AP National News

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (AP) — Shifting winds posed new challenges for firefighters battling a blaze in Southern California coastal mountains that threatened ranches and rural homes and kept a major highway shut down for days. The Alisal Fire is covering more than 24 square miles in the Santa Ynez Mountains west of Santa Barbara. Containment

By FIRDIA LISNAWATI Associated Press DENPASAR, Indonesia (AP) — The Indonesian resort island of Bali is welcoming international travelers to its shops and white-sand beaches for the first time in more than a year. They must be vaccinated, test negative, hail from certain countries, quarantine for five days and heed restrictions in public. President Joko

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — A local news agency says nine people have been killed in a fire that engulfed a 13-story building overnight in southern Taiwan. The island’s semi-official Central News Agency reported the blaze also injured 44. The fire department in the city of Kaohsiung said firefighters were conducting search and rescue efforts Thursday

SYDNEY (AP) — One of New Zealand’s best-known businessmen Ron Brierley has been sentenced in a Sydney court to 14 months in prison for possessing child sex abuse images. The 84-year-old former high-profile corporate raider had pleaded guilty to the charges in April, but was released on bail until his sentencing. Brierley was arrested at

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Tropical depression Pamela has dissipated in northern Mexico after slamming into the country’s Pacific coast as a hurricane, though forecasters warn that its rainy remnants still pose a flooding threat to parts of Texas and Oklahoma. Pamela made landfall early Wednesday about 40 miles (65 kilometers) north of the resort and

By MARI YAMAGUCHI Associated Press TOKYO (AP) — A Japanese court is hearing from five people who say they were promised “paradise on Earth” in North Korea but suffered instead and now want the country to compensate them. The court summoned North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to speak, but a lawyer says they are

By DAVID BAUDER AP Media Writer NEW YORK (AP) — Singer Adele has been gone from the public spotlight, musically speaking, since after the release of her “25”album in 2015. Now she’s coming back, announcing on Instagram that her “30” album will come out November 19. A new single, ‘Easy on Me,’ is being released

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — About 800 San Francisco city workers have asked for medical or religions exemptions to avoid a looming deadline for them to get vaccinated or lose their job. But so far, the city has not approved a single request. That’s according to a city human resources official, who said about 5.5% of

By DAVID RISING Associated Press BANGKOK (AP) — After sending a record number of military aircraft to harass Taiwan over China’s National Day holiday, Beijing has toned down the saber rattling but tensions remain high, with the rhetoric and reasoning behind the exercises unchanged. Experts agree a direct conflict is unlikely at the moment, but

By CHRISTOPHER WEBER Associated Press LOS ANGELES (AP) — Los Angeles politician Mark Ridley-Thomas and a former dean at the University of Southern California have been charged with a bribery scheme in which he promised to steer millions of dollars in contracts to the school if his son got a scholarship and a teaching job.

CHICAGO (AP) — Civil rights activist, retired Chicago professor and historian Timuel Black has died at the age of 102. Black’s widow tells the Chicago Sun-Times and WLS-TV that he died Wednesday. Details of his death were not immediately available. Civil rights leader the Rev. Jesse Jackson called Black “a tall tree in the civil

By FELICIA FONSECA Associated Press FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — Jurors in Arizona have convicted a U.S. Air Force airman of first-degree murder in the death of a Mennonite woman who was living in New Mexico. The jury reached its verdict Wednesday after deliberating for about five hours. Mark Gooch was also found guilty of kidnapping

By GEOFF MULVIHILL Associated Press A federal judge says OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma can resume laying the groundwork to carry out its $10 billion settlement plan. Judge Linda McMahon’s ruling Wednesday denies the U.S. Bankruptcy Trustee’s request for a long pause in the plan. The office within the Justice Department asked for the settlement to

By JAMES ANDERSON Associated Press DENVER (AP) — Attorneys for President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign, its onetime attorney Rudy Giuliani and conservative media figures are asking a judge to dismiss a defamation lawsuit by a former employee of Dominion Voting Systems who argues he lost his job after being named in false charges as trying

By SARAH RANKIN Associated Press RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Former President Donald Trump and other Republicans are trying to fire up the party’s right-wing base ahead of Virginia’s critical November elections. Trump phoned into a rally held in suburban Richmond Wednesday that was marked by falsehoods about the 2020 election and tirades against vaccine and

By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER AP Economics Writer WASHINGTON (AP) — Consumer prices rose 0.4% last month, slightly higher than August’s gain and pushing annual inflation back to the highest increase in 13 years. The consumer price index rose 5.4% in September from a year ago, up slightly from August’s gain of 5.3% and matching the increases

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court won’t review a nonprofit group’s effort to open a supervised injection site in Philadelphia to try to reduce overdose deaths. The high court’s decision Wednesday in the widely watched test case is a setback for the two dozen U.S. states and cities that supported the petition. Organizers of the

SEATTLE (AP) — Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson says a Facebook representative provided false testimony in a lawsuit that accuses the company of violating state campaign finance laws. The Seattle Times reports that in court filings the Democratic attorney general says both the social media giant and its attorneys knew the testimony was false. Ferguson

By RANDALL CHASE Associated Press DOVER, Del. (AP) — The Delaware Supreme Court has heard arguments in a defamation lawsuit filed by a former Donald Trump campaign operative against the media company that includes Yahoo! and AOL and formerly owned HuffPost. Attorneys for Carter Page argued Wednesday that a Delaware Superior Court judge made several

By KIM CHANDLER Associated Press MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Federal judges have heard arguments over whether an Alabama inmate had the mental capacity to understand paperwork setting up his planned execution next week. Willie B. Smith III is set to receive a lethal injection Oct. 21 for the 1991 kidnapping and murder of 22-year-old Sharma