NEW YORK (AP) — Actor Blake Lively asked a judge on Thursday to dismiss a countersuit filed against her by her “It Ends With Us” costar Justin Baldoni, calling his claims “vengeful and rambling” after she sued for sexual harassment and retaliation. Lively’s lawyers wrote in papers filed in Manhattan federal court that Baldoni and…
WASHINGTON — An American man who was abducted more than two years ago while traveling through Afghanistan as a tourist has been released by the Taliban in a deal with the Trump administration that Qatari negotiators helped broker, the State Department said Thursday. What You Need To Know Secretary of State Marco Rubio is praising…
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Beijing on Thursday demanded protections for Chinese students in the U.S. after a Congressional panel asked six American universities to hand over a large amount of detailed information on their Chinese students, citing national security concerns. A letter sent to the universities, including Stanford and Carnegie Mellon, alleged that the Chinese…
As a devastating wildfire burned through a Maui town, killing more than 100 people, emergency management employees traded dozens of text messages, creating a record that would later help investigators piece together the government’s response to the 2023 tragedy. One text exchange hinted officials might also be using a second, untraceable messaging service. “That’s what…
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — A commuter plane that crashed on sea ice off Alaska, killing all 10 people on board, was half a ton overweight for a trip into icy conditions, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a preliminary report released Wednesday. The weight is just a “data point” in the ongoing investigation, cautioned…
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) — Joshua Riibe, a senior at St. Cloud University in Minnesota who is believed to be the last person to see missing University of Pittsburgh student Sudiksha Konanki in the Dominican Republic, left the Caribbean country on Wednesday, his lawyers said. Following a trial exceeding five hours, Judge Edwin Rijo…
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Another storm system is affecting millions of people in the middle of the U.S., leaving parts of the Midwest and Great Plains under blizzard conditions and a broad swath of neighboring states at risk of high winds and wildfires. Roughly 72 million people were under a wind advisory or warning Wednesday,…
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. births rose slightly last year, but experts don’t see it as evidence of reversing a long-term decline. A little over 3.6 million births were reported for 2024, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention preliminary data. That’s 22,250 more than the final tally of 2023 U.S. births, which was…
PUNTA CANA, Dominican Republic (AP) — The search for a U.S. college student who went missing in the Dominican Republic intensified on Monday, one day after a man questioned by authorities visited the beach where she was last seen and spoke with officials. Sudiksha Konanki, a 20-year-old student at the University of Pittsburgh and an…
MURPHYSBORO, Ill. (AP) — From Logan School’s top floor, 11-year-old Othella Silvey should have been able to see her house easily — it was less than two blocks away. But after a monstrous tornado ripped through the Illinois town of Murphysboro on March 18, 1925, Othella saw nothing but flattened wasteland. “She couldn’t tell which…