NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The Louisiana Supreme Court threw out charges Friday against a pastor who flouted restrictions on gatherings early in the coronavirus pandemic, ruling 5-2 that the governor's executive orders violated freedom of religion.
BOSTON (AP) — A group of Christian, Hindu, Buddhist and Jewish leaders is asking Starbucks to stop charging extra for vegan milk alternatives, saying the practice amounts to a tax on people who have embraced plant-based lifestyles.
Qatar, a key U.S. ally in the Persian Gulf, is facing increased scrutiny over its alleged financial ties to terrorism in a lawsuit from relatives of a slain American journalist and a separate federal investigation into a member of the country’s royal family.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The United Arab Emirates' long-ailing ruler and president, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, died Friday, the government announced in a brief statement. He was 73.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis, who has been using a wheelchair because of a bad knee, is going ahead with plans to visit Canada this summer so he can apologize in person for abuse suffered by Indigenous people at the hands of the Catholic church.
NEW YORK (AP) — Top leaders of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called on the faithful to pray and fast Friday, in hopes the Supreme Court is on track to overturn the constitutional right to abortion.
SRINAGAR, India (AP) — Hindus in Indian-controlled Kashmir staged protests on Friday, a day after assailants fatally shot a Hindu government employee in the disputed Muslim-majority region.
Police blamed anti-India rebels for the killing of Rahul Bhat, a revenue clerk, inside an office complex in Chadoora town on Thursday.
BOSTON (AP) — The thousands of tourists who visit Boston's Old North Church probably won't see much of Chelsea Millsap on their trip, even though she may just have the most important job at the historic site.
NEW DELHI (AP) — With one brother president, another prime minister and three more family members cabinet ministers, it appeared that the Rajapaksa clan had consolidated its grip on power in Sri Lanka after decades in and out of government.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The sponsor of a bill that would have subjected Louisiana women to murder charges for having abortions abruptly pulled the proposal from debate Thursday night after House members voted 65-26 to totally revamp the legislation, eliminating the criminal penalties.
FALLS CHURCH, Va. (AP) — Fairfax County officials have rebuffed a request from Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin to establish a security perimeter around the neighborhoods of U.S. Supreme Court justices living in the county after some have faced protests outside their homes.
ZAGREB, Croatia (AP) — Thousands rallied across Croatia Thursday in solidarity with a woman who was denied an abortion despite her fetus having serious health problems, and whose weeks-long ordeal has sparked public outrage.
GREENWOOD, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi prosecutors have dropped a second set of charges against a former Franciscan friar who was convicted last month of sexually abusing a student during the 1990s at a Catholic school.
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Five-time former Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was reappointed on Thursday in an effort to bring stability to the island nation, which is engulfed in a political and economic crisis.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A settlement has been reached in a lawsuit twelve women brought last summer against Liberty University, accusing the Christian institution of fostering an unsafe environment on its Virginia campus and mishandling cases of sexual assault and harassment.
HONG KONG (AP) — Cardinal Joseph Zen, the 90-year-old Catholic cleric arrested by Hong Kong police on national security charges, has long been a fiery critic of Beijing's control of religion and political monopoly, along with efforts by the Vatican to reach a working arrangement with the ruling Communist Party.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — U.S. COVID-19 cases are up, leading a smattering of school districts, particularly in the Northeast, to bring back mask mandates and recommendations for the first time since the omicron winter surge ended and as the country approaches 1 million deaths in the pandemic.
HONG KONG (AP) — A 90-year-old Roman Catholic cardinal, a singer and at least two others have been arrested in Hong Kong on suspicion of colluding with foreign forces to endanger China’s national security, in an action widely condemned as a further sign of Beijing's erosion of rights in the city.
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — A first-of-its-kind federal study of Native American boarding schools that for over a century sought to assimilate Indigenous children into white society has identified more than 500 student deaths at the institutions, but officials expect that figure to grow exponentially as research continues.
BERLIN (AP) — Students at a high school in the western German town of Schleiden on Wednesday buried a longtime member of their community — a classroom skeleton that had served as an educational specimen for generations of pupils.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — The wives of two Ukrainian soldiers defending the Mariupol steel mill met with Pope Francis on Wednesday and begged him to intervene to arrange for a third-party evacuation of the troops before Russian soldiers capture or kill them.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Retired Associated Press photographer Nick Ut met Wednesday with Pope Francis and gave him a copy of his Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a young Vietnamese girl running naked down the road after a napalm attack.
Frank Wilczek, the Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist and author renowned for his boundary-pushing investigations into the fundamental laws of nature, was honored Wednesday with this year’s prestigious Templeton Prize, awarded to individuals whose life’s work embodies a fusion of science and spirituality.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Every Saturday, in secluded beach villas, hotel banquet halls and luxury apartment towers across Dubai, Jews arrive to worship at some of the world's most hidden synagogues even as the United Arab Emirates encourages the dramatic growth and openness of its Jewish community.
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — The U.S. Interior Department says it will release a report Wednesday that will begin to uncover the truth about the federal government's past oversight of Native American boarding schools.
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — New York will give abortion providers $35 million to expand services and boost security in anticipation of the U.S. Supreme Court possibly overturning the landmark Roe v.
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A civil rights leader said Tuesday that he won't stop raising his voice for the poor, uninsured and downtrodden, although his trespassing conviction for a demonstration five years ago at North Carolina's Legislative Building was allowed to stand.
JERUSALEM (AP) — "The Netanyahus," which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction this week, recounts a very funny anecdote about Israel's famous family that unfolds more than a half-century before one of them became it's longest-serving prime minister.
UMUIDA, Nigeria (AP) — As Anayo Mbah went into labor with her sixth child, her husband battled COVID-19 in another hospital across town. Jonas, a young motorcycle taxi driver, had been placed on oxygen after he started coughing up blood.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Police asked for the public's help in tracking down those who vandalized and threw two Molotov cocktails into the office of a prominent Wisconsin anti-abortion lobbying group's office that was damaged by fire.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis’ willingness to work despite knee pain that has made walking nearly impossible shows other older adults that they have wisdom and experience to offer younger generations, a top Vatican cardinal said Tuesday.
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — The Gulf Clan drug cartel shut down dozens of towns in northern Colombia for four days in reaction to its leader being extradited to the U.S. for trial. It warned that anyone who disobeyed the stay-at-home order risked being shot or having their vehicle burned.
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Sailors deployed to secure travel during the Eid al-Fitr holiday made Indonesia's biggest cocaine seizure after finding plastic packages of the drugs floating at sea, the navy said.
One of the Ukrainian fighters holding out in the Mariupol steelworks said Monday they were still defending the city.
Valeri Paditel, who heads the border guards in the Donetsk region, said the fighters were “doing everything to make those who defend the city in the future proud.”
NEW DELHI (AP) — Authorities in New Delhi stopped a demolition drive in a Muslim-dominated neighborhood after hundreds of residents and a number of opposition party workers gathered in protest Monday.
The people who run America’s abortion clinics agree: There’s no job like it.
There are the clients -- so many of them desperate, in need, grateful. There are the abortion opponents -- passionate, relentless, often furious.