ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey’s finance chief tried to reassure thousands of international investors on a conference call Thursday, in which he pledged to fix the economic troubles that have seen the country spiral into a currency crisis. The national currency recovered somewhat from record lows hit earlier this week, a day after Qatar pledged…
Washington (AP) Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Washington, is facing a storm of criticism and calls for his resignation after becoming entangled in two major sexual abuse scandals roiling the church that he has served with distinction since 1966. A scathing grand jury report this week accused Wuerl of helping to protect…
NEW YORK (AP) — Aretha Franklin, the undisputed “Queen of Soul” who sang with matchless style on such classics as “Think,” ”I Say a Little Prayer” and her signature song, “Respect,” and stood as a cultural icon around the globe, died Thursday at age 76 from pancreatic cancer. She died at her home in Detroit — “one…
NEW YORK (AP) — Newspapers from Maine to Hawaii pushed back against President Donald Trump’s attacks on “fake news” Thursday with a coordinated series of editorials speaking up for a free and vigorous press — and, not surprisingly, Trump didn’t take it silently. The Boston Globe, which set the campaign in motion by urging the…
NEW HAVEN, CT (AP) — The number of overdose victims linked to a suspected bad batch of synthetic marijuana has risen to 76 in New Haven, Connecticut, as officials try to determine exactly what sickened people. People on and around the historic New Haven Green near Yale University began falling ill shortly after 8 a.m.…
NEW DELHI (AP) — Former Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a Hindu nationalist who set off a nuclear arms race with rival Pakistan but later reached across the border to begin a groundbreaking peace process, died on Thursday after a prolonged illness. He was 93. The All India Institute of Medical Sciences, where Vajpayee…
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former CIA Director John Brennan said Thursday that President Donald Trump yanked his security clearance because his campaign colluded with the Russians to sway the 2016 election and is now desperate to end the special counsel’s investigation. In an opinion piece in The New York Times, Brennan cites press reports and Trump’s…
BALLWIN, MO (AP) — A St. Louis man is objecting to a finding that he is mentally unfit to stand trial in a shooting that paralyzed a suburban St. Louis police officer from the neck down. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that 33-year-old Antonio Taylor made the objection in a motion filed Tuesday through his public…
LAWRENCE, KS (AP) — A Missouri woman who is charged with killing her 5-year-old daughter and critically injuring her 1-year-old son by intentionally driving into the Kansas River told authorities she wanted to die and didn’t want anyone else to have her children, according to court records. The probable cause affidavit was released Wednesday in…
CLAYTON, MO (AP) — A St. Louis suburb has rejected Washington University’s request to add about 100 beds at its main campus, partially because of parking concerns. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that the Clayton Board of Aldermen said no Tuesday to increasing the number of beds to 3,413 from 3,300. The beds would have gone…