Browsing: News

Many of the tens of thousands of New Yorkers stopped, questioned and sometimes frisked by police in the past decade were wrongly targeted because of their race, lawyers for four men who claim they were illegally stopped said Monday.

A Minnesota woman at the center of a long-running court fight over the unauthorized downloading of copyrighted music said there’s still no way she can pay record companies the $222,000 judgment she owes after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear her appeal Monday.

Murder, mystery, comedy: all the themes of the fast-paced mystery set in 1935 Britain comes to life in Jones Theatre beginning at 7:30 p.m. tonight.

Baylor’s theater department presents “The 39 Steps,” a multi-role murder mystery involving spies, romantic entanglements, murder, suspense and police.

Cigarettes would have to be kept out of sight in New York City stores under a first-in-the-nation plan unveiled by Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Monday, igniting complaints from tobacco companies and smokers who said they’ve had enough with the city’s crackdowns.

Shops from corner stores to supermarkets would have to keep tobacco products in cabinets, drawers, under the counter, behind a curtain or in other concealed spots.

A University of Central Florida drop-out planned an attack on campus but committed suicide in a dorm before carrying it out, authorities said Monday.

Materials found in his dorm room made it appear that 30-year-old James Oliver Seevakumaran planned a wider attack, authorities said in a news conference.

Arturo Alviter Balderrama lost his focus, his grade point average and eventually his freedom. But his troubles had deeper roots.

“At 13, I found myself using low-level drugs for fun,” Arturo, 17, told a legislative committee last month. “After about a year I had moved on to more serious drugs and found myself running with the wrong crowd.”

A Democratic state lawmaker arrested for drunken driving offered an emotional apology on the floor of the Texas House on Monday, drawing a standing ovation and flowers from her colleagues.

Naomi Gonzalez of El Paso crashed her BMW into another car, which then hit a bicyclist around 2 a.m. Thursday. Gonzalez, the other driver and the cyclist all went to the hospital with minor injuries. The 34-year-old was charged with driving while intoxicated.

The No. 1 Lady Bears put on a show on March 9-11, at the Big 12 Tournament as they became the only team in the Big 12 to win the championship for three consecutive years.

The Lady Bears displayed why they are the No. 1 team in the nation, whether it was by blowing a team out, making shots in the clutch or responding every time an opponent tried to come back into the game.

Some Republican and Democratic legislators have joined forces on measures aimed at curtailing Gov. Rick Perry’s power, benefits and number of terms.

The Dallas Morning News reported Sunday that at least six bills, proposed constitutional amendments and budget decisions would reduce the governor’s power or perks. Although some of the efforts might not affect Perry directly, they seem to be inspired by his actions as governor.

Walking up to crowds, shaking hands with surprised bystanders in the street, mixing his formal speeches with off-the-cuff remarks, Pope Francis stamped his own style on the papacy Sunday.

Five men have been arrested and have confessed to raping a Swiss woman who was attacked in central India while on a cycling vacation with her husband, police said.

Two other suspects are being sought, said D. K. Arya, a senior police officer. The five men arrested in Datia on Sunday are from villages near where the attack occurred Friday night as the Swiss couple camped in a forest in Datia district of Madhya Pradesh state.

Two members of Steubenville’s celebrated high school football team were found guilty Sunday of raping a drunken 16-year-old girl, and Ohio’s attorney general warned the case isn’t over, saying he is investigating whether coaches, parents and other students broke the law, too.

The issue of school start dates goes beyond every kid’s desire for more summer fun; there is in fact a very real economic component to the decision. We recently looked at the implications of moving the school start date earlier in August, focusing on losses from reduced tourism.

While the rest of the country stresses its NCAA tournament plans on Selection Monday, the Lady Bears plan to sit back and enjoy themselves.

Sure, there are a few teams in the field that have a good idea where they’ll go. Notre Dame, UConn and Stanford can reasonably expect No. 1 seeds and subregional tournaments closer to home. Dozens more teams know they’ll be in the field, awaiting seeds and confirmation they beat the bubble.

