Month: June 2023

NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge in New York City gave preliminary approval Monday to a $290 million deal that JPMorgan Chase reached with sex victims of financier Jeffrey Epstein. Judge Jed S. Rakoff praised lawyers on both sides for working out the deal announced earlier this month. He called it a “really fine

By LARRY NEUMEISTER Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — A Florida man who dubbed himself the “Wolf of Airbnb” has pleaded guilty to a wire fraud charge for defrauding landlords and cheating a government pandemic program. Konrad Bicher entered the plea Monday in Manhattan federal court, admitting he gained about $2 million illegally. He agreed

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Police say four people found dead in a burned down Little Rock house were killed by gunshot wounds, including one self-inflicted. Little Rock Police on Monday released the cause of death for the four people found in the charred remains of a house in southwest Little Rock early Friday morning.

By ISABELLA O’MALLEY Associated Press An unexpected culprit toppled beach chairs along the sand at normally calm Clearwater Beach, Florida, last Wednesday. West Coast surfers might snicker at the cause, but the National Weather Service confirms the rare 4-foot (1.2 meter) wave was caused by a kind of tsunami, just not the kind you usually

NEW YORK (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris has visited the Stonewall Inn national monument to pay tribute to activists at the site of a watershed moment in the gay rights movement.And she is speaking out as state lawmakers around the U.S. have introduced or pass hundreds of bills this year that whittle away at

By MANUEL RUEDA Associated Press BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Colombia’s president has handed out 86 medals to soldiers, Indigenous volunteers and others who helped rescue four children who spent 40 days on their own in the jungle after a plane crash. President Gustvao Petro on Monday described the search as an example of how Western

By NICK EL HAJJ Associated Press ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The red carpet unfurled Monday in Abu Dhabi for Hollywood action megastar Tom Cruise, who was on hand for the Middle Eastern premiere of “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One.” Cruise was met by an enthusiastic crowd of fans and movie

By LOLITA C. BALDOR and MATTHEW LEE Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. officials say the Pentagon will announce it is sending up to $500 million in military aid to Ukraine, including more than 50 heavily armored vehicles and an infusion of missiles for air defense systems. The aid comes as Ukrainian and Western leaders

FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) — Five teenagers were killed when their car ran off a curving street and landed in a southwest Florida retention pond where it went underwater, authorities said. It happened either late Sunday or early Monday, killing everyone inside. The crumpled Kia sedan was pulled from the water on Monday. On Tuesday

By EDITH M. LEDERER Associated Press UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The first U.N. independent investigator to visit the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay said Monday the 30 men held there are subject “to ongoing cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under international law.” The investigator, Irish law professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, said at a news

Jesse Watters will fill the Fox News Channel time slot left vacant by the firing of Tucker Carlson, part of a dramatic revamp of the network’s evening lineup announced on Monday. Greg Gutfeld’s late-night show that combines news and comedy will move up an hour to start at 10 p.m. Eastern, displacing Laura Ingraham. She’ll

By BERENICE BAUTISTA Associated Press MEXICO CITY (AP) — Diego Luna has mixed emotions about the looming end of his Star Wars series “Andor.” The Mexican actor is a possible candidate for an Emmy nomination in the category of lead actor in a drama series for role as a thief-turned-spy in the Disney+ series. If

WOODY CREEK, Colo. (AP) — Jim Crown, an executive and philanthropist who recently announced an effort to rally other Chicago business leaders to help fight violent crime, has died in a car crash on a racing track in Colorado. He was 70. The Pitkin County coroner’s office says Crown, a grandson of industrialist Henry Crown

SOUTHPORT, N.C. (AP) — Officials say a pilot was killed Sunday when a single-engine plane crashed into a home a few blocks from a North Carolina airport. They say three people inside the home at the time escaped without injury. Southport Fire Chief Charles Drew says firefighters found the plane fully engulfed in flames. Drew

A white woman accused of firing through her door and fatally shooting a Black mother in front of her 9-year-old son in central Florida was charged Monday with manslaughter and assault. Susan Lorincz was arrested earlier this month following the fatal shooting of Ajike Owens in Ocala, Florida. She was formally charged with one count

By KEN MAGUIRE AP Sports Writer LONDON (AP) — Major League Baseball wants to grow in Europe and is looking for ways to connect with the local fans. The league hopes to stage games in Paris in 2025 and sees fashion as a way to create more interest with French fans. Caps and jerseys with

By JAKE OFFENHARTZ Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — New York’s former lieutenant governor and longtime civic leader Richard Ravitch has died at the age of 89. Ravitch was best known for steering New York through the fiscal crisis of the 1970s and helping to stabilize the MTA in the early 1980s. He remained an

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Swedish government investigators on Monday launched a probe into a roller coaster accident that killed one person and injured nine at the country’s oldest amusement park. The Gröna Lund park was closed for a week after the accident Sunday when a roller coaster train partially derailed and sent some passengers plunging to

AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) — The Maine House has voted in favor of a bill to ensure 16- and 17-year-olds can receive gender-affirming hormone therapy without parental consent in some situations. The bill, approved 73-60 on Monday, allows teens to undergo treatment without parental consent if they are diagnosed with gender dysphoria, are experiencing harm and

NEW YORK (AP) — New York City will add the festival of Diwali to the list of public school holidays in recognition of the growth of the city’s South Asian and Indo-Caribbean communities. Mayor Eric Adams announced Monday that Diwali will join celebrations including Rosh Hashana and Lunar New Year as a day off for

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — Honduras has started an El Salvador-style mass sweep of prisons and arrested a suspect in a pool-hall shooting last week that killed 11 people. Police suggested the pool-hall killings may be related to last week’s gang-related massacre of 46 female inmates at a women’s prison. The Honduran government has vowed to

By PETER SMITH Associated Press PITTSBURGH (AP) — The gunman convicted in the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history had psychotic, delusional and paranoid symptoms that made him unable to “read the world appropriately” or make proper decisions, his lawyer said Monday, launching an effort to persuade jurors to spare his life. Robert Bowers had

By SEUNG MIN KIM, AAMER MADHANI and ELLEN KNICKMEYER Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden declared Monday that the United States and NATO played no part in the Wagner mercenary group’s short-lived insurrection in Russia, calling the uprising and the longer-term challenges it poses for President Vladimir Putin’s authority “a struggle within the

By JAKE BLEIBERG, KEN MILLER and ISABELLA O’MALLEY Associated Press DALLAS (AP) — Scorching temperatures brought on by a “heat dome” have taxed the Texas power grid and threaten to bring record highs to the state before they are expected to expand to other parts of the U.S. during the coming week, putting even more

By VALERIE GONZALEZ and STEVE PEOPLES Associated Press EAGLE PASS, Texas (AP) — Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis promised to end birthright citizenship, finish building the southern border wall and send U.S. forces into Mexico to combat drug cartels as part of an aggressive — and familiar — immigration policy proposal he laid out Monday

By JULIE CARR SMYTH Associated Press COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Amazon’s profitable cloud business will invest roughly $7.8 billion by the end of 2029 to expand its data center operations in central Ohio. State leaders made the announcement involving Amazon Web Services on Monday. It comes as Ohio seeks to establish itself as the Midwest’s