AP National News

By AMY BETH HANSON Associated Press HELENA, Mont. (AP) — A transgender woman, the owners of an independent bookstore and an educator who teaches in costume are among those challenging Montana’s first-in-the-nation law that bans people dressed in drag from reading to children in public schools or libraries. The federal lawsuit filed Thursday in Butte

By TARA COPP and LOLITA C. BALDOR Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States has decided to send cluster munitions to Ukraine to help its military push back Russian forces entrenched along the front lines. The Biden administration is expected to announce on Friday that it will send thousands of them as part of

NEW YORK (AP) — Baltimore shortstop Gunnar Henderson and New York manager Aaron Boone spoke Thursday with Pete Stendel, the YES Network cameraman who sustained an orbital fracture when he was hit by Henderson’s errant throw Wednesday night. “I got a chance to reach out to his wife and then also made contact with Pete,”

WIMBLEDON, England (AP) — Frances Tiafoe is still waiting on his sneakers from Travis Scott. The American tennis player advanced to the third round at Wimbledon on Thursday and then playfully nudged the rapper to send him a pair of his new Nike sneakers. Tiafoe joked that Scott’s says, “’Yeah, it’s coming, yeah, it’s coming.’”

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) — Wildfires raging across Canada have already broken records for total areas burned, the number of people forced to evacuate their homes and the cost of fighting the blazes, and the fire season is only halfway finished. Michael Norton, director general, Northern Forestry Centre, Canadian Forest Service, said that “it’s no

By LARRY NEUMEISTER Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — Federal prosecutors say a former Indiana congressman should pay nearly $1.4 million to cover the legal bills of companies forced to incur expenses when he was prosecuted on insider trading charges. But his lawyer says it’s an exorbitant amount to demand from a man already suffering

By WYATTE GRANTHAM-PHILIPS AP Business Writer NEW YORK (AP) — Threads, a text-based app built by Meta to rival Twitter, is live. The app, billed as the text version of Meta’s photo-sharing platform Instagram, became available Wednesday night to users in more than 100 countries — including the U.S., Britain, Australia, Canada and Japan. Despite

By SUSAN HAIGH Associated Press HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — A Connecticut state lawmaker attacked as she left a Muslim prayer service is accusing local police of downplaying what happened to her. Democratic Rep. Maryam Khan called Thursday for a federal investigation into how the Hartford Police Department handles violent crimes, especially those against women. The

By JUAN A. LOZANO Associated Press HOUSTON (AP) — The case of a Texas man who was reported missing as a teenager in 2015 and found alive last week at a church took an unexpected turn Thursday when police revealed it all was a hoax — the man was only gone for a day, but

By EDITH M. LEDERER Associated Press UNITED NATIONS (AP) — U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is condemning Israel’s excessive use of force in its largest military operation in the West Bank in two decades, citing its airstrikes and ground operations in a refugee camp crowded with civilians. It was a rare condemnation of Israel by the

By JULIE CARR SMYTH Associated Press COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The railroad industry has sued to block a new minimum crew-size requirement that Ohio imposed after a fiery train derailment in East Palestine in February. Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed the new rule in March as part of the state’s nearly $13.5 billion state

By TIM REYNOLDS AP Basketball Writer LAS VEGAS (AP) — Victor Wembanyama’s debut at NBA Summer League is Friday night. His highly anticipated showing is sold out, not too different from when a superstar music artist hits the city. All 17,500 tickets that were available for Day 1 of the 11-day series of games on

By MORGAN LEE and PAUL J. WEBER Associated Press EL PASO, Texas (AP) — Family members of the 23 people killed in a racist attack at a Texas Walmart are confronting the gunman face-to-face in court for the first time since the 2019 massacre. The sentencing hearing for Patrick Crusius continued Thursday in a federal

NEW YORK (AP) — A cameraman hit in the head by an errant throw Wednesday night at Yankee Stadium has a broken eye socket and is home resting, the YES Network said in a statement Thursday. Positioned right next to the New York Yankees’ dugout on the first-base side, Pete Stendel of YES Network was

By MSTYSLAV CHERNOV Associated Press LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia has fired cruise missiles at a western Ukraine city far from the front line of the war, killing at least six people in an apartment building. Ukrainian officials said it was the heaviest attack on civilian areas of the city of Lviv since the Kremlin’s

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — A missing 2-year-old Michigan girl who disappeared during an attack on her mother was found dead nearly 100 miles (161 kilometers) away in Detroit, three days after she vanished. Wynter Cole Smith’s body was discovered Wednesday evening by FBI agents in an overgrown alley in a neighborhood on the east side

By ED WHITE Associated Press DETROIT (AP) — An engineering company accused of partial responsibility for Flint’s lead-contaminated water in 2014 and 2015 has agreed to settle lawsuits brought by some residents of the Michigan city. Lockwood, Andrews & Newman is an engineering firm known as LAN. It says in a court filing that a