National News

WASHINGTON -- House Democrats, feeling pressure to display their vision for border security, are preparing a package that would ignore President Donald Trump's demand for $5.7 billion for a wall with Mexico and would instead pay for other ideas aimed at protecting the border...

BOSTON -- Wilson Menashi palmed a squid in his left hand and extended his arm into an aquarium tank, watching as a giant Pacific octopus stretched out arms to greet him like a friend. Freya latched some of her 2,240 suction cups onto Menashi's arm, using their powers of taste and smell to gather information around the 84-year-old man known as the octopus whisperer -- and the seafood treats he was bearing...

WASHINGTON -- In a high-stakes case of dare and double-dare, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi served notice Wednesday President Donald Trump won't be allowed to deliver his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress next week. She took the step after Trump said he planned to show up in spite of Democratic objections to the speech taking place when big swaths of the government are shut down...

WASHINGTON --Americans like the idea of "Medicare-for-all," but support flips to disapproval if it would result in higher taxes or longer waits for care. That's a key insight from a national poll released Wednesday by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. It comes as Democratic presidential hopefuls embrace the idea of a government-run health care system...

WASHINGTON -- When home sales weaken, prices typically do, too, and buyers benefit. Not quite this time. Home purchases in many areas of the country have dipped, and price gains have slowed. Yet a rising number of middle-class Americans are finding that home ownership is unaffordable...

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, will not testify before a House committee next month as scheduled, his adviser said Wednesday, depriving Democrats for now of a prime opportunity to scrutinize Trump, his links to Russia and payments to buy the silence of a porn star...

NEW YORK -- In many states across the U.S., victims of long-ago child sex-abuse have been lobbying for years, often in vain, to change statute of limitation laws that thwart their quest for justice. This year seems sure to produce some breakthroughs, due in part to the midterm election results and recent disclosures about abuse by Roman Catholic priests...

PARK HILLS, Ky. -- Less than a week ago, Covington Catholic High School was known mostly for its seven state titles in football and its rousing motto, "A spirit that will not die." By Tuesday, its phones had been shut off, its website and social media accounts had gone dark, police cars were barricading its entrances and classes were canceled along with a basketball game as the overwhelmingly white, all-boys school found itself a symbol of the nation's deep divisions over race, class and culture.. ...

MOSCOW -- Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan met Wednesday to coordinate their moves in Syria as their governments bargain over zones of influence in the war-torn country. The leaders share strong opposition to the U.S. military presence in Syria, seeing it as an obstacle to their clout in the country. The Kremlin meeting marked their first encounter since U.S. President Donald Trump announced the pullout of American troops in a Dec. 19 tweet...

CARACAS, Venezuela -- Venezuela's crisis quickly escalated on Wednesday, as an opposition leader backed by the Trump administration declared himself interim president in a direct challenge to embattled socialist Nicolas Maduro, who retaliated by breaking off relations with the United States, his biggest trade partner...

Today is Thursday, Jan. 24, the 24th day of 2019. There are 341 days left in the year. Today's Highlight in History: On Jan. 24, 2013, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced the lifting of a ban on women serving in combat. On this date: In 1848, James W. Marshall discovered a gold nugget at Sutter's Mill in northern California, a discovery that led to the gold rush of '49...

WASHINGTON -- Senate leaders Tuesday agreed to hold votes this week on dueling proposals to reopen shuttered federal agencies, forcing a political reckoning for senators grappling with the longest shutdown in U.S. history: Side with President Donald Trump or vote to temporarily end the shutdown and keep negotiating...

WASHINGTON -- The White House is moving forward with plans for President Donald Trump to deliver his State of the Union speech next week in front of a joint session of Congress -- despite a letter from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi requesting he delay it...

NEW YORK -- Rudy Giuliani's latest media blitz, which was filled with a dizzying array of misstatements and hurried clarifications, agitated President Donald Trump and some of his allies, who have raised the possibility the outspoken presidential lawyer be at least temporarily sidelined from televised interviews...

LOS ANGELES -- A crowd of teachers roared its approval after a tentative deal was announced Tuesday between Los Angeles school officials and the union to allow educators to return to classrooms after a six-day strike in the nation's second-largest district...

LAS VEGAS -- A man suspected of being in the U.S. illegally shot and killed four people in Nevada over the past two weeks, including an elderly Reno couple, authorities said, and the slayings added fuel to the immigration debate. Wilbur Ernesto Martinez-Guzman, 19, from El Salvador has been jailed in Carson City since Saturday on possession of stolen property, burglary and immigration charges. ...

