National News

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  CHRISTINA LARSON The Orionids — one of two major meteor showers caused by remnants from Halley’s comet — will peak with the arrival of a new moon, providing an excellent opportunity to see shooting stars without interference from moonlight. During Tuesday morning’s peak, expect to see…

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  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  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…

By  BRIDGET BROWN, PAMELA SAMPSON, CURTIS YEE, AMY SHAFER and NELL CLARK President Donald Trump said Friday he had commuted the sentence of former U.S. Rep. George Santos, who is serving more than seven years in federal prison after pleading guilty to fraud and identity theft charges. The New York Republican…

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…