apnews.com

Cross-posted from: beehaw.org/post/11328480...

An Alaska fishing guide company has paid $900,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by the U.S. government alleging one of its guides started a wildfire in 2019, the U.S. attorney’s office for Alaska said in a statement Wednesday....

A bipartisan delegation from the United States Congress reaffirmed support for Taiwan during a visit Thursday following its election of a new president. The delegation’s visit is the first by U.S. lawmakers to the island since the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party won a third-straight term in the Jan. 13...

Nepal has asked Russia to send back hundreds of Nepali nationals who were recruited to fight against Ukraine and repatriate the bodies of those who died in the conflict, Nepal’s top diplomat said Thursday....

Two British museums are returning gold and silver artifacts to Ghana under a long-term loan arrangement — 150 years after the items were looted from the Asante people during Britain’s colonial battles in West Africa....

West Virginia’s Republican-dominated Legislature pushed forward a slate of contentious bills Wednesday that would arm teachers, allow people to sue libraries over books that offend them and restrict where transgender kids can use the bathroom at school....

A judge ordered Wednesday that a trial be held next month to determine whether a Black high school student in Texas can continue being punished by his district for refusing to change a hairstyle he and his family say is protected by a new state law....

Ohio has banned gender-affirming care for minors and restricted transgender women’s and girls’ participation on sports teams, a move that has families of transgender children scrambling over how best to care for them....

Just over a month after taking office in Argentina, right-wing President Javier Milei on Wednesday faced a general strike in rejection of his decree targeting unions as well as his economic and labor reform proposals....

Human-induced global warming, and not El Niño, was the primary driver of last year’s severe drought in the Amazon that sent rivers to record lows, required deliveries of food and drinking water to hundreds of river communities and killed dozens of endangered dolphins, researchers said Wednesday....

The mother of an intellectually disabled girl who was allegedly led from school grounds by three male students and sexually assaulted in a Starbucks bathroom and a nearby empty building filed a lawsuit Wednesday accusing Starbucks, Pittsburgh Public Schools and a property management company of negligence....

An American scientist has sparked a trans-Atlantic tempest in a teapot by offering Britain advice on its favorite hot beverage....

An Oregon jury awarded $85 million Tuesday to nine victims of wildfires that ravaged the state in 2020, the latest verdict in a series of legal proceedings that are expected to put the utility PacifiCorp on the hook for billions of dollars over its liability for the deadly blazes....

Democratic lawmakers in Oregon on Tuesday unveiled a sweeping new bill that would undo a key part of the state’s first-in-the-nation drug decriminalization law, a recognition that public opinion has soured on the measure amid rampant public drug use during the fentanyl crisis....

Disney this week requested a second delay in a state court case involving its legal battle with Gov. Ron DeSantis’ appointees over who controls Walt Disney World’s governing district, as the company accused them and the governor’s office of stonewalling requests for documents that are part of the litigation....

Previously unknown colonies of emperor penguins have been spotted in new satellite imagery....

The IRS wants to rewrite its complicated letters to taxpayers and speak to people in plain English....

A Filipino fishing boat captain protested on Tuesday the Chinese coast guard’s aggression in the disputed South China Sea, where he asserted that Chinese officers drove him and his men away from a disputed shoal and ordered them to dump their catch in the sea....

Alabama, unless stopped by the courts, intends to strap Kenneth Eugene Smith to a gurney Thursday and use a gas mask to replace breathable air with nitrogen, depriving him of oxygen, in the nation’s first execution attempt with the method....

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken began a tour of four African countries on Monday, meeting with the leaders of Cape Verde and Ivory Coast and touting America as the continent’s key economic and security ally at times of regional and international crises....