U.S./World category, Page 386

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran released a prominent actress from an Oscar-winning film on Wednesday, nearly three weeks after she was jailed for criticizing a crackdown on anti-government protests, local reports said. Iran’s semi-official ISNA news agency said Taraneh Alidoosti, the 38-year-old star of Asghar Farhadi’s Oscar-winning 2016 film,...

BEIJING — Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is pushing for closer economic ties on a visit to China that seeks to sidestep territorial disputes in the South China Sea. The countries have both been rocked by economic crises linked to the COVID-19 pandemic, but are looking to recharge investments in...

LONDON — British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, in his first major speech of 2023 on Wednesday, pledged to halve inflation, grow the U.K. economy and stop illegal immigration. In a speech setting out the Conservative government’s priorities for the year ahead, Sunak focused on tackling the U.K.’s slowing economy and...

WASHINGTON — Republican leader Kevin McCarthy surely could have seen defeat coming: The wave that swamped him has been building for years. In 2015, attacks from the right wing drove House Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio to quit in frustration. Boehner’s successor, Rep. Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, stuck...

BOSTON — The mastermind of the nationwide college admissions bribery scheme that ensnared celebrities, prominent businesspeople and other parents who used their wealth and privilege to buy their kids’ way into top-tier schools was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison Wednesday. The punishment for Rick Singer, 62, is the...

NEW YORK — It was small, as Washington celebrations go — two senior Biden administration advisers gathered with program participants near the White House on a Thursday afternoon in December to mark the end of a little-known initiative with a budget of less than $8 million. The impact of The...

NEW YORK — Many of the conservative prelates who dominate the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops were appointed by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. His recent death deprives them of a symbolic figurehead but is unlikely to weaken their collective power or end the culture wars that have divided the USCCB,...

DES MOINES, Iowa — The Mega Millions jackpot increased to an estimated $940 million after another drawing resulted in plenty of losers but not a single grand prize winner. The numbers drawn late Tuesday were: 25, 29, 33, 41, 44 and gold Mega Ball 18. The next drawing is scheduled...

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — An airline ground crew worker was pulled into the engine of a plane during a fatal accident at an Alabama airport, authorities said. The National Transportation Safety Board released the additional information about the Saturday accident at the Montgomery Regional Airport that claimed the life of an...

BONNE TERRE, Mo. — A Missouri inmate was put to death Tuesday for a 2003 killing, becoming what is believed to be the first transgender woman executed in the U.S. Amber McLaughlin, 49, was convicted of stalking and killing a former girlfriend, then dumping the body near the Mississippi River...

MADISON, Wis. — The former chairman of the Wisconsin Republican Party said Republican Sen. Ron Johnson spoke to him weeks before Joe Biden assumed the presidency about having the state’s GOP-controlled Legislature, rather than voters, choose Wisconsin’s presidential electors, according to newly released documents from closed-door testimony to the House...

WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday finalized a rule change that allows women seeking abortion pills to get them through the mail, replacing a long-standing requirement that they pick up the medicine in person. The Biden administration implemented the change last year, announcing it would no longer...

JACKSON, Miss. — In Mississippi, where elected officials have a long history of praising self-sufficiency and condemning federal antipoverty programs, a welfare scandal has exposed how millions of dollars were diverted to the rich and powerful — including pro athletes — instead of helping some of the neediest people in...

KYIV, Ukraine — Drone advances in Ukraine have accelerated a long-anticipated technology trend that could soon bring the world’s first fully autonomous fighting robots to the battlefield, inaugurating a new age of warfare. The longer the war lasts, the more likely it becomes that drones will be used to identify,...

KYIV, Ukraine — Emergency crews on Tuesday sifted through the rubble of a building struck by Ukrainian rockets, killing at least 63 Russian soldiers barracked there, in the latest blow to the Kremlin’s war strategy as Ukraine says Moscow’s tactics could be shifting. An Associated Press video of the scene...

The number of young kids, especially toddlers, who accidentally ate marijuana-laced treats rose sharply over five years as pot became legal in more places in the U.S., according to a study published Tuesday. More than 7,000 confirmed cases of kids younger than 6 eating marijuana edibles were reported to the...

Forty-seven. That’s how many days of child care Kathryn Anne Edwards’ 3-year-old son has missed in the past year. RSV, covid-19 and two bouts of the dreaded preschool scourge of hand, foot and mouth disease struck one after another. The illnesses were so disruptive that the labor economist quit her...

DES MOINES, Iowa — An estimated $785 million Mega Millions jackpot set for Tuesday night will give lottery players a chance to start the new year with a lucrative bang. The big prize is the sixth-largest jackpot in U.S. history and has grown so large because no one has matched...

ST. LOUIS — Unless Missouri Gov. Mike Parson grants clemency, Amber McLaughlin, 49, will become the first openly transgender woman executed in the U.S. She is scheduled to die by injection Tuesday for killing a former girlfriend in 2003. McLaughlin’s attorney, Larry Komp, said there are no court appeals pending....

VATICAN CITY — Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s longtime personal secretary has written a tell-all book that his publisher on Monday promised would tell the truth about the “blatant calumnies,” “dark maneuvers,” mysteries and scandals that sullied the reputation of a pontiff best known for his historic resignation. Archbishop Georg Gaenswein’s...

WASHINGTON — When lawyers argue before the Supreme Court, a small white light goes on to tell them when their time is almost expired and then a red light signals when they should stop. But arguments this term are extending well beyond the red light’s cue. Arguments that usually lasted...

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Israeli forces killed two Palestinians, including a man claimed by an armed group as a member, during a confrontation that erupted early Monday when troops entered a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian health officials said. The two men were killed in the village...

COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Lise Nørgaard, a screenwriter who penned the popular epic television drama “Matador” about the lives of ordinary Danish families in a fictitious provincial town during the recession of the 1930s and the hard times of World War II, has died. She was 105. Nørgaard died Sunday after...