Sorted by date Results 26 - 50 of 71
HOUSTON (AP) — The U.S. government carefully designed a path of least resistance to building a border wall in Texas, picking a wildlife refuge and other places it already owns or controls to quickly begin construction. All it needed was Congress to approve the money. Then came Harvey. President Donald Trump's administration must now grapple with a storm that devastated the Texas Gulf Coast, with some areas still underwater and tens of thousands of people forced from their homes. Rebuilding will require billions of dollars to start — and may...
CHICAGO (AP) — Simeon Wright, who was with his cousin Emmett Till when the Chicago boy was kidnapped in 1955 after whistling at a white woman in Mississippi, has died. He was 74. Till, who was 14, spent the summer of 1955 visiting relatives in Mississippi and was kidnapped, tortured and killed after whistling at a white woman working at a store in the rural hamlet of Money. His death galvanized the civil rights movement when his mother, Mamie Till Mobley, insisted on an open-casket funeral in Chicago to show the world her son's mutilated b...
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazilian and French authorities said Tuesday they uncovered an international corruption scheme aimed at buying votes in awarding the 2016 Olympics. It is the latest allegation to sully the legacy of the Rio Games, the first Olympics in South America. The disclosures came as police in Rio de Janeiro raided the home of Brazilian Olympic Committee President Carlos Nuzman. They emerged with suitcases, documents and a computer. Police said detention warrants had been issued for Nuzman and an associate, businessman Arthur Cesar...
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The Latest on North Korea's nuclear test and the world reaction (all times local): 3:45 a.m. The U.N. secretary-general is warning the U.S. and North Korea that "confrontational rhetoric may lead to unintended consequences" and stressing that the nuclear crisis must be solved diplomatically. Antonio Guterres says it's "absolutely crucial" that the U.N. Security Council is united in dealing with North Korea's nuclear and missile tests and that the U.S., Russia, China, Japan and South Korea use one strategy. Guterres tol...
BEAUMONT, Texas (AP) — His three vehicles flooded by Hurricane Harvey, Jason Bell checked at one car-rental office only to find about 2,500 people ahead of him on the waiting list. When he tried a more out-of-the-way location, the reservations still numbered about 300. Many other storm victims have the same problem. Tens of thousands of personal vehicles were inundated by floodwaters or smashed by wind-tossed objects, creating a huge demand for rentals that has put the cars in painfully short supply in the Houston area and across eastern T...
HOUSTON (AP) — As a parade of motorists rolled down their windows on the edges of a Houston Home Depot parking lot offering cash, the crowd of day laborers had slowly thinned to about a dozen by mid-morning. The workers who were already gone were off to tear out soggy carpeting, carry ruined sofas to the curb and saw apart mold-infested drywall. Those who still remained knew they were hot commodities and weren't going to settle for low offers. The owner of a car dealership shook his head and drove off after his $10-an-hour proposal to clean f...
BEIRUT (AP) — The Latest on developments in Syria (all times local): 6:15 p.m. A Kremlin spokesman says President Vladimir Putin has sent his congratulations to Syrian President Bashar Assad after government forces breached the nearly three-year Islamic State siege of the eastern city of Deir el-Zour. Dmitry Peskov told reporters Tuesday that Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu had briefed Putin on "the completion of the operation to break the siege" of Deir el-Zour. Putin hailed it as an "important strategic victory" and sent a telegram t...
NEW YORK (AP) — Beyonce, Blake Shelton, Barbra Streisand and Oprah Winfrey will headline a one-hour benefit telethon to benefit Hurricane Harvey victims that will be simulcast next week on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and CMT. The event will be telecast live at 8 p.m. Eastern on Sept. 12, and on tape delay at 8 p.m. on the West Coast. It is being organized by Houston rap artist Bun B and Scooter Braun, founder of SB Projects. The show will also be streamed live on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. George Clooney, Matthew McConaughey, Dennis Quaid, Julia R...
LONDON (AP) — Four serving members of the army were arrested under the Terrorism Act on suspicion of being members of a banned far-right group, British defense officials and police said Tuesday. The West Midlands Counterterrorism Unit said officers had arrested four people in central England alleged to be members of the neo-Nazi group National Action. The group is banned in the U.K., and an official list of banned groups describes it as "virulently racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic." The force said the men were suspected of "being c...
KUTUPALONG, Bangladesh (AP) — A massive influx of Rohingya refugees fleeing recent violence in Myanmar has pushed aid services in Bangladesh to the brink, with established camps already beyond capacity, aid workers said Tuesday. The U.N. refugee agency said a total of 123,000 refugees have fled western Myanmar since Aug. 25. "The numbers are very worrying. They are going up very quickly," said UNHCR spokeswoman Vivian Tan. The agency was pleading for assistance, saying it needed more land so it could set up new camps to accommodate refugees who...
MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin refrained from criticizing U.S. President Donald Trump at a news conference in China on Tuesday, but said a decision to shutter Russian diplomatic outposts in the U.S. was poorly handled. Speaking at a news conference during a summit in China on Tuesday, Putin dismissed as "naive" a question about whether he was disappointed in Trump. In comments carried by Russian news agencies, Putin said Trump is "not my bride, and I'm not his groom." Asked how Russia would feel if Trump were impeached, Putin s...
HOUSTON (AP) — One couple displaced by Harvey managed to get a hotel room, but got kicked out after one night for lacking state identification that was lost to the flooding. A man whose cellphone was wrecked by floodwater is staying at a convention center, waiting for government offices to reopen Tuesday. While the number of evacuees seeking refuge in Houston's emergency shelters has dwindled, many thousands of people are still in dire need of housing. Some returned to complexes inundated with sewage and mud. Others are staying with family a...
