Month: March 2023

By KATHY McCORMACK Associated Press CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — New Hampshire’s highest court on Wednesday turned away the latest attempt to get a sentence reduction for Pamela Smart, who is serving life in prison for plotting with her teenage lover to have her husband killed in 1990. Smart, 55, was a 22-year-old high school media

By KEVIN McGILL and MATTHEW BROWN Associated Press NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Oil companies offered a combined $264 million for drilling rights in federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday in a sale mandated by last year’s climate bill compromise. The auction was the first in the Gulf in more than a year

By GEOFF MULVIHILL Associated Press The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday approved selling naloxone without a prescription, setting the overdose-reversing drug on course to become the first opioid treatment drug to be sold over the counter. It’s a move that some advocates have long sought as a way to improve access to a

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Crews were working Wednesday to remove three remaining barges that got loose on the Ohio River, including one carrying methanol. The Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet says a total of 10 barges got loose early Tuesday on the river near Louisville. Most were recovered, but the U.S Army Corp of Engineers

PRAGUE (AP) — Czech labor unions have joined opposition parties to protest the government’s proposed bid to raise the retirement age by four years to 68. Some 2,000 protesters gathered Wednesday in front of government offices in the capital Prague to voice their opposition to the plan. The government has yet to finalize pension reform

By CIARÁN GILES Associated Press Madrid (AP) — A Spanish Supreme Court judge has ordered the release of Clara Ponsatí, a Euro MP and a former Catalan Cabinet member who fled Spain five years ago after a failed independence bid for Catalonia. Ponsatí was released Wednesday after being detained a day earlier when she entered

BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s constitutional court ruled Wednesday that a law banning child marriages needs to be amended because it removes the possibility of continuing a marriage once both spouses become adults. The German government passed the law in 2017 with the stated purpose of protecting girls who were married abroad. The Federal Constitutional Court

STRASBOURG, France (AP) — Swiss retirees are taking their government to a top European court over what they claim is its failure to take stronger action on climate change. Lawyers and members of the group Senior Women for Climate Protection appeared Wednesday before the European Court of Human Rights for a rare public hearing that

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Sweden’s Foreign ministry has summoned the Russian ambassador after Moscow’s diplomatic mission to Stockholm posted on its website that the Scandinavian country would become a “legitimate target for Russia’s retaliatory measures” if it joins NATO. Foreign Minister Tobias Billström on Wednesday decried what he called an ”obvious attempt at influence.” Billström

By JANIE HAR Associated Press SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The leader of California’s first-in-the-nation reparations task force on Wednesday said it won’t take a stance on how much the state should compensate Black residents whom economists estimate may be owed more than $800 billion for decades of over-policing, disproportionate incarceration and housing discrimination. The $800

By THOMAS ADAMSON Associated Press PARIS (AP) — Paris sanitation workers are starting to clean up debris from a more than three-week-long strike, a day after the 10th nationwide anti-pension reform protest. The CGT union representing Paris sanitation workers said its members were returning to their jobs Wednesday in a suspension of the strike action

By JAMEY KEATEN Associated Press GENEVA (AP) — UBS says it’s bringing back former CEO Sergio Ermotti to lead the Swiss bank as it moves forward with a government-orchestrated plan to take over struggling rival Credit Suisse. The bank said Wednesday that Ermotti’s appointment takes effect in a week. Ermotti was the bank’s top executive

LONDON (AP) — Entertainer Paul O’Grady, who achieved fame as drag queen Lily Savage before becoming a much-loved comedian and host on British television, has died. He was 67. O’Grady’s partner Andre Portasio said he died “unexpectedly but peacefully” on Tuesday evening. Born in Birkenhead, near Liverpool, in 1955, O’Grady was working as a local-authority