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WASHINGTON - With last week's midterms largely in the rearview mirror, leadership elections are the order of the day on Capitol Hill. In morning meetings, both Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., won the votes to keep their posts next year. House Republicans - who will become the minority party in that chamber in January - convene in the afternoon. Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., is seeking to fend off a conservative challenge from Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, for minority leader next year.
A disputatious reporter seeks access to the White House but is blocked by Secret Service. Debate ensues over the journalist's tactics and whether he presents a physical threat more menacing than the pummeling that issues from his pen, or his microphone. The government doesn't offer a clear account and is sued on First Amendment grounds.
The CIA explored finding a "truth serum" to use on terrorism detainees in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to a declassified report that was released as part of a lengthy Freedom of Information lawsuit. The report, written by a chief CIA medical official whose identity has not been disclosed, detailed that Project Medication, as the effort was named, was shelved in 2003.
CNN sued the Trump administration on behalf of reporter Jim Acosta on Tuesday, asking a court to restore Acosta's White House press pass after President Donald Trump suspended it last week.
Mimi Britt of Maryland's Long Reach High has become a school celebrity and hopes to keep football in her future.
WASHINGTON - Hate crimes in America rose 17 percent last year, the third consecutive year that such crimes increased, according to newly released FBI data. Law enforcement agencies reported 7,175 hate crimes occurred in 2017, up from 6,121 in 2016. That increase was fueled in part by more police departments reporting hate crimes data to the FBI, but overall there is still a large number of departments that report no hate crimes to the federal database.
BROOKLYN - Joaquín Guzmán, the famed Mexican drug lord known as "El Chapo," has spent the past 22 months in a small, windowless cell in Lower Manhattan awaiting trial. On Tuesday, at a federal district court in Brooklyn, that trial will finally start. "This is such an important case, because no single individual in Mexico is more responsible for the last decade of violence than Chapo Guzmán," said David Shirk, a professor at the University of San Diego who focuses on Mexican politics and U.S.-Mexico border issues.
At first, 14-year-old Brett Corbett told his mom he was sent to the principal's office sopping wet because the kids dared him to swim in the creek behind the school, in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia. But then the videos emerged and, with them, an appalling story of bullying.
Days after Hurricane Florence rammed into the North Carolina coast, President Donald Trump was on his way to comfort those who lost homes or loved ones. He met with the state's Democratic governor; he sat for a briefing; he paused to ask residents in New Bern, "Hi, everybody, how's your house?" When Hurricane Harvey pummeled Texas last year, he traveled to Houston, and when Hurricane Michael hit Florida and Georgia last month, he and the first lady quickly went to the Gulf Coast.
The maker of chocolate M&M's and Snickers sees a growing risk on the horizon: sliding cocoa supply from one of the world's top growers. The answer? Comics and WiFi. Mars Inc., maker of candy famous to consumers across the world, is among firms trying to lure millennials into cocoa farming in Indonesia, where aging planters, decaying trees, pests and diseases have depressed output so much that the nation has become a net importer. The hope is that the younger set, attracted by free Internet, will get hooked on cocoa at themed cafes and be persuaded to return to the farms.