Browsing: National

An insurance agent accused of helping a Zumba instructor use her fitness studio as a front for prostitution was convicted Wednesday in a case that set off a guessing game in a small Maine town over who was on her customer list.

The city wants young New Yorkers to hear its latest public-health warning loud and clear: Cranked-up headphones can be hazardous to your hearing.

So much so that the city is planning a $250,000 social media and marketing campaign to warn teens that they risk hearing loss from listening to personal music players at high volume, health officials said Wednesday.

Passengers reacted with shrugs but largely agreed with a new policy announced by the Transportation Security Administration that airline passengers will be able to carry small knives and previously forbidden sports equipment on planes.

Cheering Venezuelans in the U.S. waved their country’s flag and expressed hope Tuesday that change would come to their homeland after the death of long-ruling populist President Hugo Chavez.

“He’s gone!” dozens in a largely anti-Chavez community chanted after word spread of the death of the 58-year-old leftist. Many said they were rejoicing after nearly a decade and a half of socialist rule heavily concentrated in the hands of Chavez.

A nurse’s refusal to give CPR to a dying 87-year-old woman at a California independent living home despite desperate pleas from a 911 dispatcher has prompted outrage and spawned a criminal investigation.

The harrowing 7-minute, 16-second call also raised concerns about the nature of seniors’ living arrangements at a time when their numbers are growing in the U.S., and there are calls for legislation to prevent a repeat of what happened Feb. 26 at the Glenwood Gardens in Bakersfield.

The Homeland Security Department released from its jails more than 2,000 illegal immigrants facing deportation in recent weeks due to looming budget cuts and planned to release 3,000 more during March, The Associated Press has learned.

The newly disclosed figures, cited in internal budget documents reviewed by the AP, are significantly higher than the “few hundred” illegal immigrants the Obama administration acknowledged this week had been released under the budget-savings process.

Little Rock may not be a likely terrorism target or a gang crime hotspot, but the Arkansas capital has decided to follow the example of high-security cities by expanding electronic surveillance of its streets.

A police car with a device that photographs license plates moves through the city and scans the traffic on the streets, relaying the data it collects to a computer for sifting. Police say the surveillance helps identify stolen cars and drivers with outstanding arrest warrants.

After almost three years in custody, the Army private accused in the biggest leak of classified material in U.S. history said he did it because he wanted the public to know how the American military was fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with little regard for human life.

Bradley Manning, 25, pleaded guilty Thursday at a military hearing at Fort Meade, Md., to 10 charges that could carry a maximum sentence of 20 years. Prosecutors plan to pursue 12 more charges against him at court-martial, including a charge of aiding the enemy that carries a potential life sentence.

Margaret Fiester is no shrinking violet, but she says working for her former boss was a nightmare.

“One day I didn’t do something right and she actually laid her hands on me and got up in my face and started yelling, ‘Why did you do that?'” said Fiester, who worked as a legal assistant for an attorney.

A commercial craft carrying a ton of supplies for the International Space Station ran into thruster trouble shortly after liftoff Friday, and flight controllers scrambled to fix the problem.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk said three of the four sets of thrusters on the company’s unmanned Dragon capsule did not immediately kick in, delaying the release of twin solar panels for two hours.

A 22-year-old man was charged with murder Thursday in the death of a mayoral candidate, whose body was found near a river levee in the Mississippi Delta this week.

The Coahoma County Sheriff’s Department said in a news release that Lawrence Reed of Shelby was charged in the death of Marco McMillian, 34, a candidate for mayor of Clarksdale.

Squabbling away the hours, the Senate swatted aside last-ditch plans to block $85 billion in broad-based federal spending reductions Thursday as President Barack Obama and Republicans blamed each other for the latest outbreak of gridlock and the administration readied plans to put the cuts into effect.

So entrenched were the two parties that the Senate chaplain, Barry Black, opened the day’s session with a prayer that beseeched a higher power to intervene.

“Rise up, O God, and save us from ourselves,” he said of cuts due to take effect sometime on Friday.

President Barack Obama is pulling out all the stops to warn just what could happen if automatic budget cuts kick in. Americans are reacting with a collective yawn.

They know the drill: Obama raises the alarm, Democrats and Republicans accuse each other of holding a deal hostage, there’s a lot of yelling on cable news, and then finally, when everyone has made their points, a deal is struck and the day is saved.

Maybe not this time. Two days before $85 billion in cuts are set to hit federal programs with all the precision of a wrecking ball, there are no signs that a deal is imminent. Even the White House conceded Wednesday that efforts to avoid the cuts were unlikely to succeed before they kick in on Friday.

She sits tall on a rock, eyes behind her famous circle-frame glasses, staring defiantly across the Capitol’s National Statuary Hall.

Civil rights activist Rosa Parks’ 9-foot bronze statue was unveiled in a ceremony Wednesday that included remarks from President Barack Obama and leaders of Congress, echoing words of her determination and legacy for the future.

“We make excuses for inaction,” Obama said, addressing the members of Congress and guests in the National Statuary Hall. “We say to ourselves, ‘It’s not my responsibility. There’s nothing I can do.’ Rosa Parks tells us there’s always something we can do.”

The Supreme Court’s conservative justices voiced deep skepticism Wednesday about a section of a landmark civil rights law that has helped millions of Americans exercise their right to vote.

In an ominous note for supporters of the key provision of the Voting Rights Act, Justice Anthony Kennedy both acknowledged the measure’s vital role in fighting discrimination and suggested that other important laws in U.S. history had run their course. “Times change,” Kennedy said during the fast-paced, 70-minute argument.

