National News

Millions of Americans have converged on a narrow corridor stretching from Oregon to South Carolina to watch the moon blot out the midday sun today for a couple of minutes in the first total solar eclipse to sweep coast to coast in 99 years. Veteran eclipse watchers warned the uninitiated to get ready to be blown away...

RIPOLL, Spain -- They were brothers and boyhood friends from a town with no unfamiliar faces. They were linked by Moroccan roots and equally tied by their upbringings in Ripoll, an ancient hub in the Catalan foothills known for its monastery and passageways dotted with cafes and kebab shops...

SINGAPORE -- A U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer collided with a tanker early today in waters east of Singapore and the Straits of Malacca, and at least 10 sailors are missing. The Navy said five others were hurt. The USS John S. McCain sustained damage on its port side aft, or left rear, from the collision with the Alnic MC that happened at 5:24 a.m., the Navy's 7th Fleet said...

ABU GHADDUR, Iraq -- U.S.-backed Iraqi forces on Sunday launched a multi-pronged assault to retake the town of Tal Afar, west of Mosul, marking the next phase in the country's war on the Islamic State group. Tal Afar and the surrounding area are among the last pockets of IS-held territory in Iraq after victory was declared in July in Mosul, the country's second-largest city...

BRIDGEWATER, N.J. -- Republican Ohio Gov. John Kasich urged President Donald Trump on Sunday to stop the staff chaos at the White House and "settle it down." Strategist Steve Bannon last week became the latest top White House official to follow Trump's national-security adviser, a chief of staff, two communications directors, a press secretary, and others out the door...

GREENSBORO, N.C. -- The Rev. Nelson Johnson needs no reminders of the massacre of five of his labor-activist friends almost 40 years ago -- he still has the faded scar on his left arm, left by a Nazi who stabbed him as white supremacists descended on a march for workers through black neighborhoods in Greensboro...

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump plans to address the nation tonight on his strategy for the war in Afghanistan. The White House said Trump will speak to the country at 8 p.m. today from Fort Myer in Arlington, Virginia. Trump and his national-security team met Friday at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland to reach agreement on a strategy...

EPPING, N.H. -- A woman who became stuck in a swimming pool after the ladder broke turned to Facebook to ask for help getting out. Leslie Kahn, 61, was swimming in her pool alone when the ladder broke, leaving her stranded. She said she didn't have the strength to pull herself. She used a pool pole to drag the chair her iPad was on and posted in a community Facebook page, asking for help. A woman who lived nearby showed up, followed by police and a neighbor...

CHICAGO -- The fatal stabbing of a hairstylist in Chicago was part of a sexual fantasy hatched in an online chatroom between a Northwestern University professor and an Oxford University employee, whose plan included killing someone and then themselves, prosecutors told a Cook County judge Sunday at a bond hearing for the men...

EDMOND, Okla. -- A convicted sex offender who molested his niece when she was 7 years old moved in next door to his victim nearly a dozen years after he was sent to prison for the crime. Outraged, the Oklahoma woman, now 21, called lawmakers, the police and advocacy groups to plead with them to take action...

BOSTON -- Two hairs that looked like the victim's; some dirt on a truck like that taken from the crime scene; a pattern on the bumper that resembled a design on the victim's popular brand of jeans. The case against Steven Barnes in the rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl seemed circumstantial, at best...

Today in History Today is Monday, Aug. 21, the 233rd day of 2017. There are 132 days left in the year. Today's Highlight in History: On August 21, 1858, the first of seven debates between Illinois senatorial contenders Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas took place...

BEIRUT -- Lebanon's U.S.-backed army on Saturday launched its biggest military operation yet against Islamic State militants, who in 2014 gained a foothold along the tiny Mediterranean country's border with Syria. The long-awaited campaign aims to defeat IS in the group's border enclave and put an end to a terror threat that has loomed over Lebanon...

HELSINKI -- A man stabbed eight people Friday in Finland's western city of Turku, killing two of them, before police shot him in the thigh and detained him, police said. Authorities were looking for more potential suspects in the attack. A suspect -- a man whose identity was not known -- was being treated in the city's main hospital but was in police custody. Security was being stepped up across the Nordic country, Interior Minister Paula Risikko told reporters at a news conference...

RIPOLL, Spain -- A missing imam and a house that exploded days ago became the focus Saturday of an investigation into an extremist cell responsible for two deadly attacks in Barcelona and a nearby resort, as authorities narrowed in on who radicalized a group of young men in northeastern Spain...

BOSTON -- Thousands of demonstrators chanting anti-Nazi slogans converged Saturday on downtown Boston in a repudiation of white nationalism, dwarfing a small group of conservatives who cut short their planned "free speech rally" a week after a gathering of hate groups led to bloodshed in Virginia...

WASHINGTON -- Steve Bannon, the blunt-spoken and divisive strategist who went from Donald Trump's victorious campaign to a top White House post, has been pushed out by the president, capping a turbulent seven months that witnessed the departure of much of Trump's original senior staff...

