By MENELAOS HADJICOSTIS NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — The island of cats has a cat problem. Officials in Cyprus, the small island nation in the eastern corner of the Mediterranean, estimate there is roughly one feral cat for every one of its 1…
By TIM REYNOLDS Updated 12:01 PM CDT, October 17, 2025 Michael Jordan is back in the NBA with NBC, and that network brought the sounds of “Roundball Rock” back as well. Amazon Prime is entering the league after hiring many broadcasters who were…
By TODD RICHMOND Ah, rats! Researchers think they have debunked the origin of Chicago’s so-called “rat hole,” one of the Windy City’s weirdest local landmarks. Hold on. The rat hole wasn’t what you think. It wasn’t some back alley bar that served as…
By CEDAR ATTANASIO SEATTLE (AP) — The special delivery arrived in a plastic storage box after a chartered flight in bouncy single-propeller plane. Veterinarian Susan Shaffer Sookram snipped the zip ties securing the lid and greeted the cargo: four dogs, one…
By DEVNA BOSE/Mississippi Today Thanks to a new partnership between the Mississippi Department of Education and Mississippi Public Broadcasting, students across the state will be getting new teachers this year. But those teachers won’t be in classrooms, sitting behind desks. They’ll…
By ADITHI RAMAKRISHNAN NEW YORK (AP) — Two bright green comets are streaming through the skies and are visible to skygazers in the Northern Hemisphere. Both hail from the outer edges of our solar system — possibly what’s known as the Oort Cloud, well beyond Pluto.…
By JACK BROOK Updated 2:03 PM CDT, October 11, 2025 NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A New Orleans family cleaning up their overgrown backyard made an extremely unusual find: Under the weeds was a mysterious marble tablet with Latin characters that included…
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Notable reaction to the death of Kiss founding member Ace Frehley who died Thursday at 74. Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons “We are devastated by the passing of Ace Frehley. He was an essential and irreplaceable rock soldier…
By KATHERINE LIN/Mississippi Today Mississippi has bemoaned its lack of technology startups and venture capital since the first dot-com boom in the mid 1990s. Innovate Mississippi believes it might have a solution. It is providing funding and training to seven Mississippi…
By MAURA CAREY and BRETT MARTEL In the South, there is only one thing that can rival college football itself: the party before kickoff. Pinpointing the exact origins of tailgating is near impossible. Some trace it to Nov. 6, 1869, when Rutgers and…
By JACK DURA MEDORA, N.D. (AP) — The day his young wife and mother died, Theodore Roosevelt wrote in his diary that “the light has gone out of my life,” and it was only through extended trips to the isolated Dakota…
HALF MOON BAY, Calif. (AP) — A California engineer and gardening enthusiast won the top prize at an annual pumpkin-weighing contest in Northern California after growing a giant jack-o’-lantern gourd weighing 2,346 pounds (1,064 kilograms). Brandon Dawson, of Santa Rosa,…
By QUINN GLABICKI/Pittsburgh’s Public Source On a wooded hillside along the banks of the Allegheny River, Gabrielle Marsden brushed up against an oblong leaf: Asimina triloba. The American pawpaw. The deciduous tree bears North America’s largest native fruit, and, as Marsden…
By STAN CHOE NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street cruised to the finish of a winning week on Friday after banks recovered some of their sharp losses from the day before. The S&P 500 rose 0.5%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added…
By JENNA FRYER Formula 1 announced a five-year deal Friday with Apple, which will be the global motorsports series’ U.S. broadcast partner beginning next season. ESPN had been the broadcast partner since 2018 and through the explosion of popularity of F1 in the…
By JOHN O’CONNOR Updated 3:18 PM CDT, October 16, 2025 SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — It figures that a billionaire would win big in Las Vegas. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker reported a gambling windfall of $1.4 million on his federal tax return…
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Authorities in Philadelphia said Friday that they are no closer to locating a missing 23-year-old woman who disappeared from her nursing home job nearly two weeks ago, urging residents to come forward with even the smallest of…
