U.S./World category, Page 85

WASHINGTON — Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for defense secretary, paid a woman who accused him of sexual assault to head off the threat of a baseless lawsuit, according to Hegseth’s lawyer. Hegseth was accused of sexual assault in 2017 after a speaking appearance at a Republican women’s event...

Firefighters in New York said Sunday that a voluntary evacuation overnight helped them protect more than 160 homes from a stubborn wildfire near the New Jersey border as officials in much of the Northeast coped with hundreds of brush fires in tinder-dry and windy conditions. Communities in New England dealt...

MANAUS, Brazil — Joe Biden toured the drought-shrunken waters of the Amazon River’s greatest tributary Sunday as the first sitting American president to set foot in the legendary rainforest, while the incoming Trump administration seems poised to scale back the U.S. commitment to combating climate change. The massive Amazon region,...

BEIRUT — A rare Israeli airstrike on central Beirut killed Hezbollah’s chief spokesman on Sunday, an official with the militant group said. Earlier, officials said Israeli strikes killed at least 12 people in the Gaza Strip, where Israel has been at war with the Palestinian Hamas for over a year....

BEIJING — Eight people were killed and 17 others injured after a stabbing attack at a vocational school in the eastern Chinese city of Wuxi on Saturday night, local police said. The attack occurred at the Wuxi Vocational Institute of Arts and Technology in Yixing county at around 18:30 local...

KYIV, Ukraine — A high-tech factory in central Russia has created a new, deadly force to attack Ukraine: a small number of highly destructive thermobaric drones surrounded by huge swarms of cheap foam decoys. The plan, which Russia dubbed Operation False Target, is intended to force Ukraine to expend scarce...

BEIRUT — Israeli ground forces reached their deepest point in Lebanon since they invaded six weeks ago before pulling back Saturday after battles with Hezbollah militants, Lebanese state media reported. The clashes and further Israeli bombardment of Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold, came as Lebanese and Hezbollah officials study...

LUCKNOW, India — A fire tore through a neonatal intensive care unit in a hospital in northern India, killing 10 newborn babies and injuring 16 others, authorities said. The fire occurred late Friday at a hospital in Jhansi city in India’s Uttar Pradesh state. Officials said the blaze spread quickly...

LAHORE, Pakistan — A Pakistani province declared a health emergency Friday due to smog and imposed a shutdown in two major cities. Smog has choked Punjab for weeks, sickening nearly 2 million people and shrouding vast swathes of the province in a toxic haze. A senior provincial minister, Marriyum Aurangzeb,...

BEIRUT — Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister on Friday asked Iran to help secure a cease-fire in the war between Israel and Hezbollah and appeared to urge it to convince the militant group to agree to a deal that could require it to pull back from the Israel-Lebanon border. As a...

UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations and other international organizations are bracing for four more years of Donald Trump, who famously tweeted before becoming president the first time that the 193-member U.N. was “just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time.” In his first...

WASHINGTON — Pete Hegseth, a popular Fox News host who is Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Defense, was accused of sexual assault in 2017 after a speaking appearance at a Republican women’s event in Monterey, California, according to a statement released by the city. No charges were...

NEW YORK — A representative for Rudy Giuliani says the former New York City mayor is relinquishing his cherished watches ahead of a Friday deadline to turn over his assets to two former Georgia election workers who won a $148 million defamation judgment against him. A judge last week ordered...

NEW YORK — Three daughters of Malcolm X have accused the CIA, FBI, the New York Police Department and others in a $100 million lawsuit Friday of playing roles in the 1965 assassination of the civil rights leader In the lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court, the daughters — along...

ATHENS, Ga. — A Venezuelan man “went hunting for females on the University of Georgia’s campus” earlier this year and ended up killing nursing student Laken Riley after a struggle, a prosecutor said Friday. A defense attorney said the evidence is circumstantial and doesn’t prove his client is guilty. Jose...

The Texas Supreme Court on Friday ruled that a legislative subpoena cannot be used to stop an execution after Republican and Democratic lawmakers used the novel maneuver to pause Robert Roberson’s lethal injection at the last minute. The ruling addressed a subpoena issued for Roberson by the Texas House Criminal...

BALTIMORE — Harford County is moving to preserve 1,110 acres of agricultural land to meet its goal of preserving 75,000 acres by 2040 as solar farms pose mounting pressure for land use across the state. The 1,110 acres for preservation are outlined in 19 resolutions introduced to the Harford County...

SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras — Belize issued tropical storm warnings for the Central American country’s coast on Friday as Tropical Storm Sara moved through the Caribbean, dousing Honduras’ northern coast with heavy rain. Sustained rain fell overnight in the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula, but there were no signs...

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Three former Memphis police officers charged with murder in the beating of Tyre Nichols will go on trial in April, a judge decided Friday. Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley and Justin Smith have pleaded not guilty to state charges of second-degree murder in the death of Nichols, who...

LOS ANGELES — California has seen its share of bears breaking into cars. But bears caught on camera entering luxury cars tipped off insurers that something wasn’t quite right. In what’s dubbed “Operation Bear Claw,” the California Insurance Department said four Los Angeles residents were arrested Wednesday, accused of defrauding...

HOUSTON — A Texas man charged with trying to provide material support to the Islamic State group and planning violent attacks in Houston appeared in federal court Thursday. Anas Said is accused of offering his home as a safe sanctuary for members of ISIS and saying he wants to take...

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon’s latest report on UFOs has revealed hundreds of new reports of unidentified and unexplained aerial phenomena but no indications suggesting an extraterrestrial origin. The review includes hundreds of cases of misidentified balloons, birds and satellites as well as some that defy easy explanation, such as a...

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A powerful car bomb accidentally detonated at the house of a Pakistani Taliban militant in northwestern Pakistan on Thursday, killing at least two children and five suspected militants, police said. The explosion took place before dawn in the city of Mir Ali in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province when...

WASHINGTON — Suicides in the U.S. military increased in 2023, continuing a long-term trend that the Pentagon has struggled to abate, senior defense officials said. The increase is a bit of a setback after the deaths dipped slightly the previous year. Officials said both the number of suicides and the...