Category: Uncategorized

By GRACE GARCES BORDALLO and JENNIFER SINCO KELLEHER (Associated Press) HAGATNA, Guam (AP) — Chainsaws buzzed Friday as neighbors helped neighbors clear toppled trees and began cleaning the wreckage of Typhoon Mawar, which walloped Guam as the strongest typhoon to hit the island in over two decades but appeared to have passed without leaving death or massive destruction in its wake. While it was still early going in the recovery effort, police Sgt. Paul Tapao said there did not seem to be any major damage, main roads were passable and “Guam has been very blessed to have no storm-related deaths...

By JAMES POLLARD (Associated Press/Report for America) COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Abortion will soon be severely restricted in one of the last bastions for legal access in the U.S. South. The South Carolina Senate approved a bill Tuesday that would ban most abortions after around six weeks of pregnancy — before most people know they are pregnant — and sent it to the Republican governor who has promised to sign the bill into law as soon as possible. The proposal restores a 2021 ban that took effect when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year. The ban was overturned by the state’s...

By TOM KRISHER (AP Auto Writer) DETROIT (AP) — More than 33 million people in the United States are driving vehicles that contain a potentially deadly threat: Airbag inflators that in rare cases can explode in a collision and spew shrapnel. Few of them know it. And because of a dispute between federal safety regulators and an airbag parts manufacturer, they aren’t likely to find out anytime soon. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is demanding that the manufacturer, ARC Automotive of Knoxville, Tennessee, recall 67 million inflators that could explode with such force as to blow...

By AMY BETH HANSON and HALELUYA HADERO (Associated Press) HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Montana became the first state in the U.S. to enact a complete ban on TikTok on Wednesday when Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte signed a measure that’s more sweeping than any other state’s attempts to curtail the social media app, which is owned by a Chinese tech company. The measure, scheduled to take effect on Jan. 1, 2024, is expected to be challenged legally and will serve as a testing ground for the TikTok-free America that many national lawmakers have envisioned. Cybersecurity experts say it could be difficult...

By HANNAH SCHOENBAUM, GARY D. ROBERTSON and DENISE LAVOIE (Associated Press) RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Legislation banning most abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy will become law in North Carolina after the state’s Republican-controlled General Assembly successfully overrode the Democratic governor’s veto late Tuesday. The House completed the second and final part of the override vote after a similar three-fifths majority — the fraction necessary — voted for the override earlier Tuesday in the Senate. The party-line outcomes represent a major victory for Republican legislative leaders who needed...

By SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN, MORGAN LEE and RIO YAMAT (Associated Press) FARMINGTON, N.M. (AP) — The gunman who killed three people and wounded six others as he fired randomly while roaming his northwestern New Mexico neighborhood was a local high school student and his victims include a 97-year-old woman and her daughter, police said Tuesday. Investigators were still trying to determine a motive for the attack by Beau Wilson, 18, in the Farmington neighborhood where he lived. They say he opened fire Monday, killing Gwendolyn Schofield, her 73-year-old daughter, Melody Ivie, and 79-year-old Shirley...

By NICK PERRY (Associated Press) WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — A fire ripped through a hostel in New Zealand’s capital overnight, killing at least six people and forcing others to flee the four-story building in their pajamas in what a fire chief on Tuesday called his “worst nightmare.” Fifty-two people had made it out of the building but firefighters were still trying to account for others, Wellington fire chief Nick Pyatt said. Loafers Lodge resident Tala Sili told news outlet RNZ that he saw smoke pouring through under his door and opened it find the hallway pitch black. “I was on the top...

By ZEKE MILLER, SEUNG MIN KIM, JOSH BOAK and LISA MASCARO (Associated Press) WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden and congressional leaders confronted each other on the debt limit impasse Tuesday, ending their meeting with no breakthrough but agreeing to meet again this week to try to avert the looming risk of an unprecedented government default. Speaking at the White House, Biden described the talks as “productive” even though House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said after the high-stakes Oval Office meeting that he “didn’t see any new movement” toward resolving the stalemate. Lawmakers and their...