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Damage to remote Alaska villages hammered by flooding last weekend is so extreme that many of the more than 2,000 people displaced won’t be able to return to their homes for at least 18 months, Gov.…
By MARK SHERMAN WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration on Friday asked the Supreme Court to allow the deployment of National Guard troops in the Chicago area, escalating President Donald Trump’s conflict with Democratic governors over using the military on U.S. soil. The emergency appeal…
LONDON (AP) — Prince Andrew said Friday he is giving up his royal title of the Duke of York and other honors after his friendship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein returned to the headlines. The younger brother of King Charles III said he and…
By BARBARA ORTUTAY Meta is adding parental controls for kids’ interactions with artificial intelligence chatbots — including the ability to turn off one-on-one chats with AI characters altogether — beginning early next year. But parents won’t be able to turn off…
By JACK BROOK NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The FBI has accused a Louisiana resident of participating in the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, then lying about his past and fraudulently obtaining a visa to live in the U.S. According…
By KONSTANTIN TOROPIN and LISA MASCARO WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. has seized survivors after a military strike Thursday on a suspected drug-carrying vessel in the Caribbean, the first since President Donald Trump began launching deadly attacks in the region last month, a defense official…
By ERIC TUCKER and ALANNA DURKIN RICHER Updated 2:20 PM CDT, October 17, 2025 GREENBELT, Md. (AP) — John Bolton pleaded not guilty Friday to charges accusing the former President Donald Trump national security adviser turned critic of emailing classified information to family members and…
By MATT O’BRIEN Updated 8:48 AM CDT, October 16, 2025 Microsoft is encouraging people to talk to their laptops as it rolls out new artificial intelligence updates to Windows 11 and pushes users to phase out its predecessor, Windows 10. Microsoft…
By STAN CHOE Updated 3:57 PM CDT, October 16, 2025 NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks fell on Thursday, hurt by drops for midsized banks as worries flare about the loans they’ve made. The S&P 500 slid 0.6% in its latest up-and-down…
By MIKE SCHNEIDER ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — A suspect in the Los Angeles area’s deadly Palisades Fire earlier this year was ordered to be moved to California on Thursday from central Florida, where he was arrested last week. A hearing for Jonathan…
By CHRISTOPHER WEBER Updated 3:46 PM CDT, October 16, 2025 LOS ANGELES (AP) — Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday that California will begin selling affordable insulin under its own label on Jan. 1, nearly three years after he first announced a partnership to sell state-branded…
MORRISTOWN, N.J. (AP) — Ace Frehley, the original lead guitarist and founding member of the glam rock band Kiss who captivated audiences with his elaborate makeup and smoke-filled guitar, died Thursday. He was 74. Frehley died peacefully surrounded by family…
By CHRISTINE FERNANDO CHICAGO (AP) — Troubled by clashes between agents and the public, a judge on Thursday ordered federal immigration officers in the Chicago area to wear body cameras and also summoned a senior official to court next week to discuss…
By ERIC TUCKER, ALANNA DURKIN RICHER and MICHAEL KUNZELMAN Updated 3:41 PM CDT, October 16, 2025 GREENBELT, Md. (AP) — Former Trump administration national security adviser John Bolton was charged Thursday in a federal investigation into the potential mishandling of classified information, a person familiar…
By SOPHIE BATES Updated 12:51 PM CDT, October 16, 2025 LELAND, Miss. (AP) — Law enforcement officers and community leaders are asking for the public’s help in identifying people wanted for questioning about a mass shooting in the Mississippi Delta town of…
By JONATHAN MATTISE Updated 9:10 AM CDT, October 16, 2025 NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Authorities said Wednesday that they have identified the remains of 14 of the 16 people killed last week in a massive blast at a Tennessee explosives plant, where it’s possible…
By GEOFF MULVIHILL and MORGAN LEE A federal program that provides food assistance to 40 million low-income people could be at risk in November if the government shutdown isn’t resolved by then. And in at least some places, new applications for the program…
