Sorted by date Results 26 - 50 of 119
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks sank more than 2 percent Thursday, the second day of steep declines around the globe driven by concerns about rising interest rates and trade tensions that could slow economic growth. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 545 points after dropping 831 points Wednesday. The two-day loss of 5.3 percent is the biggest for Dow since February. The S&P 500 is also down more than 5 percent over the two days and after falling for the past six trading days is almost 7 percent below its Sept. 20 high. The recent turbulence i...
NEW YORK (AP) — Facebook said it has purged more than 800 U.S. pages and accounts for spamming users with politically-tinged garbage links and clickbait just weeks ahead of the U.S. midterm elections. The banned accounts and Facebook sites exhibited "coordinated inauthentic behavior" such as working together to make the pages appear more popular than they actually are. This, Facebook said, was designed to mislead users about who they are and what they're doing. The social network said these accounts spread "sensational political content" d...
BOSTON (AP) — Thousands of additional drug cases tainted by a former chemist authorities say was high almost every day she worked at a state drug lab for eight years must be dismissed, Massachusetts' highest court ruled Thursday. The Supreme Judicial Court's decision is the latest twist in a saga that has already resulted in the dismissal of more than 11,000 convictions and exposed that two former state prosecutors had withheld evidence about the scope of Sonja Farak's misconduct. Cases that were tossed previously were those only involving e...
SAN DIEGO (AP) — DNA testing has revealed the shark that attacked a 13-year-old boy last month off a Southern California shore was a great white, according to a report. Scientists gathered the shark's DNA by swabbing the wet suit Keane Webre-Hayes wore when he was bitten while diving for lobsters near Encinitas, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported Wednesday. The bite on Sept. 29 tore his back, shoulder, torso, face and ear. The teen was released from a hospital after surgery and is expected to make a full recovery. Witnesses estimated the s...
BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan (AP) — The problem came two minutes into the flight: The rocket carrying an American and a Russian to the International Space Station failed Thursday, triggering an emergency that sent their capsule into a steep, harrowing fall back to Earth. The crew landed safely on the steppes of Kazakhstan, but the aborted mission dealt another blow to the troubled Russian space program that currently serves as the only way to deliver astronauts to the orbiting outpost. It also was the first such accident for Russia's manned program i...
NEW YORK (AP) — Filmmaker Rory Kennedy couldn't resist the obvious place to open her new documentary on NASA. That's a news clip of her uncle, President John F. Kennedy, challenging the space agency to land a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. Kennedy said she wanted to give people who were not alive in the 1960s a sense of the excitement and energy that surrounded the Apollo missions and space flight in general. The movie about NASA's 60th anniversary, called "Above and Beyond: NASA's Journey to Tomorrow," premieres Saturday at 9 p.m. E...
MOSCOW (AP) — The booster rocket failure that forced an emergency landing for two astronauts headed to the International Space Station was the first launch accident for Russia's manned-space program in 35 years. But several launches of unmanned Progress cargo ships have not gone as planned in the past decade. The astronauts, a Russian and an American, were reported safe, but the failed launch Thursday throws off the schedule for sending crew to the International Space Station. Russia's Soyuz capsules currently are the only way for humans to r...
MIDLAND, Texas (AP) — Drilling booms have come and gone in this oil town for nearly a century. But the frenzy gripping it now is different. Overwhelming. Drilling rigs tower over suburban backyards. There's a housing crunch so severe that rents are up 30 percent in the last year alone. This boom is engulfing the rest of West Texas, extending to areas drilling hasn't touched before. As communities welcome new jobs and business, they're struggling with an onslaught of problems from air pollution to student homelessness. In December, companies i...
(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.) (THE CONVERSATION) After Hurricane Florence, reports started rolling in of “giant mosquito” sightings – and bitings – throughout North Carolina. What’s going on with these mega mosquitoes that can be as big as a quarter? As a mosquito biologist, I often get asked to identify a mosquito based upon someone’s verbal report of the little buggers. I usually do OK with an educated guess based on descriptions like “It had striped legs,...
HEALDSBURG, Calif. (AP) — Authorities in Northern California are looking for a hammer. A really, really big one. The Santa Rosa Press-Democrat says police in Healdsburg in California's wine country are looking for an enormous artwork that vanished over the weekend. The artwork was an 800-pound ball-peen hammer made of metal with a long redwood handle. The hammer measures 21 feet long and the head is 6 feet tall. The piece, valued at $15,000, was loaned by the artist about a year ago to the Healdsburg Community Center. It vanished from the l...
WASHINGTON – October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is reminding customers they can help fund the cause by purchasing the Breast Cancer Research Stamp. These 65-cent self-adhesive semipostal stamps are available year-round in sheets of 20 to help raise funds for breast cancer research. Each stamp is equal to the First-Class Mail 1-ounce postage rate in effect at the time of purchase. The stamps are available at Post Offices nationwide, online at usps.com, b...
Northwestern Oklahoma State University alumna Katrina Henning recently returned to the United States after serving two years in the Peace Corps in Madagascar. The 2016 graduate recently shared a little about her experience to students and faculty in the Science Amphitheatre. Henning, who majored in English and minored in biology while at Northwestern, is from Milton, Delaware. She said she took on this experience because of the travel, and because she wants to attend graduate school, she wanted...
