BRATISLAVA, Slovakia (AP) — Protesters rallied in Slovakia’s capital and several other cities Thursday to condemn legislation approved by Parliament that they say could curb free expression and hamper the work of nongovernmental organizations. People who gathered at Bratislava’s Freedom Square compared the measure to Russia’s “foreign agent” law, which has been criticized as repressive, […]

Ashley Dayer’s dream of winning a National Science Foundation grant to pursue discoveries in bird conservation started when she was an early-career professor with an infant in her arms and a shoestring laboratory budget. Competition is intense for NSF grants, a key source of funding for science research at U.S. universities. It took three failed […]

The public has a right to hear audio recordings from the custody hearing of Harmony Montgomery, a 5-year-old New Hampshire girl who was murdered by her father and vanished in 2019 after being placed in his care, the highest court in Massachusetts ruled Wednesday. The father, Adam Montgomery, was found guilty in her death last […]

NEW YORK (AP) — Starting next month, the Education Department says student loans that are in default will be referred for collections. Roughly 5.3 million borrowers are in default on their federal student loans and soon could be subject to having their wages garnished. Referrals for collection had been put on hold since March 2020 […]

New York environmental workers who came with a warrant looking for Peanut the squirrel found the scampering social media star on a bathtub. His housemate, Fred the raccoon, was in a suitcase in a bedroom closet. Soon after the Oct. 30 seizure, both animals were euthanized and Peanut became a martyr – held up as […]

SEATTLE (AP) — Current and former Seattle police officers who attended President Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” political rally on Jan. 6, 2021 at the U.S. Capitol are asking the nation’s highest court to keep their identities anonymous in public court records. Using “John Doe” pseudonyms, they sued over whether the investigation into their activities […]

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Dutch centre-right leader Pieter Omtzigt announced Friday evening he is quitting both the fragile four-party ruling coalition and national politics. Citing his mental health, the 51-year-old said in a social media video that he is unable to recover from burnout in the current political climate. “It was a huge honor […]

WASHINGTON (AP) — Just days after being promoted to acting IRS commissioner, the whistleblower who testified publicly about investigations into Hunter Biden’s taxes is out of the job, according to three people familiar with the decision. Gary Shapley, who previously testified to Congress as Republicans reviewed the business dealings of Joe Biden’s son, will be […]

WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal judiciary is warning that Congress is not providing enough money for judges’ security, at a time of escalating threats and chilling efforts at intimidation. More than five dozen judges handling lawsuits against the Trump administration are receiving “enhanced online security screening” that typically includes scrubbing their personal information from the […]

WASHINGTON (AP) — About 10,000 pages of records related to the 1968 assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy were released Friday, including handwritten notes by the gunman, who said the Democratic presidential candidate “must be disposed of” and acknowledged an obsession with killing him. Many of the files had been made public previously, while others […]

A federal judge on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit alleging that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints arm misused hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations by investing it instead of using it for charitable purposes. U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby said a three-year statute of limitations on fraud claims in Utah passed before […]

WASHINGTON (AP) — On the rooftop patio of the General Services Administration headquarters, an agency staffer recently discovered something strange: a rectangular device attached to a wire that snaked across the roof, over the ledge and into the administrator’s window one floor below. It didn’t take long for the employee — an IT specialist — […]