Texas has no teams in the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1977.

When the 68-team field was announced Sunday, the Lone Star State was completely shut out. There were no Longhorns, Baylor Bears, Texas A&M Aggies, Red Raiders or Owls.

You never know what might happen when a lawmaker brings a gun to a knife fight.

But Second Amendment rights advocates are about to find out.

Kansas State and Kansas tied for the regular-season Big 12 title.

That doesn’t mean they feel very good about themselves entering the league tournament.

Argentine Jorge Bergoglio was elected pope Wednesday and chose the papal name Francis, becoming first pontiff from the Americas and the first from outside Europe in more than a millennium.

A stunned-looking Bergoglio shyly waved to the crowd of tens of thousands of people who gathered in St. Peter’s Square, marveling that the cardinals had had to look to “the end of the earth” to find a bishop of Rome.

An arrest in Arizona 50 years ago that led to a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision is the subject of an exhibit that includes the handwritten confession famously thrown out by the nation’s highest court.

The warning from police that suspects have the right to remain silent sprang, in part, from the arrest of Ernesto Miranda in Phoenix on March 13, 1963.

Wanted: moderate Democrats. Contact the mostly liberal House Democratic leadership if interested.

Democrats hope to take back the House of Representatives in 2014 by mirroring their last successful effort to flip the chamber in 2006.

George Prescott Bush filed the official paperwork Tuesday to run for Texas land commissioner next year, hoping to use a little-known but powerful post to continue his family’s political dynasty in one of the country’s most-conservative states.

Texas senators started a debate Tuesday that will likely last for weeks as lawmakers try to decide how many standardized tests students must take to graduate from high school.

After the disastrous introduction of a new testing regimen last year, the Legislature is anxious to overhaul what parents, teachers, students and business leaders all consider a flawed system. Texas law currently requires some high school students to take 15 exams to graduate, though the state education commissioner has waved a requirement that exam results count toward 15 percent of the final grades in core courses.

Colorado lawmakers took a historic vote to approve civil unions for gay couples Tuesday, delivering on a campaign promise from Democrats who have capitalized on the changing political landscape of a state where voters banned same-sex marriage not long ago.

Black smoke poured from the Sistine Chapel chimney on Tuesday, signaling that cardinals had failed on their first vote of the papal conclave to choose a new leader for the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics and their troubled church.

Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles on Sunday launched what many consider a doomed candidacy to replace Hugo Chavez with a no-holds-barred attack against a government he accused of coldly betraying Venezuelans’ trust.

Chavez’s political heirs have toyed with Venezuelans’ hopes, lying to them about his deteriorating health by suggesting he could recover and even producing decrees he supposedly signed, said Capriles, whom Chavez defeated by a 12-point margin in October.

A judge struck down New York City’s pioneering ban on big sugary drinks Monday just hours before it was supposed to take effect, handing a defeat to health-minded Mayor Michael Bloomberg and creating confusion for restaurants that had already ordered smaller cups and changed their menus.

A modest but widely felt earthquake rolled through a wide swath of Southern California late Monday morning but there were no immediate reports of damage.

The 9:55 a.m. quake had an estimated magnitude of 4.7, said Nick Scheckel, seismic analyst at the California Institute of Technology’s seismological laboratory in Pasadena. He said a number of aftershocks were occurring.

Harvard University administrators secretly searched the emails of 16 deans last fall, looking for a leak to reporters about a case of cheating, two newspapers reported.

The email accounts belonged to deans on the Administrative Board, a committee addressing the cheating, The Boston Globe and The New York Times reported, citing school officials. The deans were not warned about the email access and only one was told of the search afterward.

If the day comes when you stand for the Texas National Anthem before a ballgame, you can thank several former Soviet satellite republics, your Texas twang and a bunch of good old boys (and a couple of women) who have been working to rewrite American history for 20 years.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Sunday accused the Taliban and the U.S. of working in concert to convince Afghans that violence will worsen if most foreign troops leave — an allegation the top American commander in Afghanistan rejected as “categorically false.”