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korean President Moon Jae-in took office four months ago with plans to reach out to North Korea in a way his conservative predecessors did not in the previous decade. Two ICBM launches and one nuclear test later, his government is ramping up its defenses, with some officials even considering asking the United States to bring back tactical nuclear weapons a generation after their removal from the Korean Peninsula. Seoul's new interest in stronger weapons received a boost Tuesday when the Trump administration a...
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — With Seoul expecting another North Korean missile test, South Korean warships conducted live-fire exercises at sea on Tuesday in a second straight day of military swagger from a nation still rattled by the North's biggest-ever nuclear test. The test on Sunday, which North Korea said was a hydrogen bomb, was a huge advance in the North's push for nuclear-tipped missiles capable of hitting the United States. It has also resulted in South Korea boosting its own military capabilities. Washington and Seoul agreed to lift re...
BEIJING (AP) — China has the economic tools to pressure North Korea but fears pushing Kim Jong Un's government so hard it collapses. Though China has long been the North's main trading partner and diplomatic protector, Kim's nuclear and missile tests have alienated Chinese leaders, who supported last month's U.N. sanctions that slash North Korean revenue by banning sales of coal and iron ore. President Donald Trump and others have called on China to use its leverage to do more to halt the North's nuclear development. Beijing tried to head o...
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — University of Kansas police have found a stolen, loaded gun in a bathroom stall in an academic building on campus. Deputy Police Chief James Anguiano said the .38-caliber revolver was discovered Tuesday morning in Wescoe Hall. He said both a student and a graduate teaching assistant had seen the firearm. Anguiano said a check of the serial number showed the gun was stolen in Olathe, Kansas. He did not have more details. It was the second report in two months of an unattended gun being found in a university bathroom. A W...
HOUSTON (AP) — The Latest on the aftermath of Harvey (all times local): 6:30 p.m. The nation's largest oil refinery is starting to reboot after shutting down ahead of Harvey's onslaught. Motiva Enterprises says its Port Arthur, Texas, refinery should be running at 40 percent of capacity by Monday, producing more fuel than other refineries running at full throttle. At full capacity, the Saudi company's Port Arthur facility can process more than 600,000 barrels of oil per day — equivalent to 25.2 million gallons (95.4 liters). San Ant...
Hurricane Harvey began with raging winds, but its legacy will be water. Seemingly endless, relentlessly insidious water — a staggering 40 inches or more that swamped parts of Houston in just five days. Harvey scooped tons of water from the sea and hurled it down on the nation's fourth-largest city, drowning vast swathes of the landscape and battering it with almost a year's worth of rainfall. Rooftops became islands poking up through swirling floodwaters. Thousands of houses were destroyed, and tens of thousands more, soaked and pounded by t...
BROOKVILLE, Ind. (AP) — State officials are hosting two meetings this month in southeastern Indiana about the state's ongoing efforts to monitor wild deer for bovine tuberculosis. The public meetings organized by the Department of Natural Resources and the State Board of Animal Health come as the state is planning to create a new bovine tuberculosis surveillance zone in Franklin County and adjacent Fayette County. Such surveillance involves testing lymph nodes from deer taken by hunters for signs of bovine tuberculosis. That chronic b...
TONGANOXIE, Kan. (AP) — Tyson Foods Inc. will invest $320 million in a new chicken-processing plant in northeastern Kansas employing 1,600 people so that it can keep up with a growing consumer demand for fresh poultry, the company and state officials announced Tuesday. The Springdale, Arkansas-based meat producer unveiled its plans during a news conference in Tonganoxie with Gov. Sam Brownback and other state and local officials. The company plans to build the plant outside the town of around 5,300 residents about 30 miles (48 kilometers) w...
ORANGE, Mass. (AP) — A Massachusetts agricultural festival already known for its sustainable practices is taking it one step further this year by collecting and recycling human urine. Organizers of the North Quabbin Garlic & Arts Festival tell The Telegram & Gazette (http://bit.ly/2xLrv6s ) the urine will eventually fertilize hay in the field in Orange on which the event is held. Founder Deborah Habib says the festival scheduled for Sept. 23 and 24 attracts more than 10,000 people, yet only produces three bags of trash. Habib hopes to c...
Seed saving is precisely that. Gathering seed saves money for the next planting season and also saves genetic strains that may have originated generations ago in family gardens. But it takes planning and good timing. "Seed saving has always been a common way to save seeds that were adapted to local climates or that had local historical value," said John Porter, an educator with University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension. "The practice has become much more popular with the increase of home food gardening and interest in heirlooms over the last...
(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.) (THE CONVERSATION) It is too early to know how many animals were affected by the severe weather spawned by Hurricane Harvey. But it is likely that millions of pets and livestock animals were impacted by this disaster. Now Irma is brewing in the Caribbean. According to the American Veterinary Medical Association’s pet ownership calculator, more than 30 percent of metro Houston’s two million households owned at least one dog or cat...
OLATHE, Kan. (AP) — A suburban Kansas City man has admitted to driving under the influence in a crash that killed a woman who worked with special needs children. The Kansas City Star reports that 28-year-old James McAllister, of Overland Park, pleaded guilty to a felony charge of involuntary manslaughter in the death of 24-year-old Caitlin Vogel of Stilwell. He also pleaded guilty to driving without a court-ordered ignition interlock device. Authorities say McAllister ran a stop sign in May 2016, causing his sport utility vehicle to b...
BENTONVILLE, Ark. (AP) — Officials in Benton County are reviewing plans for a possible marijuana cultivation facility in the county as the state moves forward in implementing the sales of medical marijuana. The Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports that Benton County's planning board has a hearing set for Wednesday for a proposed facility to grow marijuana. County Judge Barry Moehring says the county's authority on such a facility is limited to applying land-use regulations. Arkansas voters in November approved legalizing medical m...