Advanced breast cancer has increased slightly among young women, a 34-year analysis suggests. The disease is still uncommon among women younger than 40, and the small change has experts scratching their heads about possible reasons.

The results are potentially worrisome because young women’s tumors tend to be more aggressive than older women’s, and they’re much less likely to get routine screening for the disease.

A ranking BP executive testified Tuesday that the London-based oil giant and its contractors share the responsibility for preventing blowouts like the one that killed 11 workers and spawned the nation’s worst offshore oil spill in 2010.

Lamar McKay, who was president of BP America at the time of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, became the first BP executive to testify at a federal trial intended to identify the causes of BP’s Macondo well blowout and assign percentages of blame to the companies involved.

Rig owner Transocean and cement contractor Halliburton also are defendants at trial, which opened Monday.

Scouts’ honor, merit badges and camping trips come to mind when one thinks of the Boy Scouts. At more than 100 years old, this organization is still a prominent part of American society.

In September, Dr. Byron Johnson and a team of researchers from Tufts will begin researching the effects of this organization on the health, character, and performance of boys who participate in this program.

Johnson, director of the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion, said little research has been done on the Boy Scouts even though the organization is more than 100 years old.

he Senate voted Tuesday to confirm Chuck Hagel, a Vietnam War veteran and former Republican senator from Nebraska, as the 24th secretary of defense after a brutal confirmation process that saw members of his own party question his capacity to lead the Pentagon.

Just hours after a vote to end the first-ever filibuster of a defense nominee, Hagel was approved 58-41, by far the narrowest margin for a successful appointment going back to the Carter administration. Hagel could get to work at the Pentagon as soon as Wednesday.

BP put profits ahead of safety and bears most of the blame for the disastrous 2010 spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a U.S. Justice Department attorney charged Monday at the opening of a trial that could result in the oil company and its partners being forced to pay tens of billions of dollars more in damages.

The London-based oil giant acknowledged it made “errors in judgment” before the deadly blowout, but it also cast blame on the owner of the drilling rig and the contractor involved in cementing the well. It denied it was grossly negligent, as the government contended.

The Justice Department stayed silent when Indiana and Washington state strengthened their voter identification rules. But when Georgia and Texas lawmakers wanted to do the same, they needed federal approval.

Now, this different treatment for different states will face a make-or-break test at the Supreme Court. In a potentially landmark case, justices on Wednesday will consider whether it’s time to dismantle a key plank of the historic 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Lawyers for Lance Armstrong say the Justice Department has joined a lawsuit against the cyclist. The lawsuit alleges the former Tour de France champion concealed his use of performance-enhancing drugs for over a decade and defrauded his long-time sponsor, the U.S. Postal Service.

The suit the Justice Department is joining was filed in 2010 by former teammate Floyd Landis, who was stripped of his 2006 Tour de France title for doping.

A medical helicopter crash-landed outside an Oklahoma City nursing home early Friday, killing two people onboard and injuring a third who was pulled from the burning wreckage, officials said.

Only the flight team was onboard when the helicopter crashed while headed from Oklahoma City to Watonga, 70 miles away, to pick up a patient, said Fire Department Battalion Chief Marc Woodard. No one on the ground was seriously injured or killed.

Drew Peterson — the swaggering former suburban Chicago police officer who gained notoriety after his much-younger fourth wife vanished in 2007 — was sentenced to 38 years in prison on Thursday for murdering his third wife.

Illinois does not have the death penalty, and the 59-year-old Peterson had faced a maximum 60-year prison term. The judge gave him four years’ credit for time he has served since his arrest.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan is talking with school districts about how to free them from unworkable parts of the federal No Child Left Behind law, signaling he is open to an approach he long tried to avoid.

The Education Department has given 34 states and the District of Columbia permission to ignore parts of the Bush-era No Child Left Behind Law and eight others have waiver applications pending ahead of next week’s application deadline. But that still leaves eight states — giants California and Texas among them — operating under the law and set to fall short of its requirements, such as all students being proficient in math and reading by 2014.

National Rifle Association President David Keene said Wednesday he doesn’t expect a filibuster from gun rights supporters as the Senate prepares to vote on potential gun control issues.

Keene spoke at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum in a one-hour event moderated by CNN chief national correspondent John King, who asked him if the NRA would support efforts to filibuster and block the votes.

The first of three people killed in a gunman’s rampage was identified Wednesday as a 20-year-old woman.

Police did not know why she was in the home of the shooter, who lived with his parents and was described by authorities as a video game-playing loner.

Courtney Aoki, 20, of Buena Park was shot multiple times early Tuesday in the home where gunman Ali Syed, 20, lived, said Orange County sheriff’s spokesman Jim Amormino.

A gas explosion that sparked a massive, block-engulfing blaze in an upscale Kansas City shopping district injured 14 people, a city official said Tuesday evening, adding it is believed that an accident by a utility contractor may have caused the blast.

Drug overdose deaths rose for the 11th straight year, federal data show, and most of them were accidents involving addictive painkillers despite growing attention to risks from these medicines.

“The big picture is that this is a big problem that has gotten much worse quickly,” said Dr. Thomas Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which gathered and analyzed the data.

We often hear of the phrase “daddy’s little girl” as if fathers and daughters share a special bond unlike any other. A study at Baylor shows that this father-daughter dynamic may be linked to sports.

Dr. Mark Morman, director of graduate studies in the communication department, has released a study showing that fathers and daughters are fostering relationships through shared activities. He performed this study with alumna Elizabeth Barrett, who now works in the Texas House of Representatives. Barrett could not be reached for comment.