LOS ANGELES (AP) - The Los Angeles Lakers fired coach Darvin Ham on Friday after just two seasons in charge. The Lakers announced on social media that they were dismissing Ham four days after their season ended with a first-round playoff loss to Denver in five games. Ham led Los Angeles to the Western Conference finals...

BRENTWOOD, N.H. (AP) - A New Hampshire jury awarded $38 million to the man who blew the lid off abuse allegations at the state's youth detention center Friday, in a landmark case finding the state's negligence allowed him to be beaten, raped and held in solitary confinement as a teen. David Meehan went to police in 201...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Democratic U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas denied any wrongdoing amid reports of pending indictments related to the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan. The longtime congressman released a statement Friday saying he and his wife "are innocent of these allegations." "Everything I have ...

HOUSTON (AP) - Officials in Houston are urging residents to prepare for worsening flooding after days of heavy rains that have led to high-water rescues and mandatory evacuation orders. "This threat is ongoing and it's going to get worse. It is not your typical river flood," Hidalgo County Judge Lina Hidalgo,...

NEW YORK (AP) - Hope Hicks, a former longtime adviser to Donald Trump, took the witness stand Friday in his criminal trial, where prosecutors are expected to question her about her knowledge of hush money payments made during the 2016 presidential campaign. Hicks, who served as White House communications director, is t...

NEW YORK (AP) - Hope Hicks, who served as Donald Trump's 2016 campaign press secretary and went on to hold various roles in his White House, took the witness stand in his New York hush money case on Friday. Her testimony on the trial's 11th day was the latest in a frenzied second week of witness testimony and followed ...

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) - China on Friday launched a lunar probe to land on the far side of the moon and return with samples that could provide insights into differences between the less-explored region and the better-known near side. It is the latest advance in China's increasingly sophisticated space exploration program,...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a scuba dive boat captain to four years in custody and three years supervised release for criminal negligence after 34 people died in a fire aboard the vessel. The Sept. 2, 2019, blaze was the deadliest maritime disaster in recent U.S. history, and prompted chang...

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) - The major traffic artery linking New England with New York will be closed in Connecticut for days after a tanker fire damaged a bridge over Interstate 95, Gov. Ned Lamont said Thursday. The tanker truck filled with gasoline burst into flames in a three-vehicle crash Thursday on I-95 in southwest ...

PHOENIX (AP) - Democratic Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs has relegated a Civil War-era ban on most abortions to the past by signing a repeal bill Thursday. Hobbs says the repeal, signed Thursday, is just the beginning of a fight to protect reproductive health care in Arizona. But the repeal may not take effect until 90 days ...

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Joe Biden on Thursday defended the right to protest but insisted that "order must prevail" as college campuses across the country face unrest over the war in Gaza. "Dissent is essential for democracy," he said at the White House. "But dissent must never lead to disor...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Police have begun removing barricades at a pro-Palestinian demonstrators' encampment on the UCLA campus. Thursday morning's law enforcement effort comes after officers spent hours threatening arrests over loud speakers if people did not disperse. Hundreds of people had gathered on campus, both inside...

BEIJING (AP) - The death toll climbed to 48 as search efforts continued in southern China on Thursday after a highway section collapsed in a mountainous area, sending more than 20 cars down a steep slope. Officials in the city of Meizhou said three other people were unidentified, pending DNA testing. It wasn't immediat...

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) - Solomon Islands lawmakers on Thursday chose former Foreign Minister Jeremiah Manele as the new prime minister of the South Pacific island nation that has grown closer to China in recent years. The withdrawal of pro-Beijing former Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare from the contest to make way ...

BEIJING (AP) - A section of a highway collapsed after heavy rains in southern China, sending cars tumbling down a slope and leaving at least 36 people dead, authorities said Thursday. The Meizhou city government said that 23 vehicles have been found in a pit after a 17.9-meter (58.7-foot) long section of the highway ga...

PHOENIX (AP) - Democrats in the Arizona Legislature are expected to make a final push Wednesday to repeal the state's long-dormant ban on nearly all abortions, which a court said can be enforced. Voting wasn't complete but the Senate had the 16 votes it needed to advance the bill. Fourteen Democrats in the Senate were ...

MOUNT HOREB, Wis. (AP) - A Wisconsin school district said an active shooter was "neutralized" outside a middle school in Mount Horeb on Wednesday, and no one inside the building was injured. Authorities said without giving details that the "alleged assailant" was harmed, and a witness said she had h...

LONDON (AP) - German tennis legend Boris Becker was discharged from bankruptcy court in London after a judge found Wednesday he had done "all that he reasonably could do" to repay creditors tens of millions of pounds. Becker fell far short of repaying his creditors in full, but Chief Insolvency and Companies ...

WESTMORELAND, Kan. (AP) - One person died Tuesday when a tornado ripped through the small city of Westmoreland in northeastern Kansas, destroying houses, RVs and outbuildings, authorities said. Pottawatomie County officials said on Facebook that a tornado struck the city of about 700 people Tuesday evening, destroying ...

NEW YORK (AP) - The pro-Palestinian demonstration that paralyzed Columbia University ended in dramatic fashion late Tuesday, with police carrying riot shields swarming the Ivy League campus, bursting into an administration building protesters took over the previous night and making dozens of arrests. A statement releas...

BEIJING (AP) - The first scientist to publish a sequence of the COVID-19 virus in China said he was allowed back into his lab after he spent days locked outside, sitting in protest. Zhang Yongzhen wrote in an online post early Wednesday that authorities had "tentatively agreed" to allow him and his team to re...

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - A new congressional map giving Louisiana a second majority-Black House district was rejected Tuesday by a panel of three federal judges, fueling new uncertainty about district boundaries as the state prepares for fall congressional elections. The 2-1 ruling forbids the use of a map drawn up in Januar...

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) - Democratic state Sen. Timothy Kennedy won a special election Tuesday for the New York congressional seat vacated by Democrat Brian Higgins. Kennedy defeated Republican Gary Dickson for the upstate New York seat, helped by a 2-to-1 Democratic registration advantage in the district, which includes Bu...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - At least 55 people were hurt, two seriously, when a Metro light rail train and a University of Southern California shuttle bus collided Tuesday along a busy thoroughfare in downtown Los Angeles, officials said. The crash happened shortly before noon along Exposition Boulevard, near the USC campus and...

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - Haiti's newly installed transitional presidential council chose former Sports Minister Fritz Belizaire as the country's prime minister Tuesday as it presses forward in its monumental task of trying to establish a stable new government amid stifling violence. Belizaire replaces Michel Patric...

NEW YORK (AP) - Donald Trump was held in contempt of court Tuesday and fined $9,000 for repeatedly violating a gag order that barred him from making public statements about witnesses, jurors and some others connected to his New York hush money case. Prosecutors had alleged 10 violations, but New York Judge Juan M. Merc...

NEW YORK (AP) - Donald Trump's hush money trial resumes Tuesday with testimony from the third prosecution witness, Gary Farro, a banker who helped Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen open accounts. Cohen used one to buy the silence of porn performer Stormy Daniels. She alleged a 2006 sexual encounter with Trump, whic...

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) - The president of the top United Nations court opened a hearing Tuesday to deliver judges' decision on a request by Nicaragua to order a halt to German military and other aid to Israel amid the devastating Gaza conflict. Nicaragua, a longstanding ally of the Palestinians, alleges that Germa...