Month: April 2024

By FATIMA HUSSEIN Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — The IRS says more than 140,000 taxpayers filed their taxes through its new direct file pilot program. It says the program’s users claimed more than $90 million in refunds and saved roughly $5.6 million in fees they would have spent with commercial tax preparation companies. But despite

By KIMBERLEE KRUESI Associated Press NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee teachers and staff will be allowed to carry concealed handguns on public school grounds under legislation signed into law by Gov. Bill Lee. According to the statute, which became effective Friday, parents and other teachers will be barred from knowing who is armed at their

By MATTHEW PERRONE and ZEKE MILLER Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s administration is indefinitely delaying a long-awaited menthol cigarette ban, a decision that infuriated anti-smoking advocates but could avoid a political backlash from Black voters in November. In a statement Friday, Biden’s top health official gave no timeline for issuing the rule,

By MATTHEW BARAKAT Associated Press ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — A judge has ordered a Marine Corps veteran and former militia member to remain jailed pending trial on charges he attempted to make ricin, a biological toxin ricin. Forty-two-year-old Russell Vane Vienna, Virginia, was arrested two weeks ago after authorities searched his house and found traces

By BRENDAN FARRINGTON Associated Press TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Former Florida Gov. and U.S. Sen. Bob Graham has been remembered by Republicans and Democrats alike as a man whose love for the state and people transcended politics. Graham was a two-term governor and a three-term U.S. senator who died last week at 87. He was

NEW YORK (AP) — Defense lawyers in Donald Trump’s hush money trial dug Friday into assertions of the former publisher of the National Enquirer and his efforts to protect Trump from negative stories during the 2016 election. David Pecker returned to the witness stand for the fourth day as defense attorneys tried to poke holes

SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — A woman has pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact for being the driver of the car from which her boyfriend fatally shot a 6-year-old boy on a busy Southern California highway. The Orange County Register reports that Wynne Lee, 26, entered the plea Friday in Orange County

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Commerce Department is announcing new restrictions on U.S. firearms exports in an effort to prevent the guns from ending up in the hands of drug traffickers and criminals in other nations. Oversight of legal firearms exports has become a political struggle in Washington since the Trump administration in 2020 moved oversight

By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS Associated Press JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi Senate leaders are saying for the first time that they are willing to expand Medicaid to the full level allowed under a federal law signed 14 years ago by then-President Barack Obama. Senators offered a proposal Friday in negotiations with fellow Republicans in the

Associated Press NEW KENT, Va. (AP) — The former medical director of a Virginia hospital that treats vulnerable children and young adults has been acquitted of sexually abusing two teenage patients during physical exams. Dr. Daniel Davidow worked for decades as the medical director of the Cumberland Hospital for Children and Adolescents, a facility that

By MATTHEW PERRONE and ZEKE MILLER Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s administration is indefinitely delaying a plan to ban menthol cigarettes, a decision that is certain to infuriate anti-smoking advocates but could avoid a political backlash from Black voters in November. In a statement Friday, Biden’s top health official gave no timeline