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GOP prosecutor urges judge to toss Wisconsin abortion suit

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:13:36 GMT

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Attorneys for a Republican prosecutor urged a judge Thursday to toss out a lawsuit seeking to repeal Wisconsin’s 174-year-old abortion ban, arguing that a newer state law permitting pre-viability abortions complements the ban rather than supersedes it, as Democrats maintain.Wisconsin lawmakers passed a law in 1849 that outlaws abortion except to save the mother’s life. The U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Roe vs. Wade decision in 1973 that legalized abortion statewide effectively voided the ban. It was held in abeyance for nearly five decades until the high court struck down Roe vs. Wade last year. The decision reactivated the ban.State Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat, filed the lawsuit in Dane County circuit court last June seeking to repeal the ban. Kaul argues that the 1849 law is so old it was essentially adopted without the people’s consent; or alternately, that more permissive restrictions on abortion enacted in Wisconsin in 198...

Purple lanes: Minnesota highway signs to honor Prince

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:13:36 GMT

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — The late pop superstar Prince will have a highway named after him in his home state, following a vote by Minnesota lawmakers Thursday.The Senate vote was 55-5 to rename the highway that runs past Prince’s Paisley Park museum and studios. Among those watching was his oldest sister, Sharon Nelson. The bill passed the House unanimously last month on the seventh anniversary of Prince’s death, and now goes to Gov. Tim Walz, who is expected to sign.Purple signs will soon go up along a seven-mile stretch of State Highway 5 in the Minneapolis suburbs of Chanhassen and Eden Prairie — designating it the Prince Rogers Nelson Memorial Highway. Prince’s friends and fans are footing the bill, said the lead sponsor, Republican Sen. Julia Coleman, of Waconia.“Prince was a true genius, a visionary artist who pushed the boundaries of music and cultures in ways that will never be forgotten,” Coleman told her fellow senators. “His influence can be he...

B.C. flooding, mudslides prompt evacuation orders, highway closures in the Interior

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:13:36 GMT

The first spell of summer-like weather in British Columbia has accelerated Mountain snowmelt, causing flooding and mudslides that have prompted evacuation orders and highway closures in the province’s southern Interior.The mayor of Cache Creek said Thursday that it was “unbelievable the amount of water” that’s flowing over Highway 97 and down Highway 1 as the two routes intersect in the village west of Kamloops.John Ranta said many businesses have been devastated by the flooding and the floodwaters are running through the firehall. The mayor said he’s spoken with Emergency Management Minister Bowinn Ma, who offered support from the province, and several BC Wildfire Service crews are in the village to help distribute sandbags.But Ranta said there’s nothing they can do until the waters recede, then take steps to prevent similar extensive flooding from happening in the future.Ma told reporters in the legislature that temperatures are expected to rise...

In ‘No Hard Feelings,’ a comedy made for Jennifer Lawrence

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:13:36 GMT

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Jennifer Lawrence has wanted to do a big comedy for years. She has always been funny and vibrant in her television appearances. And while she has brought humor and physical comedy to many of her roles for David O. Russell and others, she also hasn’t exactly gotten the big, broad “Dumb and Dumber” or “Anchorman” experience, to cite some of her favorites (or at least the ones she’s memorized). That changes this summer with “ No Hard Feelings ” (in theaters June 23), a classic, raunchy R-rated comedy that was tailor made for her. “I’ve always wanted to do a comedy. And I’ve read a lot of them,” Lawrence told The Associated Press last week in Las Vegas. “I just didn’t read anything that was funny enough.”“No Hard Feelings” was inspired by a real Craigslist ad posted by parents who were seeking a woman to “date” their son to bring him out of his shell the summer before he went to college. There are debates over just how real the “real ad” was, but think...

US: ‘tangible progress’ in Armenia-Azerbaijan peace talks

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:13:36 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday that Armenia and Azerbaijan have made “tangible progress” in U.S.-hosted peace talks between the two former Soviet republics that have repeatedly clashed over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.The four-day negotiating session did not produce a peace agreement, but Blinken said he believed a deal could be “within sight, within reach” and praised the two sides for coming together to try to find common ground. He said reaching an agreement would be “not only historic but would be profoundly in the interests of the people of Azerbaijan and Armenia and would have very positive effects even beyond their two countries.”The closed-door discussions were held far from the media spotlight at the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute in northern Virginia. The Armenian and Azeri foreign ministers, who led their delegations, did not speak at the closing ceremony.U.S. engagement in the conflict could be seen as...