KISSIMMEE, Fla. -- A suspect in the fatal shooting of a police officer in Florida and the grave wounding of a sergeant was arrested in a bar several hours after the attack, authorities said Saturday. Everett Miller faces a charge of first-degree murder for the killing of officer Matthew Baxter and could face other charges for the wounding of Sgt. Sam Howard, said Kissimmee police chief Jeff O'Dell at a news conference Saturday...

BRIDGEWATER, N.J. -- In a break with tradition, President Donald Trump and the first lady have decided not to participate in events honoring recipients of this year's Kennedy Center Honors arts awards to "allow the honorees to celebrate without any political distraction," the White House announced Saturday...

MCMINNVILLE, Ore. -- A sheriff honored a family's golden retriever for digging up $85,000 worth of black-tar heroin in a family's backyard. The owners of a dog named Kenyon thought he had dug up a time capsule in their backyard, so they filmed themselves opening it. As they did, they realized Kenyon had found drugs. Yamhill County Sheriff Tim Svenson identified the substance as more than 15 ounces of black tar heroin...

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump's racially fraught comments about a deadly neo-Nazi rally have thrust into the open some Republicans' deeply held doubts about his competency and temperament, in a public airing of worries and grievances about a sitting president by his own party...

WASHINGTON -- It's not just the skies that get dark when there's a total solar eclipse. So do we. Modern science explains the sun disappears because the moon is passing in front of it. But before that, people had to come up with reasons for what was happening in the sky. Some of them weren't bedtime stories...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke University removed a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee early Saturday after it was vandalized amid a national debate about monuments to the Confederacy. The university said it removed the carved limestone likeness before dawn from the entryway to Duke Chapel, where it stood among 10 historical figures. Officials discovered early Thursday the statue's face had been gouged and scarred, and part of the nose was missing...

Today in History Today is Sunday, Aug. 20, the 232nd day of 2017. There are 133 days left in the year. Today's Highlight in History: On August 20, 1977, the United States launched Voyager 2, an unmanned spacecraft carrying a 12-inch, gold-plated copper phonograph record containing images, greetings in dozens of languages, samples of music and sounds of nature. ...

Today in History Today is Saturday, Aug. 19, the 231st day of 2017. There are 134 days left in the year. Today's Highlight in History: On August 19, 1942, during World War II, about 6,000 Canadian and British soldiers launched a disastrous raid against the Germans at Dieppe, France, suffering more than 50-percent casualties...

ALBANY, N.Y. -- A New York military aviation researcher got more than she bargained for on a dream trip to a battle-scarred South Pacific island -- the chance to help solve the mystery of an American soldier listed as missing in action from World War II...

BARCELONA, Spain -- A van veered onto a sidewalk and sped down a busy pedestrian zone Thursday in Barcelona's picturesque Las Ramblas district, swerving from side to side as it mowed down tourists and residents and turned the popular European vacation spot into a bloody killing zone...

WASHINGTON -- While Monday's total solar eclipse in the U.S. will be a once-in-a-lifetime sky show for millions, there's a small group of people who have experienced it all before, and they can't get enough of it. Glenn Schneider has seen 33. Fred Espenak has watched 28. Donald Liebenberg has logged 26. For newbie Kate Russo, it's 10 and counting...

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. -- The white nationalists behind last weekend's violent rally found an appealing target in the historic town where Thomas Jefferson founded a university and an outspoken, progressive mayor declared his city the "capital of the resistance" to President Donald Trump...

NEW YORK -- It took bloodshed in Charlottesville, Virginia, to get tech companies to do what civil-rights groups have been asking them to do for years: take a firmer stand against accounts used to promote hate and violence. In the wake of the deadly clash at a white-nationalist rally last weekend in Virginia, major companies such as Google, Facebook and PayPal are banishing a growing cadre of extremist groups and individuals for violating service terms...

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone -- The government has begun burying the 350 people killed earlier this week in mudslides in Sierra Leone's capital, and it warned Thursday of new danger from a large crack that has opened on a mountainside where residents were told to evacuate...

BAGHDAD -- The wires protruding from the small, misshapen stuffed animal revealed the deadly booby-trap tucked inside. For the people of Mosul, the sophisticated bomb was a reminder of how difficult it will be to return to homes littered with hidden explosives by Islamic State militants and dotted with the remnants of undetonated bombs dropped by the U.S.-led coalition that still could blow up...

WASHINGTON -- America's diplomatic and defense chiefs sought Thursday to reinforce the threat of possible U.S. military action against North Korea after President Donald Trump's top strategist essentially called the commander-in-chief's warnings a bluff...

KABUL, Afghanistan -- An American soldier was killed, and several others were wounded in a battle with Islamic State militants in eastern Afghanistan, the U.S. military said. The military said in a statement several Afghan forces also were wounded in the fighting Wednesday in the Achin district of the Nangarhar province, a militant stronghold...

