August 11, 2019 7:56 am
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) – California has some of the toughest gun laws in the nation, including a ban on the type of high-capacity ammunition magazines used in some of the nation’s deadliest mass shootings. How long those types of laws will stand is a growing concern among gun control advocates in California and elsewhere. A federal judiciary that is becoming increasingly conservative under President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate has gun control advocates on edge. They worry that federal courts, especially if Trump wins a second term next year and Republicans hold the Senate, will take such an expansive view of Second Amendment rights that they might overturn strict gun control laws enacted in Democratic-leaning states.
September 24, 2024 4:59 am
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — World leaders will open their annual meeting at the U.N. General Assembly under the shadow of increasing global divisions, major wars in Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan, and the threat of an even larger conflict in the wider Middle East. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres previewed his opening “State of the World” speech to presidents, prime ministers, monarchs and ministers at Sunday’s “Summit of the Future,” saying “our world is heading off the rails — and we need tough decisions to get back on track.” One notable moment at Tuesday’s opening assembly meeting: U.S. President Joe Biden’s likely final major appearance on the world stage, a platform he has tread upon and reveled in for decades.
November 27, 2023 3:46 pm
AMERICUS, Ga. (AP) — The family of Rosalynn Carter has begun three days of memorials for the former first lady and global humanitarian who died Nov. 19 at the age of 96. The Carter Center confirms that former President Jimmy Carter plans to attend a memorial church service Tuesday in Atlanta for his partner of more than seven decades. Rosalynn Carter’s remains were placed in a hearse Monday morning in the Carters’ native Sumter County, Georgia. After brief ceremonies there, the family’s motorcade began the trip to Atlanta, where Rosalynn Carter will lie in repose at The Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum. Two funerals are set for Tuesday in Atlanta and Wednesday in the Carters’ hometown of Plains. Both are for invited guests. Rosalynn Carter’s burial is private. (Photo: AP)
January 5, 2023 2:32 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A former Philadelphia election official who has told of enduring death threats for defending the city’s 2020 vote-counting against former President Donald Trump’s lies will be nominated for the top election administration post in Pennsylvania. Al Schmidt will be nominated to be Pennsylvania Gov.-elect Josh Shapiro’s secretary of state, the campaign said Thursday, setting him up to oversee what is expected to be a hard-fought 2024 election in the critical presidential battleground. Shapiro, a Democrat, made the post his first Cabinet selection to be publicly announced ahead of his Jan. 17 inauguration. “Al Schmidt has a proven track record of defending our democracy, protecting voting rights and standing up to extremism — even in the face of grave threats,” Shapiro said in a statement. Schmidt, 51, is a Republican, fitting in with Shapiro’s theme of fashioning a bipartisan administration in politically divided Pennsylvania. Schmidt is currently president and CEO of the Committee of Seventy, a good-government group in Philadelphia. Before he joined the group a year ago, Schmidt spent a decade as a Republican elected to the three-member board that oversees elections in Philadelphia. Holding the post of secretary of state is subject to confirmation in the Republican-controlled Senate.
February 23, 2022 3:20 am
TAPACHULA, Mexico (AP) – About one hundred migrants from Haiti, Cuba and African nations threw stones and sticks at Mexican National Guard troops and immigration agents in the southern city of Tapachula, near the border with Guatemala. The confrontation Tuesday came amid months of complaints by migrants that processing claims for refuge, asylum or humanitarian visas was taking too long. The National Immigration Institute said in a statement that the migrants involved in Tuesday’s protests had blocked entrances to an immigration office and insisted they be attended to, ahead of people who already had appointments. When officers tried to force them to leave a four-confrontation broke out.
March 31, 2021 4:11 am
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) – The Minneapolis officer who put his knee on George Floyd’s neck defended himself to a bystander afterward by saying Floyd was “a sizable guy” and “probably on something.” Prosecutors at Derek Chauvin’s murder trial Wednesday laid out the rapidly escalating sequence of events, playing store security video of Floyd inside Cup Foods and still more footage of him outside. Together, witness accounts and video began to show how events spun out of control, as a scene of people apparently joking around inside the neighborhood market soon gave way to the sight of officers struggling with Floyd and putting him on the ground.
June 1, 2020 4:20 am
LOS ANGELES (AP) – In the past 48 hours of protests surrounding the death of George Floyd, journalists covering the story have become targets for protesters and police in cities across the country. The Radio Television Digital News Association has counted more than 60 incidents in which reporters have been, “injured, assaulted or harassed by either protesters or police officers” in cities including Minneapolis, New York, Chicago, Washington D.C., Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Denver. RTDNA’s executive director Dan Shelley said that the attacks on journalists are harming the public at large. Shelley said, “It’s interfering with their ability to be eyewitnesses and chroniclers of what’s occurring in this country right now.”
August 11, 2019 7:54 am
NEW YORK (AP) – Jeffrey Epstein has died of an apparent suicide in jail, prompting an investigation into his death and assurance from a U.S. official that allegations of sexual abuse and conspiracy will not be cast aside. The Federal Bureau of Prisons says that Epstein, a wealthy financier accused of orchestrating a sex-trafficking ring and sexually abusing dozens of underage girls, was found unresponsive in his cell Saturday morning. He was pronounced dead at a hospital. A person familiar with the matter who wasn’t authorized to discuss it publicly says Epstein had been placed on suicide watch after an incident a little over two weeks ago in which he was found with bruising on his neck. But the person says he was taken off watch at the end of July and wasn’t on it at the time of death.
September 24, 2024 4:56 am
Palestinian officials say Israel’s strikes early Tuesday killed at least seven people in Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis. They said at least 15 others, including women and children, were injured in the strikes. Israel’s military says it will do “whatever is necessary” to push Hezbollah away from Lebanon’s border with Israel. Israel and Hezbollah have been trading fire since the Israel-Hamas war began. On Monday, Israel launched hundreds of airstrikes in southern and eastern Lebanon, killing nearly 500 people and wounding more than 1,600 others. Thousands of people fled southern Lebanon, jamming the main highway to Beirut in the biggest exodus since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war.
November 27, 2023 3:44 pm
JERUSALEM (AP) — Elon Musk has visited Israel, where he toured a kibbutz attacked by Hamas militants. The billionaire also met Monday with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who scolded him over content on his social media platform X. Musk has been under fire for endorsing an antisemitic conspiracy theory and for wider accusations of hatred flourishing on the platform previously known as Twitter. Musk joined Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a tour of a rural village that Hamas militants stormed on Oct. 7 in a deadly assault that launched the war. Musk says “it was jarring” to see the where the attack took place and that it had been a “difficult day emotionally.”
