AP National News

The Associated Press MADRID (AP) — Protesters including brothel owners and sex workers have demonstrated in front of the Spanish Parliament over a bill that would penalize prostitution customers and sex club owners or pimps with sentences up to 4 years in prison. The bill backed by the ruling left-wing PSOE party proposes broadening the

By MARCIA DUNN AP Aerospace Writer CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Jeff Bezos’ rocket company suffered its first launch failure Monday. No one was aboard, only science experiments. The Blue Origin rocket blasted off from West Texas and was barely a minute into the flight when bright yellow flames shot out from around the single

By ELENA BECATOROS and HANNA ARHIROVA Associated Press KHARKIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian troops reclaimed a wide swath of territory from Russia on Monday, pushing all the way back to the northeastern border in some places and capturing many Russian soldiers as part of a lightning advance that forced Moscow to make a hasty retreat.

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem has disclosed that she recently underwent back surgery to treat an injury impacting her spine. The 50-year-old Republican governor says she recently traveled to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, for the surgery after receiving treatment for several weeks in South Dakota. The surgery treated

By ELENA BECATOROS Associated Press KHARKIV, Ukraine (AP) — Among the boarded-up windows and blast-scarred buildings of Ukraine’s second-largest city, where Russian missiles and rockets strike during the day and the night, fear forms the backdrop of life. As Ukrainian forces advance in their counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region, pushing Russian forces out of territory

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Thousands of nurses in Minnesota have launched a three-day strike over pay issues and understaffing worsened by the strains of the coronavirus pandemic. Some 15,000 nurses in seven health care systems in the Minneapolis and Duluth areas are participating in the labor action that started Monday. Those systems have recruited temporary nurses

By JAKE COYLE AP Film Writer TORONTO (AP) — “Untitled Amblin Film,” read Gabriel LaBelle’s audition sheet. Director “TBD.” LaBelle, a 19-year-old actor from Vancouver with a handful of credits in TV and film, taped his audition and sent it off, not thinking too much about it. A couple days later, he began to hear

By JIM SALTER Associated Press ST. LOUIS (AP) — St. Louis police officers have fatally shot a 16-year-old who police say was reaching for a gun. Darryl Ross was shot just after 11:30 p.m. Sunday at a gas station on the city’s north side. Ross is Black. A police incident report says one of the

By ERIC TUCKER Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers on Monday dismissed as a “storage dispute” Trump’s retention of top-secret documents at his Florida home, urging a judge to keep in place a directive that temporarily halted key aspects of the Justice Department’s criminal probe. The Trump team also referred to

By ALEXANDRE NHAMPOSSA Associated Press MAPUTO, Mozambique (AP) — Extremists allied with the Islamic State group have spread their attacks further south into Mozambique’s most populous province, Nampula, including an assault on a Catholic mission in which an Italian nun was among those killed. The extremists first struck the province earlier this month and have

By MICHAEL TARM AP Legal Affairs Writer CHICAGO (AP) — R. Kelly is a sexual predator who parlayed his fame to abuse minors, a prosecutor said Monday during closing arguments at the R&B star’s child pornography and trial-fixing trial. Addressing jurors in a 25th floor courtroom in Chicago, Kelly’s hometown, Elizabeth Pozol cited one of

By ELENA BECATOROS and HANNA ARHIROVA Associated Press KHARKIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian troops reclaimed more territory from Russia on Monday, pushing all the way back to the northeastern border in some places as part of a lightning advance that forced Moscow to make a hasty retreat from occupied land. As blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flags fluttered

FORESTHILL, Calif. (AP) — Calmer weather in Northern California helped firefighters battling a wildfire threatening thousands of mountain homes. Meanwhile remnants of last week’s Pacific hurricane continued to produce thunderstorms that caused flash flooding in the southern part of the state, where crews increased containment of another huge blaze. The Mosquito Fire in foothills east

By CHRIS OUTCALT and BRITTANY PETERSON The Colorado Sun and The Associated Press DENVER (AP) — The intensifying crisis facing the Colorado River amounts to what is fundamentally a math problem. The 40 million people who depend on the river to fill up a glass of water at the dinner table or wash their clothes

MILAN (AP) — Three Americans are among winners of this year’s Balzan Prize. Martha Nussbaum, a philosopher and scholar at the University of Chicago, won the prize for moral philosophy, for what the Balzan Foundation called  “her transformative reconception of the goals of social justice, both globally and locally.” Another University of Chicago faculty member,

By MARK KENNEDY AP Entertainment Writer NEW YORK (AP) — The newly restored Cort Theatre on Broadway will be renamed after James Earl Jones on Monday, becoming the second theater on the Great White Way named after a Black artist. The move comes after a wide Broadway coalition of theater owners, producers, union leaders, creators

By DAMIAN J. TROISE AP Business Writer NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks rose in afternoon trading on Wall Street Monday as the market builds on a rally last week that broke a three-week losing streak. The S&P 500 index rose 0.7% as of 12:12 p.m. Eastern. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 160 points, or

By JILL LAWLESS Associated Press LONDON (AP) — Queen Elizabeth II has been likened to the invisible glue holding the United Kingdom together. Some think the reign of King Charles III will see those bonds come unstuck, giving new momentum to Scotland’s push for independence. But the fact the queen died last week at her

By DAVID KEYTON, JILL LAWLESS and MIKE CORDER Associated Press EDINBURGH, Scotland (AP) — With her four children walking silently behind the hearse, Queen Elizabeth II’s flag-draped oak coffin made the solemn journey Monday along a crowd-lined street in the Scottish capital to a cathedral for a service of thanksgiving for her 70-year reign. Four

By ERIC TUCKER Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawyers for former President Donald Trump say a criminal investigation into the presence of top-secret information has “spiraled out of control. They urged a judge Monday to leave in place a directive that temporarily halted core aspects of the Justice Department’s probe. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon