selfies. In another part of the library, students sat on the floor a...
CHALKHILL, Pa. (AP) — Authorities say a drunken driving suspect who was chased by police from Maryland into Pennsylvania identified herself as Hillary Clinton. Pennsylvania State Trooper Robert Politowski says the woman he arrested early Tuesday is actually 36-year-old Holly Lynn Donahoo, of Louisville, Kentucky. She was being chased by sheriff's deputies from Garrett County, Maryland, and Maryland State Police when she drove into Wharton Township, in Pennsylvania's Fayette County. Politowski joined the chase and used spike strips to flatten D...
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A California man had been arrested last month at Los Angeles International Airport for attempting to smuggle 93 songbirds into the country. All of the birds except for eight died during transit. The Orange County Register reports (http://bit.ly/2qrYtrP ) 49-year-old Kurtis Law put the birds in a suitcase in Vietnam, where he has a house. The birds were discovered while Law's suitcase went through an X-ray machine. Law had been detained for questioning and did not claim the birds. He has been charged with smuggling goods i...
