Month: October 2022

By DON BABWIN Associated Press CHICAGO (AP) — Federal prosecutors say AT&T Illinois has agreed to pay a $23 million fine to resolve a probe into its alleged illegal efforts to influence former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan.  Federal prosecutors in Chicago also say Madigan has been indicted in the case. In a news release

By ANNE D’INNOCENZIO AP Retail Writer NEW YORK (AP) — The pace of sales at U.S. retailers was unchanged in September from August as rising prices for rent and food chipped away at money available for other things. Retail sales were flat last month, down from a revised. 0.4% growth in August. The Commerce Department

By SARAH RANKIN and DENISE LAVOIE Associated Press RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — The office of Virginia’s attorney general has handed off jurisdiction in a long-running investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct and other abuses at a hospital that serves vulnerable children. Any new charging decisions are now up to a local prosecutor with a tiny

By JIM SALTER Associated Press ST. LOUIS (AP) — When Abdul-Kaba Abdullah decided to sell his home two years ago, he listed the neatly-kept, four-bedroom house at $175,000 based on presale evaluations. But once a buyer made an offer, an appraiser valued the home at only $150,000, and the bank wouldn’t give a loan for

CAIRO (AP) — At least 10 child leukemia patients in Yemen have died, and dozens more left seriously ill, after being administered expired doses of a cancer treatment in the rebel-held capital, medical officials and workers said on Friday. Yemen’s ruinous conflict, now entering its eighth year, has caused one of the world’s worst humanitarian

By CHINEDU ASADU Associated Press ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — The lawyer for a Nigerian separatist leader facing terrorism charges and accused of instigating violence in the country’s southeast said charges have been discharged by a local court. The lawyer said that a local court dismissed charges against Nnamdi Kanu after a jury faulted the case

By GLENN GAMBOA AP Business Writer NEW YORK (AP) — Dolly Parton proudly accepted the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy at Gotham Hall Thursday night, saying she was “proud and honored to be a part of anything that is going to make the world a better place.” The country superstar was celebrated along with Dallas entrepreneur

By PETER SMITH and DAVID CRARY Associated Press A year after 17 North American missionaries were kidnapped in Haiti, beginning a two-month ordeal before they ultimately went free, the agency that sent them hasn’t made a permanent return, and several other international groups have also scaled back their work there. The kidnapping underscored a deteriorating

By ANDREW SELSKY and SARA BURNETT Associated Press SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Oregon is typically known as a bastion of West Coast liberalism where Democrats are easily elected and a Republican hasn’t served as governor since the 1980s. But with an unusually competitive three-way contest this fall, the Democratic candidate doesn’t seem so assured of

WATERVILLE, Maine (AP) — Two Ukrainians who documented the horrors of the Russian invasion and siege of Mariupol for The Associated Press are being honored with Colby College’s Lovejoy Award in Maine. Mstyslav Chernov and Evgeniy Maloletka continued reporting as the last international journalists in Mariupol, an industrial city on the Sea of Azov. They

By KAREEM CHEHAYEB Associated Press BEIRUT (AP) — France’s foreign minister has urged Lebanon’s political leadership to swiftly elect a new president and warned that a political vacuum could plunge the Mediterranean country into a deeper crisis. The country’s divided parliament has twice failed to elect a new president to succeed President Michel Aoun, whose

ASSOCIATED PRESS BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union’s border agency on Friday sought to put a damning report highlighting its involvement in covering up alleged migrant pushbacks from Greece behind it, saying that any wrongdoings are “practices of the past.” Frontex spoke out a day after the publication of the EU anti-fraud report which also

By GLENN GAMBOA AP Business Writer NEW YORK (AP) — Dolly Parton laughs at the idea that she is some sort of secret philanthropist. Sure, social media sleuths did piece together this week that the country superstar had been quietly paying for the band uniforms of many Tennessee high schools for years. And yes, it

By JOCELYN NOVECK and MARYCLAIRE DALE Associated Press Once again, disgraced mogul Harvey Weinstein sits in a courtroom, on trial in Los Angeles while the reckoning the accusations against him launched marks a significant milestone this month: It’s been five years since a brief hashtag — #MeToo — galvanized a broad social movement. The Associated

LONDON (AP) — Climate protesters threw soup over Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” in London’s National Gallery on Friday to protest fossil fuel extraction, but caused no damage to the glass-covered painting. The group Just Stop Oil, which wants the British government to halt new oil and gas projects, said activists dumped two cans of tomato

By KEVIN SCHEMBRI ORLAND and MATTHEW AGIUS Associated Press VALLETTA, Malta (AP) — A judge in Malta sentenced two brothers to 40 years in prison each after they abruptly reversed course and pleaded guilty Friday to the car-bomb murder of an anti-corruption journalist, which had shocked Europe and triggered angry protests in Malta. Hours earlier,

By ALEXANDER TURNBULL Associated Press PARIS (AP) — Continuing strikes at TotalEnergies group refineries in France are seriously disrupting fuel supplies as the left-wing CGT union has rejected a deal over a pay increase. Two other unions, the CFDT and CFE-CGC which represent a majority of the group’s French workers, agreed overnight with TotalEnergies on

BERLIN (AP) — The Islamic call to prayer is set to sound for the first time from one of Germany’s biggest mosques in Cologne on Friday — but at limited volume. It is part of a project agreed with authorities in the city that has one of the country’s biggest Muslim communities. Authorities in Germany’s

By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER AP Economics Writer WASHINGTON (AP) — What keeps driving inflation so high? The answer, it seems, is nearly everything. Supply chain snarls and parts shortages inflated the cost of factory goods when the economy rocketed out of the pandemic recession two years ago. Then it was a surge in consumer spending fueled

By DAVID PITT Associated Press DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Friday proposed sweeping changes in the way chicken and turkey meat is processed that are intended to reduce illnesses from food contamination but could require meat companies to make extensive changes to their operations. Despite decades of efforts to

By JUAN A. LOZANO Associated Press HOUSTON (AP) — A federal judge has ruled that the current version of a federal policy that prevents the deportation of hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought to the U.S. as children can continue, at least temporarily. U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen said Friday that the policy — which

By SIBI ARASU Associated Press BENGALURU, India (AP) — India’s renewables sector is booming, with the country projected to add 35 to 40 gigawatts of renewable energy annually until 2030, enough to power up to 30 million more homes each year, a report said Thursday. The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis and Climate

By KARL RITTER Associated Press STOCKHOLM (AP) — Three Swedish center-right parties say they have reached a deal to form a coalition government that would not include the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats but would depend on its support in Parliament. The agreement comes after a month of talks following Sept. 11 elections that gave the Sweden