By Holbrook Mohr Associated Press JACKSON, Miss. — The Southern Poverty Law Center is calling on the U.S. government to…
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OLYMPIA, Wash. — Gov. Jay Inslee said Tuesday he was suspending the use of the death penalty in Washington state for as long as he’s in office, announcing a move that he hopes will enable officials to “join a growing national conversation about capital punishment.”
The first-term Democrat said he came to the decision after months of review, meetings with victims’ families, prosecutors and law enforcement.
SALT LAKE CITY — A coalition of religious organizations has come together to urge a federal appeals court to uphold same-sex marriage bans in Utah and Oklahoma, saying unions between a man and woman are best for children, families and society.
The argument was made in a 42-page brief filed Monday afternoon to a Denver-based court reviewing cases that could reverse gay-marriage bans in Utah and Oklahoma.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture said Thursday it will spend $30 million this year on forest restoration projects in 12 states to reduce the threat of wildfires, protect water quality and improve wildlife habitat for at-risk species.
HOUSTON — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency gave Texas authority over greenhouse gas permitting on Tuesday, ending a long, often bitter battle between the federal agency and the state.
By Rebecca Fiedler Staff Writer Baylor women who have had involvement in the military have expressed differing opinions following the…
By Donna Cassata Associated Press WASHINGTON — House Republican leaders poised to revive efforts to overhaul the immigration system with…
A California schoolteacher was arrested Wednesday after hundreds of living and dead pythons in plastic bins were found stacked floor to ceiling inside his stench-filled home in suburban Orange County.
As investigators wearing respirator masks carried the reptiles out of the house and stacked them in the driveway, reporters and passers-by gagged at the smell. Some held their noses or walked away from the five-bedroom home to get a breath of air.
By Julie Pace AP White House Correspondent WASHINGTON — Declaring that upward economic mobility has stalled for millions of Americans,…
By Jim Salter Associated Press ST. LOUIS — With lethal-injection drugs in short supply and new questions looming about their…
WESTMINSTER, Colo. — A 16-year-old boy set himself on fire at a suburban Denver high school on Monday in an apparent suicide attempt that left him critically injured, authorities said.
The boy didn’t make any threats before starting the fire in the cafeteria at Standley Lake High School at about 7:15 a.m., Westminster Police Department spokeswoman Cheri Spottke said.
COLUMBUS, Ohio — An attorney for a condemned Ohio inmate whose slow, gasping execution with a new drug combination renewed questions about the death penalty was temporarily suspended last week while officials investigated whether he had coached the condemned man to fake symptoms of suffocation.
Alicia Chang Associated Press LOS ANGELES — A decade after landing on Mars, the rover Opportunity is still chugging along.…
Terry Tang Associated Press PHOENIX — A passenger on a Greyhound bus traveling through Arizona “went berserk” and attacked the…
By Bree Fowler Associated Press NEW YORK — The hackers behind the recent Target data breach are likely a world…
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — A Purdue University engineering student opened fire inside a basement classroom Tuesday, killing a teaching assistant and prompting officials to put the campus on lockdown, police and the university said.
PHILADELPHIA — A swirling storm clobbered parts of the mid-Atlantic and the urban Northeast on Tuesday, dumping nearly a foot and a half of snow, grounding thousands of flights, closing government offices in the nation’s capital and making a mess of the evening commute.
ORLANDO — The family of a SeaWorld trainer who died in 2010 when a killer whale pulled her into the water responded Tuesday to a documentary critical of animal captivity at the marine parks, saying the woman killed would never have worked there for 15 years if she thought the whales were treated badly.
With a flick of the switch, a 76-foot Norway Spruce officially became the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree Wednesday night after it was illuminated for the first time this holiday season in a ceremony that’s been held since 1933.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg turned on the lights just before 9 p.m., setting off a dazzling 45,000 multi-colored LED lights and a 9 ½-foot-wide Swarovski star that topped the 12-ton tree.
An engineer whose speeding commuter train ran off the rails along a curve, killing four people, nodded at the controls just before the wreck, and by the time he caught himself it was too late, a union official said Tuesday.
William Rockefeller “basically nodded,” said Anthony Bottalico, leader of the rail employees union, relating what he said the engineer told him.
A Silicon Valley jury on Thursday added $290 million more to the damages Samsung Electronics owes Apple for copying vital iPhone and iPad features, bringing the total amount the South Korean technology titan is on the hook for to $930 million.
The verdict covers 13 older Samsung devices that a previous jury found were among 26 Samsung products that infringed Apple patents.
Three Marines have become the first women to graduate from the Corps’ tough-as-nails enlisted infantry training school in North Carolina, officials said Thursday.
The three completed the 59-day course and met the same test standards as the men, said Marine Corps spokeswoman Capt. Geraldine Carey.
Today’s kids can’t keep up with their parents. An analysis of studies on millions of children around the world finds they don’t run as fast or as far as their parents did when they were young.
On average, it takes children 90 seconds longer to run a mile than their counterparts did 30 years ago. Heart-related fitness has declined 5 percent per decade since 1975 for children ages 9 to 17.
Cabot Corp., the second largest carbon black manufacturer in the U.S., agreed Tuesday to pay a $975,000 civil penalty and spend an estimated $84 million on technology to control air pollution at its three facilities in Franklin and Ville Platte, La., and Pampa, Texas, federal officials said.
The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, a co-plaintiff in the case, will receive $292,500 of the penalty, according to the proposed consent decree outlined by the Department of Justice and the Environmental Protection Agency.
By Mark Sherman Associated Press WASHINGTON — A sharply divided Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed Texas to continue enforcing abortion…
George Zimmerman was charged with assault Monday after his girlfriend called deputies to the home where they were living and claimed he pointed a shotgun at her during an argument, authorities said.
The girlfriend, Samantha Scheibe, called 911 in the early afternoon to say that Zimmerman had smashed a glass table, threatened her with the shotgun and ultimately pushed her out of the house, according to an arrest report. After pushing her out, Zimmerman barricaded the door with furniture and refused to leave, saying that he would talk to police by phone, authorities said.
Gov. Neil Abercrombie signed a bill Wednesday legalizing gay marriage in Hawaii, the state that kicked off a national discussion of the issue more than two decades ago.
Now, the island chain is positioning itself for a boost in tourism as people take advantage of the new law and the state provides another example of the nation’s changing views on marriage.
American Airlines and US Airways reached a deal with the government that lets the two form the world’s biggest airline and opens up more room at key U.S. airports for low-cost carriers.
The settlement announced Tuesday — if approved by a federal judge — would end a fight with the U.S. Justice Department and head off a courtroom showdown later this month.
Shares of Twitter went on sale to the public for the first time Thursday, instantly leaping more than 70 percent above their offering price in a dazzling debut that exceeded even Wall Street’s lofty hopes.
By the closing bell, the social network that reinvented global communication in 140-character bursts was valued at $31 billion — nearly as much as Yahoo Inc., an Internet icon from another era, and just below Kraft Foods, the grocery conglomerate founded more than a century ago.
The Florida Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a woman who donated an egg to her lesbian partner has parental rights to the child and ordered a lower court to work out custody, child support and visitation arrangements.
The case involves two women, identified only by their initials, who had a child together. One donated an egg that was fertilized and implanted in the other, who gave birth in 2004.