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Dozens of people killed in a brazen Taliban attack on a military base were members of Afghanistan's intelligence agency, officials said Tuesday, in a severe blow to the government that has lost control of nearly half of the country to the insurgents...

JERUSALEM -- Tens of thousands of Palestinians are no longer getting food aid or basic health services from America, U.S.-funded infrastructure projects have been halted, and an innovative peace-building program in Jerusalem is scaling back its activities...

Today is Wednesday, Jan. 23, the 23rd day of 2019. There are 342 days left in the year. Today's Highlight in History: On Jan. 23, 1845, Congress decided all national elections would be held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. On this date:...

WASHINGTON -- Doris Cochran, a disabled mother of two young boys, is stockpiling canned foods these days, filling her shelves with noodle soup, green beans, peaches and pears -- anything that can last for months or even years. Her pantry looks as though she's preparing for a winter storm. But she's just trying to make sure her family won't go hungry if her food stamps run out...

WASHINGTON -- Kamala Harris, a first-term senator and former California attorney general known for her rigorous questioning of President Donald Trump's nominees, entered the Democratic presidential race Monday. Vowing to "bring our voices together," Harris would be the first woman to hold the presidency and the second African-American if she succeeds...

A group of five black men shouting vulgar insults while protesting centuries of oppression. Dozens of white Catholic high school students visiting Washington for a rally to end abortion. And Native Americans marching to end injustice for indigenous peoples across the globe who have seen their lands overrun by outside settlers...

KEENE, N.H. — Officials in a New Hampshire city have approved a restaurant sign initially removed over concerns that it sounded like profanity. The name of the Vietnamese restaurant in a public building next to city hall in Keene is a play on words. ...

Today is Tuesday, Jan. 22, the 22nd day of 2019. There are 343 days left in the year. Today's Highlight in History: On Jan. 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court, in its Roe v. Wade decision, legalized abortions using a trimester approach. Former President Lyndon B. Johnson died at his Texas ranch at age 64...

Today is Monday, Jan. 21, the 21st day of 2019. There are 344 days left in the year. Today's Highlight in History: On Jan. 21, 1977, on his first full day in office, President Jimmy Carter pardoned almost all Vietnam War draft evaders. On this date:...

Today is Sunday, Jan. 20, the 20th day of 2019. There are 345 days left in the year. Today's Highlight in History: On Jan. 20, 2017, Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States, pledging emphatically to empower America's "forgotten men and women." Protesters registered their rage against the new president in a chaotic confrontation with police just blocks from the inaugural parade...

WASHINGTON -- Special counsel Robert Mueller's office Friday issued a rare public statement disputing the accuracy of BuzzFeed News' report that said President Donald Trump's former attorney told Mueller the president directed him to lie to Congress...

CHICAGO -- The white Chicago police officer who gunned down a black teenager in 2014 was sentenced Friday to nearly seven years in prison, bringing an end to a historic case centering on a shocking dashcam video and fueling national debates about race and policing and law enforcement's "code of silence."...

DETROIT -- Michigan's attorney general in 2016 promised to investigate "without fear or favor" the scandal over Flint's lead-tainted drinking water and pledged state regulators would be locked up for fudging data and misleading the public. Yet three years later, no one is behind bars. Instead, seven of 15 defendants have pleaded no contest to misdemeanors, some as minor as disrupting a public meeting. Their records eventually will be scrubbed clean...

BEIJING -- Yu Mingang had a good job helping Chinese manufacturers prepare to sell shares to the public until the cooling economy derailed those plans. As demand for auditing services sank, the 25-year-old accountant in the eastern city of Hangzhou was laid off in December. Yu tightened his belt: No more movies or eating out. He put off buying a computer...

LONDON -- It's an understatement to say Michael O'Brien is worried about Brexit. O'Brien is a supervisor at Clarity-The Soap Co., which employs visually impaired adults at a factory in east London. A tall man with a thatch of gray hair, O'Brien has a manner so easy it sounds as if he is talking about the weather rather than an issue bitterly dividing British society -- the country's looming departure from the European Union...

HARARE, Zimbabwe -- Zimbabwe imposed a "total internet shutdown" for most of Friday in what critics called an attempt to hide growing reports of a violent crackdown on protests against a dramatic fuel price increase. Badly injured people streamed into a hospital in the capital, and rights groups said at least 12 people were killed this week...

LOS ANGELES -- Teachers picketed and rallied Friday as a strike against the giant Los Angeles Unified School District extended to a fifth day with a new round of contract negotiations underway. Drums, whistles, shouts and honks from supportive motorists echoed through downtown as groups of teachers and backers walked to a rally drawing thousands to Grand Park near City Hall...

