Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 43
BOSTON (AP) — After weeks of fear and bewilderment about the drones buzzing over parts of New York and New Jersey, elected officials are urging action to identify and stop the mysterious flights. "There's a lot of us who are pretty frustrated right now," Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on "Fox News Sunday." "'We don't know' is not a good enough answer," he said. National security officials have said the drones don't appear to be a sign of foreign interference or a public safety threat. But bec...
A moving company representative and lawyers were expected to be given access to Rudy Giuliani's Manhattan apartment on Thursday after the former New York City mayor failed to turn over belongings to two former Georgia election workers who won a $148 million defamation judgment against him. The two sides hurled allegations against each other this week as the deadline for Giuliani to surrender the items passed Tuesday without any of the assets changing hands. U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman ordered Giuliani last week to give the election...
Rudy Giuliani must turn over sports memorabilia and other prized possessions to two Georgia election workers who won a $148 million defamation judgment against him, including his New York City apartment, more than two dozen luxury watches and a 1980 Mercedes once owned by movie star Lauren Bacall, a judge ruled Tuesday. But U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman in Manhattan also said Giuliani does not have to give the election workers three New York Yankees World Series rings or his Florida condominium — for now — noting those assets are tied up in...
The silver pocket watch was a prized possession of Theodore Roosevelt, a keepsake given to him by his sister and her husband in 1898 before he became president that would travel with him around the world and end up at Sagamore Hill — his home on Long Island, New York, and now a national historic site. But in 1987, it went from museum piece to pilfered prize when someone stole it from an unlocked case at the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site in Buffalo, New York, where it was on loan. It was mystery that endured 36 years u...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Kathy Roberts has almost nothing left. The South Dakota resident escaped flooding Sunday night with her cat and the clothes on her back, KTIV-TV reported. "I heard screaming outside and looked outside and I had neighbors that had water rushing into their place and water was slowly rising in my driveway," Roberts said. "Within eight minutes, I was leaving my house and driving through water that was up over my step rails on my jeep." In the residential development where Roberts lived along McCook Lake in North Sioux C...
NEW YORK (AP) — New York's highest court on Thursday threw out Harvey Weinstein 's 2020 rape conviction with a ruling that shocked and disappointed women who celebrated historic gains during the #MeToo era and left those who testified in the case bracing for a retrial against the ex-movie mogul. The court found the trial judge unfairly allowed testimony against Weinstein based on allegations that weren't part of the case. Weinstein, 72, will remain in prison because he was convicted in Los Angeles in 2022 of another rape. But the New York r...
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Search giant Google has agreed to a $391.5 million settlement with 40 states to resolve an investigation into how the company tracked users' locations, state attorneys general announced Monday. The states' investigation was sparked by a 2018 Associated Press story, which found that Google continued to track people's location data even after they opted out of such tracking by disabling a feature the company called "location history." The attorneys general called the settlement a historic win for consumers, and the l...
WATERBURY, Conn. (AP) — A jury began deliberations Thursday to decide how much conspiracy theorist Alex Jones should pay for pushing the lie that the 2012 Sandy Hook School massacre was a hoax. A lawyer for the families of eight people killed and an FBI agent who responded to the mass shooting told jurors in closing arguments that Jones started lying about the shooting the day it happened and provided the machinery that allowed that lie to spread. Jones' attorney countered by telling the jury his client didn't "invent the Internet" and a...
WATERBURY, Conn. (AP) — For a decade, the parents and siblings of people killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting have been tormented and harassed by people who believe the mass shooting was a hoax. How do you put a price tag on their suffering? That's part of the task faced by a Connecticut jury that has been asked to decide how much Infowars host Alex Jones and his company should pay for spreading a conspiracy theory that the massacre never happened. The six jurors deliberated for less than an hour Thursday before breaking for t...
WATERBURY, Conn. (AP) — A mother who lost one of her sons in the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre testified Tuesday that her biggest fear is that people who believe the shooting was a hoax will harm her other son, who survived the attack at his school. Nicole Hockley and her former husband, Ian Hockley, were the latest family members of the 26 victims of the school shooting to testify at the defamation trial of Alex Jones, where a jury is deciding how much the conspiracy theorist must pay for spreading the hoax lie. Nicole Hockley said she's been calle...
WATERBURY, Conn. (AP) — Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones appeared in court Thursday in Connecticut as he and his lawyer try to limit damages he must pay for promoting the lie that the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre was a hoax. More than a dozen family members of some of the 20 children and six educators killed in the shooting also showed up to observe his testimony in Waterbury Superior Court, which is about 20 miles (32 kilometers) away from Newtown. Jones was expected to be the first witness called, but there was a delay as the court dealt w...
A Connecticut judge found Infowars host Alex Jones liable by default Monday in a defamation lawsuit brought by parents of children killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting over the conspiracy theorist's claims that the massacre was a hoax. The ruling by the judge, who cited Jones' refusal to abide by court rulings or turn over evidence, means a jury will determine how much in damages Jones should pay to the families. Shortly after the judge's decision, Jones went on his show and said he'd been deprived of a fair trial. "These individ...
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Federal officials are not honoring an agreement to accept the validity of Connecticut pardons and continue trying to deport people pardoned by a state board because of their crimes, according to state Attorney General William Tong's office. Tong's office sued several federal agencies including the U.S. departments of Homeland Security, Justice and Immigration and Customs Enforcement in October 2019. The lawsuit said federal authorities were refusing to honor the state's pardon system in the cases of immigrants facing d...
