AP National News

By JOE McDONALD AP Business Writers BEIJING (AP) — Asian shares followed Wall Street lower Friday ahead of U.S. jobs data investors hope will persuade the Federal Reserve to ease off plans for more interest rate hikes. Tokyo, Hong Kong, Seoul and Sydney retreated. Chinese markets were closed for a holiday. Oil prices declined. Wall

By HYUNG-JIN KIM Associated Press SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan launched a new round of naval drills with South Korean warships on Friday, a day after North Korea fired more ballistic missiles and flew warplanes in an escalation of tensions with its rivals. The Reagan and its battle

By JONATHAN J. COOPER Associated Press PHOENIX (AP) — Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters is trying to put Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly on defense, tying the incumbent to President Joe Biden and saying the party has done nothing to secure the southern border. In their first and only scheduled debate Thursday, Masters sought to pierce

By EDUARDO VERDUGO Associated Press SAN MIGUEL TOTOLAPAN, Mexico (AP) — A drug gang shot to death 20 people, including a mayor and his father, in the mountains of the southern Mexico state of Guerrero, officials said Thursday. Residents began burying the victims even as a video posted on social media showed men who identified

By BOB CHRISTIE Associated Press PHOENIX (AP) — A parade of character witnesses provided a judge with glowing reports about a southern Arizona woman who admitted collecting four voted early ballots in the 2020 primary election as her lawyer seeks leniency. But the assistant attorney general prosecuting the case told Yuma County Superior Court Judge

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The city of Philadelphia issued an apology more than four decades after unethical medical experiments were allowed to be performed on mostly Black inmates at the city’s since closed Holmesburg Prison from the 1950s to the 1970s. The dermatological, biochemical and pharmaceutical experiments were performed by University of Pennsylvania researcher Dr. Albert

By BILL BARROW and MEG KINNARD Associated Press WADLEY, Ga. (AP) — Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker is remaining defiant after reports alleging he encouraged and paid for a woman’s 2009 abortion — and later fathered a child with her. Digging in on his denials of reporting by The Daily Beast, Walker, a football

By AAMER MADHANI and ZEKE MILLER Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — President Joe Biden is declaring that the risk of nuclear “Armageddon” is at the highest level since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, as Russian officials speak of using tactical nuclear weapons after suffering massive setbacks in the eight-month invasion of Ukraine. Speaking at

By COREY WILLIAMS, CLAIRE SAVAGE and MIKE HOUSEHOLDER Associated Press DEARBORN, Mich. (AP) — An armed man accused of shooting and wounding one person and who then barricaded himself inside a room at a suburban Detroit hotel has surrendered and has been taken into custody. Michigan State Police said on Twitter shortly before 9 p.m.

By STEFANIE DAZIO and OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ Associated Press SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The suspect in the kidnapping and killings of an 8-month-old baby, her parents and an uncle had worked for the family’s trucking business and had a longstanding feud with them that culminated in an act of “pure evil,” a sheriff said Thursday.

By STEPHEN SMITH and BOBBY CAINA CALVAN Associated Press SANIBEL ISLAND, Fla. (AP) — Rotting fish and garbage lie scattered in Sanibel Island’s streets. On the mainland, debris from washed-away homes is heaped in a canal like matchsticks. Huge shrimp boats sit perched amid the remains of a mobile home park. “Think of a snow

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — A University of Arizona professor who authorities say was fatally shot on campus by a former graduate student was an expert on desert water issues who faculty and former students described as a kind and brilliant colleague. School officials identified Thomas Meixner, who had headed the school’s Department of Hydrology and

NEW LONDON, Conn. (AP) — A U.S. Coast Guard Academy cadet who was expelled for becoming a father will get his degree as part of a legal settlement, his attorneys said Thursday. Isaak Olson sued the academy in December after years of endeavoring to be reinstated as a cadet. He was two months from graduating,

By FOSTER KLUG Associated Press TOKYO (AP) — A drumbeat of increasingly powerful North Korean missile launches has been met with a U.S. aircraft carrier floating off the Korean Peninsula. It’s a pattern that has repeated many times over the years, and, as in the past, there are plenty of signs in the latest cycle

By ZEKE MILLER and CHRIS MEGERIAN Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is pardoning thousands of Americans convicted of “simple possession” of marijuana under federal law, as his administration takes a dramatic step toward decriminalizing the drug and addressing charging practices that disproportionately impact people of color. Biden’s move also covers thousands convicted

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — A Des Moines television reporter announced this week on a newscast that she will publicly identify as a transgender woman. Nora J.S. Reichardt of WOI-TV said that for a long time she didn’t think she would be able to reveal her identity on air. “I didn’t know if there was

BLANCHARD, Okla. (AP) — Jody Miller, whose “Queen of the House” won the 1966 Grammy Award for best country performance by a woman, has died at age 80. Miller died Thursday in her hometown of Blanchard, Oklahoma, of complications from Parkinson’s disease. That’s according to Universal Music Group, owner of Capitol Records, which released most

By TODD RICHMOND Associated Press MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A man defending himself against homicide charges for allegedly driving his SUV through a Christmas parade in Wisconsin last year is making a spectacle of himself in court. Darrell Brooks faces 76 counts in the Nov. 21 incident in Waukesha. Opening statements in his trial are

By LYNN ELBER AP Television Writer LOS ANGELES (AP) — Judy Tenuta, a brash standup who cheekily styled herself as the “Goddess of Love” and toured with George Carlin as she built her career in the 1980s golden age of comedy, died Thursday. She was 72. Tenuta died Thursday afternoon at home in Los Angeles,

By MIKE STOBBE and MATTHEW PERRONE Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — The latest government study on teen vaping suggests there’s been little progress in keeping e-cigarettes out of the hands of kids. The data seems to show an increase, with 14% of surveyed high schoolers saying they vaped recently, up from 11% the year