The legal pressure on the prominent family behind the company making OxyContin, the prescription painkiller fueling the nation's opioid epidemic, is likely to get more intense. The Sackler family came under heavy scrutiny this week when a legal filing in a Massachusetts case asserted family members and company executives sought to push prescriptions of the drug and downplay its risks. Those revelations are likely to be a preview of the claims in a series of expanding legal challenges...

WASHINGTON -- The allegation, if true, was extraordinary: The White House, in leaking the travel plans of members of Congress, put the safety of the speaker of the House in jeopardy. Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday canceled her plans to travel by commercial plane to visit U.S. troops in Afghanistan, saying President Donald Trump had caused a security risk by talking about the trip. The White House said there was no such leak...

Today is Saturday, Jan. 19, the 19th day of 2019. There are 346 days left in the year. Today's Highlight in History: On Jan. 19, 1955, a presidential news conference was filmed for television and newsreels for the first time, with the permission of President Dwight D. Eisenhower...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Thousands of federal employees and their families are applying for unemployment and food stamps to get by as the longest government shutdown in U.S. history drags on with no end in sight. But for some of them, it has been an exercise in confusion and frustration...

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani on Thursday walked back comments from the night before in which he maintained that he had "never said there was no collusion" between Russia and members of Trump's 2016 White House campaign...

CHICAGO -- A judge on Thursday acquitted three Chicago officers of trying to cover up the 2014 shooting of Laquan McDonald, dismissing as just one perspective the shocking dashcam video of the black teenager's death that led to protests, a federal investigation of the police department and the rare murder conviction of an officer...

WASHINGTON -- Moving to protect the U.S. from advanced missile threats from China and Russia, President Donald Trump on Thursday laid out plans for a new array of space-based sensors and other high-tech systems designed to more quickly detect and defeat attacks...

WASHINGTON -- Thousands more migrant children may have been split from their families than the Trump administration previously reported, in part because officials were stepping up family separations long before the border policy that prompted international outrage last spring, a government watchdog said Thursday...

WASHINGTON -- High-level talks aimed at finalizing a second summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un are planned for this week in Washington, U.S. officials said Thursday. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is expected to meet former North Korean spy chief Kim Yong Chol at a Washington hotel on Friday. ...

BOGOTA, Colombia -- At least nine people were killed and dozens more injured in a car bombing at a heavily guarded police academy in Colombia's capital on Thursday, recalling the high-profile attacks associated with the bloodiest chapters of the country's drug-fueled guerrilla conflict...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- She is largely unknown in the United States, but the American anchorwoman for Iran's state-run broadcaster, detained last weekend by U.S. authorities, is a familiar face on its English-language channel. As a newscaster for Press TV, Marzieh Hashemi has been conducting interviews and reading the news as written by government loyalists in the Islamic Republic. It's a long way from New Orleans, where she was born Melanie Franklin in 1959 to a Christian family...

LONDON -- The head of the World Health Organization has ordered an internal investigation into allegations the U.N. health agency is rife with racism, sexism and corruption, after a series of anonymous emails with the explosive charges were sent to top managers last year...

LONDON -- A weakened but defiant Prime Minister Theresa May met lawmakers from Britain's rival Brexit factions Thursday to try to forge a replacement for her rejected European Union exit plan. But the country's main opposition leader branded the talks a "stunt," and May gave little sign she would make major changes to the divorce deal tossed out by Parliament this week. ...

WASHINGTON -- She imperiled his State of the Union address. He denied her an aircraft to visit troops abroad. The shutdown battle between President Donald Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is playing out as a surreal game of constitutional brinksmanship, with both flexing their political powers from opposite ends of Pennsylvania Avenue as the negotiations to end the monthlong partial government shutdown remain stalled...

Today is Friday, Jan. 18, the 18th day of 2019. There are 347 days left in the year. Today's Highlights in History: On Jan. 18, 1957, a trio of B-52's completed the first non-stop, round-the-world flight by jet planes, landing at March Air Force Base in California after more than 45 hours aloft...

WASHINGTON -- The Trump administration will roll out a new strategy today for a more aggressive space-based missile defense system to protect against existing threats from North Korea and Iran and counter advanced weapon systems being developed by Russia and China...

ATLANTA -- A Georgia man who had detailed plans to use an anti-tank rocket to storm into the White House was arrested in a sting Wednesday after he traded his car for guns and explosives, authorities said. Hasher Jallal Taheb, 21, of Cumming was arrested Wednesday and is charged with attempting to damage or destroy a building owned by the United States using fire or an explosive, U.S. Attorney Byung J. "BJay" Pak said...