ARDMORE, Okla. (AP) — The state Department of Veterans Affairs plans to build a new veterans center in southern Oklahoma. The agency announced on Wednesday that a new Ardmore facility will replace the city's existing center, The Oklahoman reported . "It appears that the stars and the dollar signs are aligning," said Doug Elliott, executive director of Veterans Affairs. Elliott said the century-old Ardmore center needs to be replaced before it becomes more antiquated. The new center will feature private rooms and bathrooms, and may be r...
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — An Oklahoma man serving three life prison terms in the murders of two girls and his fiancee has lost an appeal of his conviction on a separate assault charge. Kevin Sweat attacked his attorney, Peter Astor, with a razor blade in 2014 as he arrived at court to be sentenced for killing 11-year-old Skyla Whitaker, 13-year-old Taylor Paschal-Placker and 23-year-old Ashley Taylor. Sweat pleaded guilty to the murders in exchange for prosecutors not seeking the death penalty. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals on Thursday d...
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Oklahoma's chances of reaching college football's playoff may have been washed down the Red River last weekend, and there is a good chance the Big 12's championship aspirations went right with them. The Sooners were the clear front-runners to not only win the league but crash the four-team playoff. Their loss to Texas on a last-second field goal dealt them a crushing defeat. Yes, 13 of the 16 teams to reach the playoff the past four years have had a loss, but Oklahoma suddenly finds itself in a rather unenviable p...
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (AP) — Overland Park police have arrested a suspect in a hit-and-run collision that killed two students. The Kansas City Star reports the 45-year-old Olathe man was arrested Thursday and booked into the Johnson County jail on suspicion of failing to stop after an accident resulting in death. Police say the crash on Saturday killed 18-year-old Matthew Bloskey, of Overland Park, and 20-year-old Samuel Siebuhr, of Kansas City, Kansas. Overland Park police say a van belonging to the suspect may have hit Siebuhr's car as both v...
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A retired city clerk has been charged with embezzling more than $36,500 from the Kansas town where she worked for nearly 40 years. U.S. Attorney Stephen McAllister announced an indictment Thursday that accused 69-year-old Carole Sue Coker of stealing the money from Caney. She is charged with mail fraud and bank fraud. Coker, who now lives in Oronogo, Missouri, allegedly kept some cash paid to the city and didn't record all the checks written to the city to cover the thefts. She then made it appear as if the books b...
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A Wichita school's officials are raising concerns about trains stalling for long periods of time on nearby tracks, which is leading students to crawl under boxcars and across the couplings to get home. Hamilton Middle School Principal Justin Kasel told the Wichita Eagle that trains traveling just north of the school sometimes are stopped for up to an hour, tying up traffic. "It can be stuck there between five and even over 60 minutes," Kasel said. More than two-thirds of the school's 600 students don't qualify for a bus, s...
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — Two friends who were convicted of a fatal shooting at a Lawrence motel will serve different sentences. Twenty-year-old Tyrone Carvin was sentenced Wednesday to more than 23 years in prison, while 23-year-old Ramone Singleton was given about 10 years. Both men, from Kansas City, Kansas, were convicted of voluntary manslaughter and other charges in the September 2017 shooting of 23-year-old Cameron Hooks, of Lenexa, and the wounding of two other men. The Lawrence Journal-World reports Carvin received the longer sentence b...
Over the course of 12 months, the U.S. Army discharged more than 500 immigrant enlistees who were recruited across the globe for their language or medical skills and promised a fast track to citizenship in exchange for their service, The Associated Press has found. The decade-old Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest recruiting program was put on hold in 2016 amid concerns that immigrant recruits were not being screened sufficiently. The Army began booting out those enlistees last year without explanation. The AP has interviewed mo...
NEW YORK (AP) — Prosecutors in New York City abandoned part of their sexual assault case against Harvey Weinstein on Thursday after evidence surfaced that a lead police detective coached a witness to keep quiet when she raised doubts about the veracity of one of the allegations. Weinstein, 66, looked on as a judge agreed to dismiss the lone charge related to Lucia Evans, who helped spark the #MeToo movement a year ago when she told The New Yorker that the Hollywood mogul had forced her to perform oral sex in 2004 when she was a college s...
PANAMA CITY, Fla. (AP) — The devastation inflicted by Hurricane Michael came into focus Thursday with rows upon rows of homes found smashed to pieces, and rescue crews began making their way into the stricken areas in hopes of accounting for hundreds of people who may have stayed behind. At least three deaths were blamed on Michael, the most powerful hurricane to hit the continental U.S. in over 50 years, and it wasn't done yet: Though reduced to a tropical storm, it brought flash flooding to North Carolina and Virginia, soaking areas still r...
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — It's one of President Donald Trump's favorite talking points in promoting his administration's success: the record low rate of black unemployment. But on a recent sunny afternoon in Vernon Park in Philadelphia's Germantown neighborhood, that victory seemed hollow. As children laughed on the playground, several black men — some out of work, others homeless — sat or slept on benches nearby. Similar scenes play out across America and are backed by data that counter the positive picture Trump often paints in campa...
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump and Senate Republicans are forecasting nightmarish Democratic "mob rule" to amp up GOP voters for next month's critical midterm elections, flipping the script from complaints that it's Trump and the Tea Party movement who've boosted rowdy and divisive tactics to dangerous levels. Less than a month from voting in which GOP control of Congress is dangling precariously, Republicans are linking comments and actions by Democratic politicians, raucous protesters opposing Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court n...