DENVER -- Researchers said they have found a new clue into the mysterious exodus of ancient cliff-dwelling people from the Mesa Verde area of Colorado more than 700 years ago: DNA from the bones of domesticated turkeys. The DNA shows the Mesa Verde people raised turkeys that had telltale similarities to turkeys kept by ancient people in the Rio Grande Valley of northern New Mexico -- and those birds became more common in New Mexico about the same time the Mesa Verde people were leaving their cliff dwellings, according to a paper published last month in the journal PLoS One.. ...

BERLIN -- German customs officers say they have destroyed 20 rotten snake heads found in a package that had arrived from Nigeria. A spokeswoman for Munich's main customs office said Wednesday that officers discovered the snake parts when they x-rayed a 6.6-pound package last week. Marie Mueller said the customs office repeatedly has intercepted packages from western Africa with snake heads, which are sent to Germany as a delicacy...

Today in History Today is Friday, Aug. 18, the 230th day of 2017. There are 135 days left in the year. Today's Highlight in History: On August 18, 1587, Virginia Dare became the first child of English parents to be born in present-day America, on what is now Roanoke Island in North Carolina. (However, the Roanoke colony ended up mysteriously disappearing.)...

JACKSON, N.H. -- Golfers at Eagle Mountain Golf Course were joined Monday on the sixth fairway by a llama that escaped from his pen about 2 miles through some woods. The Conway Daily Sun reported the pack animal, named Noir, was friendly and got in pictures with the golfers. The fugitive is well known to local police. Officers escorted him home in June when he escaped from his electric-fence enclosure...

BEIJING -- China has urged the United States and North Korea to "hit the brakes" on threatening words and work toward a peaceful resolution of their tense standoff created by Pyongyang's recent missile tests and threats to fire them toward Guam. The dispute also has raised fears in South Korea, where a conservative political party Wednesday called for the United States to bring back tactical nuclear weapons to the Korean Peninsula...

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone -- Hawa Stevens spoke through tears of the 28 family members she lost after surging mudslides and floodwaters swept through Sierra Leone's capital, killing hundreds and leaving hundreds more missing. "Mother, father, sisters, brothers, cousins all gone. My life has been shattered. ... Please help me, God," she sobbed as she waited in a long line in the pouring rain Wednesday outside Freetown's overwhelmed mortuary to try to identify the corpses of her loved ones...

NAIROBI, Kenya -- Kenya's opposition will challenge the results of last week's presidential election in the Supreme Court and wage a campaign of civil disobedience, its leader announced Wednesday, saying they intend to expose a "computer-generated presidency."...

NEW DELHI -- A day after the U.N. chief voiced concern about Indian plans to potentially deport tens of thousands of Muslim Rohingya refugees, an Indian government official said Wednesday authorities only are working to identify those who fled persecution in neighboring Myanmar, not expel them...

MONTPELIER, Vt. -- A man who said his livelihood in agriculture has been nearly ruined by people who entered the country illegally to work on local farms is facing charges he sprayed liquid manure on a marked U.S. Customs and Border Protection car after confronting an agent about immigration enforcement...

HONOLULU -- A multi-agency team scoured the ocean off Hawaii on Wednesday for five people aboard an Army helicopter that went down during a nighttime training exercise. Officials at Wheeler Army Airfield near Honolulu reported losing communications about 10 p.m. Tuesday with the crew of a UH-60 Black Hawk, the Coast Guard said in a statement...

Bernard Lafayette fought to end segregation during the civil-rights movement. But after watching events in Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend and hearing President Donald Trump blame both sides for the deadly violence, he realized changing laws did not change enough hearts and minds...

NEW YORK -- With corporate chieftains fleeing, President Donald Trump abruptly abolished two of his White House business councils Wednesday -- the latest fallout from his combative comments on racially charged violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. Trump announced the action via tweet, although only after one of the panels already had agreed to disband earlier in the day. ...

NEW YORK -- One after another, the nation's most powerful Republicans responded to President Donald Trump's extraordinary remarks about white supremacists. Yet few mentioned the president. The Senate's top Republican, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, condemned "hate and bigotry." House Speaker Paul Ryan charged, "White supremacy is repulsive."...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- A federal appeals-court panel ruled Wednesday that Arkansas can block Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood, two years after the state ended its contract with the group over videos secretly recorded by an anti- abortion group. In a 2-1 ruling, an 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel vacated preliminary injunctions a federal judge issued preventing the state from suspending any Medicaid payments for services rendered to patients from Planned Parenthood...

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. -- The mother of the young woman mowed down while protesting a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville urged mourners at a memorial service Wednesday to "make my daughter's death worthwhile" by confronting injustice the way she did...

WASHINGTON -- Diagnosing whether a tick bite caused Lyme or another disease can be difficult, but scientists are developing a new way to do it early -- using a "signature" of molecules in patients' blood. It still is highly experimental, but initial studies suggest the novel tool might uncover early-stage Lyme disease more accurately than today's standard test, researchers reported Wednesday...