Sorted by date Results 26 - 42 of 42
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Two years after officials announced the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in Oklahoma, state officials say they are shifting their response efforts to an "endemic" approach to the coronavirus. Interim health commissioner Keith Reed said last week the department is preparing to begin a transition "into the endemic phase of this pandemic," The Oklahoman reported. A disease reaches the endemic stage when the virus still exists in a community but becomes manageable as immunity builds. Last month, California became the first s...
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — They railed against politicians, conducted military-style exercises and spoke darkly of confronting tyrants scheming to seize their guns and enslave them. Yet historian JoEllen Vinyard says the "citizen militia" activists she got to know in the 1990s didn't seem like the types who would abduct a governor or stage a coup. "I don't think they were dangerous," said Vinyard, an Eastern Michigan University professor emeritus and author of a book about far-right movements in the state. "They reminded me of the good old b...
RENO COUNTY, Kan. (AP) — One person was found dead Sunday as firefighters worked to contain a wildfire that burned 12,000 acres in south-central Kansas. Reno County Emergency Management officials said one person who had been reported missing during the fire was found dead Sunday morning. The fire began Saturday and burned land east of Hutchinson in Reno and Harvey counties. Several injuries were also reported in connection with the fire. Another person who had been reported missing was found safe Sunday. Several homes were destroyed in the f...
HAGERSTOWN, Md. (AP) — A large group of truck drivers who object to COVID-19 mandates drove two loops around the beltway surrounding Washington, Sunday, deliberately moving slowly to impact traffic and make their feelings known to lawmakers in the nation's capitol. People crowded onto overpasses, waving at the "People's Convoy" and holding signs and American flags. Within the convoy, there were tractor-trailers with horns blaring and some recreational vehicles and pickup trucks occasionally going by, mixed with the normal traffic on I...
Russia has been a popular destination for WNBA players like Brittney Griner over the past two decades because of the money they can make playing there in the winter. With top players earning more than $1 million — nearly quadruple what they can make as a base salary in the WNBA — Griner, Breanna Stewart, Diana Taurasi, Sue Bird and Jonquel Jones have been willing to spend their offseason playing far from home. It's tough for WNBA players to turn down that kind of money despite safety concerns and politics in some of the countries where they pla...
BANGKOK (AP) — The official global death toll from COVID-19 is on the verge of eclipsing 6 million — underscoring that the pandemic, now entering its third year, is far from over. The milestone is the latest tragic reminder of the unrelenting nature of the pandemic even as people are shedding masks, travel is resuming and businesses are reopening around the globe. The death toll, compiled by Johns Hopkins University, stood at 5,997,994 as of Sunday afternoon. Remote Pacific islands, whose isolation had protected them for more than two yea...
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — In a private video call with American lawmakers over the weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a "desperate" plea to the United States to help Kyiv get more warplanes to fight Russia's invasion and retain control of its airspace. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says Washington has given a "green light" to the idea and is currently "very, very actively" looking at a proposal under which Ukraine's neighbor Poland would supply Kyiv with Soviet-era fighters and in turn receive American F-16s to make u...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The massive superyacht Dilbar stretches one-and-a-half football fields in length, about as long as a World War I dreadnought. It boasts two helipads, berths for more than 130 people and a 25-meter swimming pool long enough to accommodate another whole superyacht. Dilbar was launched in 2016 at a reported cost of more than $648 million. Five years on, its purported owner, the Kremlin-aligned Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov, was already dissatisfied and sent the vessel to a German shipyard last fall for a retrofit reportedly c...
STILLWATER, Okla. (AP) — Oklahoma State will mutually part ways with women's basketball coach Jim Littell at the end of this season, the school announced Monday. Littell enters Thursday's Big 12 Tournament game against Texas Tech with a 203-139 record at Oklahoma State. He was Big 12 Coach of the Year in 2016 and 2021, and has led the Cowgirls to six NCAA Tournament appearances, highlighted by a Sweet 16 berth in 2014. The Cowgirls are 8-19 and lost their last five games. Oklahoma State athletic director Chad Weiberg said he spoke with L...
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Republicans in the Oklahoma House on Monday unveiled a package of new restrictions on the state's booming medical marijuana industry, designed to crack down on illegal growers who sell cannabis on the black market. The 12-point plan includes a standardization of lab testing and equipment, more inspections of grow facilities, separate licenses for marijuana wholesalers and stringent new reporting requirements for electric and water usage by growers. One proposal would also make the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority a s...
MISSION, Kan. (AP) — A judge named a former Kansas attorney general Monday to represent an 18-year-old high school football player who is charged in a shooting that wounded an administrator and school resource officer at a suburban Kansas City high school. Jaylon Desean Elmore was charged Saturday with attempted capital murder in Friday's shooting at Olathe East High School. The charge carries a sentence of life in prison, with no possibility of parole for 25 years. His attorney will be Paul Morrison, Johnson County Judge Dan Vokins said d...
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Republican lawmakers in Kansas are advancing a measure to prevent the governor from entering into legal agreements that change state election practices without getting prior approval from the GOP-controlled Legislature or its top leaders. A Senate committee approved a bill Monday in response to an agreement Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly reached in October with voting-rights groups to head off a lawsuit. The agreement allows Kansas residents to register to vote at state agencies that provide social services benefits. The m...
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — A teenager who scaled a tree at an Indianapolis park to rescue a cat he spotted high up in the branches ended up stuck himself and in need of a rescue, officials said. The 17-year-old boy was at Holliday Park on Indianapolis' north side Saturday afternoon when he saw the cat and decided to rescue it by climbing 35 feet (10.7 meters) into the tree, the Indianapolis Fire Department said in a news release. The teen, identified in the release only as "Owen," told firefighters "he was trying to do a good deed and bring the cat to...
MCKINLEY TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — Three anglers are safe after a homemade ice-fishing shanty was blown about a mile (1.6 kilometers) across a bay in Michigan by winds that neared 50 mph (80 kph), authorities said. A person onshore called Huron County dispatchers about 8 a.m. Sunday after seeing someone struggling with the shanty as it was being blown across the ice on Saginaw Bay off McKinley Township, Huron County Sheriff Kelly Hanson said in a news release. The shanty, which had been occupied by three men, was about 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) o...
Gasoline prices are pushing even farther above $4 a gallon, the highest price that American motorists have faced since July 2008, as calls grow to ban imports of Russian oil. Prices at the pump were rising long before Russia invaded Ukraine and have spiraled faster since the start of the war. The U.S. national average for a gallon of gasoline has soared 45 cents a gallon in the past week and topped $4.06 on Monday, according to auto club AAA. "I am looking at the possibility of walking to work," said Asiya Joseph, who had just paid $4.29 a...
BEIRUT (AP) —As more Ukrainian towns and cities come under siege, concern is mounting for millions of civilians in the crossfire. Russia has announced the establishment of safe corridors to allow civilians to leave, but there appeared to be few takers. Evacuation routes led mostly to Russia and its ally Belarus, drawing withering criticism from Ukraine and others. And Russia continued to pound some cities with rockets even after the announcement of corridors. Such tactics were common during the Syria war after Moscow entered the war in 2015 t...
WASHINGTON (AP) — In a victory for Democrats, the Supreme Court has turned away efforts from Republicans in North Carolina and Pennsylvania to block state court-ordered congressional districting plans. In separate orders late Monday, the justices are allowing maps selected by each state's Supreme Court to be in effect for the 2022 elections. Those maps are more favorable to Democrats than the ones drawn by the states' legislatures. In North Carolina, the map most likely will give Democrats an additional House seat in 2023. The Pennsylvania m...
