AP-National

By REBECCA SANTANA and AMELIA THOMSON-DEVEAUX Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans are more worried about legal immigrants committing crimes in the U.S. than they were a few years ago, a change driven largely by increased concern among Republicans, while Democrats continue to see a broad range of benefits from immigration, a new poll shows.

By SUDHIN THANAWALA and JEFF AMY Associated Press ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia lawmakers have approved new rules for challenging voters and qualifying for the state’s presidential ballot. The changes could impact the 2024 presidential race in the battleground state. The House and Senate passed the bill late Thursday as the 2024 legislative session was ending.

By JEFF AMY Associated Press ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia lawmakers are agreeing on pay raises for public school teachers and state employees, although they still have differences to work out in the upcoming budget. State lawmakers on Thursday passed the budget for the year beginning July 1. It also includes spending boosts for education, health

By JIM GOMEZ Associated Press MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A Filipino villager has been nailed to a wooden cross for the 35th time to reenact Jesus Christ’s suffering in a brutal Good Friday tradition. Carpenter and painter Ruben Enaje says this year he’s praying for peace in Ukraine, Gaza and the disputed South China Sea.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Authorities allege that a former employee of Caltrain and a former contractor for the mass transit system connecting Silicon Valley with San Francisco used public funds to build two small apartments for themselves inside two train stations. The Mercury News reports that San Mateo County prosecutors charged former Caltrain deputy director

BROOKINGS, Ore. (AP) — A federal judge has ruled that a southern Oregon city can’t limit a local church’s homeless meal services. KGW reports that U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Clarke found that an ordinance passed by the city of Brookings violated the religious freedom rights of St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church. The 2021 ordinance limited the

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (AP) — Fort Wayne Mayor Tom Henry has died a day after after experiencing a medical emergency related to his stomach cancer. He was 72. The announcement from his office that he had “passed away peacefully” Thursday came just hours after Henry’s family issued a statement saying he had entered hospice care

By MARGERY A. BECK Associated Press LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A Nebraska state lawmaker is imploring the Legislature’s Executive Board to hold accountable another lawmaker that she has accused of sexual harassment. The decision to do so will be made by a group of mostly other male lawmakers. The accusation stems from the reading of

By BASSEM MROUE and ALBERT AJI Associated Press BEIRUT (AP) — The Syrian army says Israeli airstrikes near the northern city of Aleppo have killed and wounded several people and caused damage. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said Israeli strikes hit missile depots for Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group in

By EDITH M. LEDERER Associated Press UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Haiti now needs between 4,000 and 5,000 international police to help tackle “catastrophic” gang violence which is targeting key individuals and hospitals, schools, banks and other critical institutions, the U,N, rights expert for the conflict-wracked nation says. Last July, William O’Neill said Haiti needed between

By DAVID BILLER Associated Press RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — If social media is to be believed, French President Emmanuel Macron’s just-ended trip to Brazil left him swooning. Pictures showed him and Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva traipsing through the Amazon and posing beneath the soaring canopy in white button-down shirts. Then there

By NICK PERRY Associated Press The expert pilots who navigate massive ships in and out of Baltimore’s port must often maneuver with just 2 feet (0.6 meter) of clearance from the channel floor and memorize charts, currents and every other possible maritime variable. The highly specialized role — in which a pilot temporarily takes control

By ADAM BEAM Associated Press SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A local official in a rural Northern California county has survived a recall effort. Kevin Crye was facing a recall attempt after voting to get rid of the county’s vote-counting machines last year. The machines were made by Dominion Voting Systems. That company has been at

SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — Authorities say a Southern California man convicted of killing his mother as a teenager was captured in Mexico a week after he walked away from a halfway house. Prosecutors say 20-year-old Ike Nicholas Souzer was arrested Wednesday in the coastal city of Rosarito. He was returned to California. Souzer has

By STEVE LeBLANC Associated Press BOSTON (AP) — A decade after two firefighters died when they became trapped in a brownstone in Boston’s historic Back Bay neighborhood by a fire caused by sparks from welders working next door, the Massachusetts Senate passed a bill Thursday aimed at toughening oversight of so-called “hot work.” The fire

By KEN SWEET AP Business Writer NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge in Texas has accused the major banking industry groups and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce of forum shopping in their lawsuit against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It’s a major win for the federal regulator, who had argued the only reason banks

By KIMBERLEE KRUESI Associated Press NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee’s governor has named a whole new board of trustees to the state’s only publicly funded historically Black university. Republican Gov. Bill Lee signed legislation Thursday vacating the board of Tennessee State University and unveiled the new appointees moments after. The selections must now be confirmed

BUENOS AIRES (AP) — Simmering spats between Latin American populist leaders have intensified in the past days, with Argentina’s President Javier Milei needling his leftist counterparts in Mexico and Colombia. The mudslinging came to a head earlier this week, after Milei lashed out at Petro in an interview with CNN, prompting the Colombian government to

By MICHAEL GOLDBERG Associated Press/Report for America JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi lawmakers will try to negotiate on expanding Medicaid in one of the poorest states in the U.S. after the Senate voted Thursday for a vastly different plan than one proposed by the House. The upper chamber’s proposal would insure fewer people and bring

By GERALD IMRAY Associated Press CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — A bus carrying worshippers on a long-distance trip from Botswana to an Easter weekend church gathering in South Africa plunged off a bridge on a mountain pass Thursday and burst into flames as it hit the rocky ground below, killing at least 45 people,