DOJ: Alabama ignored sewer issues, harmed Black residents

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:13:36 GMT

HAYNEVILLE, Ala. (AP) — The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday said an environmental justice probe found Alabama engaged in a pattern of inaction and neglect regarding the risks of raw sewage for residents in an impoverished Alabama county and announced a settlement agreement with the state. The departments of Justice and Health and Human Services announced the results of the environmental justice probe and a settlement agreement with state health officials to address longstanding wastewater sanitation problems in Lowndes County, a high-poverty county between Selma and Montgomery. The agreement is the result of the department’s first environmental justice investigation under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said it will not be the last, because the “fight for environmental justice is an urgent one” and the impacts of climate crisis have exacerbated the health ri...

Justice Clarence Thomas let GOP donor pay tuition: Report

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:13:36 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Republican megadonor paid two years of private school tuition for a child raised by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who did not disclose the payments, a lawyer who has represented Thomas and his wife acknowledged Thursday.The revelation of tuition payments made by Dallas billionaire Harlan Crow is the latest example of Crow’s generosity to Thomas and his family that has raised questions about Thomas’ ethics and disclosure requirements more generally. The payments, along with the earlier examples of Crow’s financial ties to Thomas, were first reported by the nonprofit investigative journalism site ProPublica.ProPublica reported Thursday that Crow paid tuition for Thomas’ great-nephew Mark Martin. Thomas and his wife, Virginia, raised Martin from the age of 6.Over the past month, ProPublica has reported in other stories about luxury vacations paid for by Crow that the conservative justice took as well as Crow’s purchase of prope...

Coroner: 4 dead in killings in south Georgia town

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:13:36 GMT

MOULTRIE, Ga. (AP) — Four people were killed Thursday in a small city in rural south Georgia, including a fast food worker and two relatives of a gunman who took his own life, the local coroner said.The shooter killed his mother and grandmother at two neighboring homes and killed a woman at a McDonald’s restaurant in downtown Moultrie, Colquitt County Coroner C. Verlyn Brock told The Associated Press. He said the gunman then killed himself.Brock did not provide the identities of the shooter or victims. He said he did not know whether the gunman and the McDonald’s worker knew each other.The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said in a statement only that there had been “multiple fatalities” at different crime scenes in the area.Police swarmed the restaurant on Thursday morning, shutting down traffic on one the main streets in the south Georgia town of 15,000.The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said the Moultrie Police Department requested its assistance.“We are working to le...

Carrie Fisher gets her Walk of Fame star, on May the Fourth

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:13:36 GMT

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Carrie Fisher received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Tuesday, a May the Fourth tribute to a beloved “Star Wars” actor that had a touch of stardust.The late star’s daughter, Billie Lourd, wearing her mother’s portrait printed on her metallic dress, accepted the star on behalf of Fisher. She threw glitter, her mother’s favorite, on the newly unveiled star.“My mom used to say you weren’t actually famous until you became a Pez dispenser. Well, people eat candy out of her neck every day. I say you aren’t actually famous until you get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame,” she said. “My mom is a double-whammy — a Pez dispenser and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame now. Mama, you’ve made it.”Mark Hamill, who played Fisher’s space brother, Luke Skywalker, was also on hand, and recalled meeting the young actor when she was just 19.“She played such a crucial role in my personal and professional life and both would have been far emptier without h...

Executions to return to South Carolina; shield law nears OK

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:13:36 GMT

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A bill that would allow South Carolina to buy the drugs needed for lethal injection without revealing the name of the company who sells them will soon be heading for the governor’s desk.The state Senate on Thursday approved minor changes the House made in the shield law bill with almost no debate. The proposal also requires the names of members of the execution team be kept secret.South Carolina has had an unintended 12-year moratorium on the death penalty after its lethal injection drugs passed their expiration date and pharmacies refused to sell the state more.Several South Carolina death row inmates have run out of regular appeals but their executions are on hold because they can’t be carried out.Sixteen other states have carried out about 100 lethal injection executions in the past six years. Many have shield laws. Some do not.Two years ago, South Carolina tried to work around the lack of lethal injections drugs by passing a law creating a firin...