By STEPHEN GROVES and MARY CLARE JALONICK WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Democrats are poised for the 10th time Thursday to reject a stopgap spending bill that would reopen the government, insisting they won’t back away from demands that Congress take up health care benefits.…
By SOPHIE BATES PARCHMAN, Miss. (AP) — A Mississippi man convicted of kidnapping, raping and killing a 20-year-old community college student in 1993 was executed Wednesday. Charles Crawford, 59, was pronounced dead at 6:15 p.m. following a lethal injection at the…
By STAN CHOE NEW YORK (AP) — Most U.S. stocks rose Wednesday following another topsy-turvy day on Wall Street. The S&P 500 added 0.4%, but only after jumping toward one of its biggest gains since the summer, erasing it all and…
By TOM MURPHY CVS has finished buying customer prescription files from hundreds of closed Rite Aid drugstores and is now running 63 of the defunct chain’s locations. The company said Wednesday that it is operating former Rite Aid and Bartell Drugs stores in…
By DAVID BAUDER Updated 4:10 PM CDT, October 15, 2025 WASHINGTON (AP) — Dozens of reporters turned in access badges and exited the Pentagon on Wednesday rather than agree to government-imposed restrictions on their work, pushing journalists who cover the American military…
By PATRICK WHITTLE PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Faulty engineering led to the implosion of an experimental submersible that killed five people on the way to the wreck of the Titanic, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded in a report Wednesday. The NTSB…
OXNARD, Calif. (AP) — A firefighter braved rising floodwaters to rescue a shivering pup that was stranded Tuesday on debris during a rare October storm in Southern California. Video shows a Ventura County firefighter climbing down a ladder to reach the…
By ASSOCIATED PRESS A person living in the suburbs of New York City has tested positive for chikungunya, a mosquito-borne virus that is more often seen in South America and hasn’t been transmitted on the U.S. mainland in a decade. Health officials…
By JANIE HAR SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration for now must stop firing workers during the government shutdown, a federal judge ordered on Wednesday. U.S. District Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco said the cuts appeared to be politically…
By DEE-ANN DURBIN The J.M. Smucker Co. is suing Trader Joe’s, alleging the grocery chain’s new frozen peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are too similar to Smucker’s Uncrustables in their design and packaging. In the lawsuit, which was filed Monday in federal court…
By BECKY BOHRER, CEDAR ATTANASIO and GENE JOHNSON JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Rain and wind were forecast Wednesday along the Alaska coast where two villages were devastated by the remnants of Typhoon Halong and officials were scrambling to find shelter for more than 1,500 people driven…
By MARK SHERMAN Updated 9:03 AM CDT, October 15, 2025 WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is taking up a major Republican-led challenge to the Voting Rights Act, the centerpiece legislation of the Civil Rights Movement, that could gut a key provision of the…
By DAMIAN J. TROISE NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. indexes bounced between gains and losses on Tuesday and wound up mixed on Wall Street as trade tensions continued to simmer between Washington and Beijing. The S&P 500 closed 0.2% lower after…
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — An estimated 31,000 registered nurses and other front-line Kaiser Permanente health care workers went on strike Tuesday to demand better wages and staffing from the California-based health care giant. Organizers say the five-day strike across 500…
By MATTHEW BROWN BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Federal officials rejected a company’s bid to acquire 167 million tons of coal on public lands in Montana for less than a penny per ton, in what would have been the biggest U.S. government coal sale in…
By MICHAEL R. SISAK and JACK BROOK NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. government has seized more than $14 billion in bitcoin and charged the founder of a Cambodian conglomerate in a massive cryptocurrency scam, accusing him and unnamed co-conspirators of exploiting forced…