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — An exceptionally rare 15th century porcelain bowl made in China that somehow turned up at a Connecticut yard sale and sold for just $35 was auctioned off Wednesday for nearly $722,000. The small white bowl adorned with cobalt blue paintings of flowers and other designs — one of only seven such bowls known to exist in the world — was among a variety of Chinese works of art sold by Sotheby's as part of its Asia Week events. The names of the seller and buyer were not disclosed. Sotheby's had estimated the value of the artif...
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Talk about your yard sale finds. A small porcelain bowl bought for $35 at a Connecticut yard sale turned out to be a rare, 15th century Chinese artifact worth between $300,000 and $500,000 that is about to go up for auction at Sotheby's. The white bowl adorned with cobalt blue paintings of flowers and other designs is about 6 inches (16 centimeters) in diameter. An antiques enthusiast came across the piece and thought it could be something special when browsing a yard sale in the New Haven area last year, according to S...
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — A Connecticut aquarium has agreed to delay its acquisition of five beluga whales for research amid a lawsuit by an animal rights group trying to stop the delivery. Mystic Aquarium will not import the whales before March 31 to allow time for a judge to decide the lawsuit and avoid an effort by Friends of Animals to obtain a preliminary injunction to stop the delivery, according to documents filed in federal court in Hartford on Dec. 23. Friends of Animals, based in Darien, Connecticut, filed the lawsuit in September, s...
It's official. Every time residents of Danbury, Connecticut, flush, they will be sending their special deliveries to the John Oliver Memorial Sewer Plant. The City Council voted 18-1 Thursday night to rename the sewage plant after the comedian, who began a tongue-in-cheek battle with Danbury when he went on an expletive-filled rant against the city on HBO's "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" in August. Mayor Mark Boughton didn't waste any time responding on social media. He posted a video of himself at the sewage plant saying the city was...
WINDSOR LOCKS, Conn. (AP) — A World War II-era plane with 13 people aboard crashed and burned at the Hartford airport after encountering mechanical trouble on takeoff Wednesday, killing seven of them. The four-engine, propeller-driven B-17 bomber struggled to get into the air and slammed into a maintenance building at Bradley International Airport as the pilots circled back for a landing, officials and witnesses said. It had 10 passengers and three crew members, authorities said. Connecticut Public Safety Commissioner James Rovella said h...
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — A tentative settlement announced Wednesday over the role Purdue Pharma played in the nation's opioid addiction crisis falls short of the far-reaching national settlement the OxyContin maker had been seeking for months, with litigation sure to continue against the company and the family that owns it. The agreement with about half the states and attorneys representing roughly 2,000 local governments would have Purdue file for a structured bankruptcy and pay as much as $12 billion over time, with about $3 billion coming f...
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — A Yale University psychiatry professor sexually assaulted five students at a research facility on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts and committed sexual misconduct against at least eight others, according to a former federal prosecutor's report released Tuesday. Commissioned by Yale, the report by former Connecticut U.S. Attorney Deirdre Daly investigated the conduct of Dr. D. Eugene Redmond, who retired last year from the Yale School of Medicine after 44 years, amid disciplinary proceedings. Redmond has denied the a...
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — The maker of the rifle used in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its appeal Thursday of a state ruling against the company. Remington Arms, based in Madison, North Carolina, cited a much-debated 2005 federal law that shields firearms manufacturers from liability in most cases when their products are used in crimes. Gunman Adam Lanza opened fire at the Newtown, Connecticut, school with a Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle on Dec. 14, 2012, killing 20 first graders and six e...
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Gun-maker Remington can be sued over how it marketed the rifle used to kill 20 children and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, a divided Connecticut Supreme Court ruled Thursday. Gun control advocates touted the ruling as providing a possible roadmap for victims of other mass shootings to circumvent a long-criticized federal law that shields gun manufacturers from liability in most cases when their products are used in crimes. Gun rights supporters bashed the decision as judicial activism and o...
A man accused of killing his ex-girlfriend and dumping her body in a suitcase in Connecticut is a citizen of Portugal who has been in the U.S. illegally for more than a year, federal authorities said Wednesday as the victim's loved ones gathered for her funeral. Javier Da Silva Rojas, who had been living in New York City, was taken into custody Monday and charged with kidnapping resulting in death in the killing of 24-year-old Valerie Reyes, of New Rochelle, New York. The charge carries the possibility of the death penalty. Da Silva, also 24, e...
A fuller picture of a cemetery in ghastly disarray emerged Thursday as the longtime caretaker of a graveyard in Connecticut's largest city was arrested and officials described in new detail shocking discoveries that included human bones and casket pieces scattered about. About 130 graves were disturbed at the 57-acre cemetery and included those of Civil War veterans, Bridgeport authorities said. Gravestones and remains had been removed to make way for the newly dead, while some new graves were stacked on top of old ones, separated by a layer...
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Some of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooter's personal belongings, including personal journals containing stories about hurting children and a spreadsheet ranking mass murders, must be released to the public because they are not exempt from open record laws, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled Tuesday. Thousands of documents already have been released from the investigation that ended without determining a motive for the massacre of 20 first-graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, 2...
