UN rights group says Japan needs to do more to counter human rights abuses (2024)

LOS ANGELES — Six years ago, a plumber found the decomposing body of Raymundo Rivera inside a pillar at a Winco supermarket in Lancaster. At the time, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department officials said the 35-year-old appeared to have fled during a traffic stop and may have "gotten insid…

DALLAS — More than 260,000 North Texans remained without power Wednesday as Oncor officials announced they expect a significant portion of outages to be restored before the weekend.

Before Glen Powell was Hollywood's most in-demand leading man, he spent years losing out on major roles. But when he finally got the call that the part of co*cky "Top Gun: Maverick" pilot Hangman was his, he nearly turned it down.

Manhattan prosecutors say they might seek new indictment of Harvey Weinstein after more accusers came forward.

LOS ANGELES — Pop singer Sean Kingston will return to his home state of Florida, where SWAT officers conducted a search at his rental house last week.

Shania Twain may not have forgiven ex-husband Mutt Lange for his affair, but she's not letting it keep her down.

Nigeria has adopted a new national anthem reintroduced nearly a half-century ago after it was dropped for the current one. The switch came into effect on Wednesday after the country's leader signed a new law. The law has been widely criticized among many Nigerians who said it was hastily passed without meaningful input from the public. The new anthem was played publicly for the first time at a legislative attended by President Bola Tinubu. He marked his first year in office as president on Wednesday. But many Nigerians took to social media to say they won't be singing the new national anthem.

SAN DIEGO — NASA is giving UC San Diego $10 million to develop competitive proposals for using satellites to study the often subtle and sometimes dramatic ways in which climate change is affecting Earth.

"Eric," a limited series premiering Thursday on Netflix, stars Benedict Cumberbatch, wearing an American accent, as Vincent Anderson, a Jim Henson-brand puppeteer, if Henson had had severe mental health issues, a drinking and drugs problem and on top of that was just kind of an angry, egotis…

Two new giant pandas will arrive at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., before the end of the year, according to an announcement Wednesday.

“Eric” is a show with a lot going on.

DETROIT — The group behind an effort to amend Michigan's 2023 clean energy law didn't gather enough signatures to get their petition on the November ballot, but promised to continue fighting to give local governments the power to deny big renewable projects.

Front Row Motorsports has purchased a charter that will expand the NASCAR team to three cars in the Cup Series in 2025. Front Row did not reveal the seller, but the announcement comes one day after Stewart-Haas Racing said it was shuttering its four-car Cup team at the end of the season. Front Row did not disclose the price. Spire Motorsports last year paid $40 million for one. The team currently fields Fords for former Daytona 500 winner Michael McDowell and Todd Gilliland, but McDowell is leaving for Spire next season.

Matt Vierling hit a three-run homer and drove in four runs for a second straight game and the Detroit Tigers pounded the Pittsburgh Pirates 8-0 in the opener of a doubleheader. His homer highlighted a four-run fifth as the Tigers won their fourth straight. Vierling had three hits, while Riley Greene added two hits and scored two runs. Tarik Skubal bounced back from his only loss this season by holding the Pirates to three singles and a walk in seven innings. Skubal, who struck out eight, retired the last 10 batters he faced.

Jury in Trump hush money trial sends note to judge asking for testimony from National Enquirer publisher, Michael Cohen.

WASHINGTON — Polls have suggested for months that former President Trump could lose support among some Republicans if he is convicted of a crime. But if history is any guide, many of those supporters will stick with him.

NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams defended the Pope following the pontiff’s use of a derogatory term for gay people, saying Wednesday that the leader of the Catholic Church, like him, is a target of the “word police.”

U.S. National Park Service officials say an unoccupied house has collapsed into the Atlantic Ocean along North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Tuesday's collapse was the sixth along the Cape Hatteras National Seashore in the past four years. About one mile of the beach was closed as the national seashore began its cleanup at the collapse site along Ocean Drive in Rodanthe. The public was invited to help employees clean up on Wednesday. A contractor hired by the property owner also is participating. North Carolina’s coast is almost entirely made up of narrow, low-lying barrier islands that are frequently washed over from both the bay and the sea and are particularly vulnerable to storm surges.

A man accused of killing his Michigan girlfriend after returning to the U.S. following deportation has been ordered to stand trial for murder. Brandon Ortiz Vite is a Mexican citizen. Ruby Garcia was fatally shot and left on the side of a highway in March. The case became a political flashpoint when former President Donald Trump accused the Biden administration of failing to keep him out of the country. He was deported in 2020, the last year of the Trump administration, but it’s not known when he returned. A judge found enough evidence on Wednesday to try him for murder and other charges.

NEW YORK — As investigators reportedly prepare to bring Sean “Diddy” Combs’ accusers before a federal grand jury, Mayor Eric Adams said Wednesday that his team is still “in the process of looking into” taking back the key to the city he gave to the embattled rap impresario.

For years, less than 2% of philanthropic giving in the U.S. has gone to benefit women and girls, but that could change in part thanks to new resources that Melinda French Gates has pledged in recent weeks. The Women’s Philanthropy Institute at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy has researched giving to women and girls since 2019. While the overall amount has increased over the years, it’s never exceeded 2% of overall charitable dollars. Jacqueline Ackerman, the institute’s interim director, said French Gates’ $1 billion commitment announced Tuesday could finally help break that threshold, if others join her.

Wednesday

Authorities say a human skull found padlocked to an exercise dumbbell has been fished out of a New Orleans waterway, leaving police with a mystery on their hands. Police said in a report that the skull was found on May 18. A man using a rope and a magnet the size of a hockey puck was fishing for objects off a bridge when he pulled the skull and dumbbell from the water. The police report was recently released and obtained by the Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate. It says the fisherman also found a handgun and a gun barrel in the water.

South Florida Sun Sentinel. May 22, 2024.

A Missouri fifth grader has won praise and had an award named for him after he raised more than $7,000 to erase school meal debt in his district. Daken Kramer posted a video last month challenging friends, family, strangers and businesses to pay off the meal debt at Thomas Ultican Elementary School in Blue Springs. He raised enough money not only to help students at his school but also at the high school. Now the Daken Kramer Legacy Award will be given to honor students like him who go above and beyond.

Hungary’s top diplomat has visited Belarus for talks on expanding ties despite the European Union’s sanctions against the country. Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó declared Wednesday that “our position is clear: the fewer sanctions, the more cooperation!” The EU has slapped a sweeping array of sanctions on Belarus for the repression that followed mass protests fueled by the 2020 presidential election. The vote was widely seen by the opposition and the West as rigged. Belarus’ isolation further deepened after authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko allowed Russian troops to use his country’s territory to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya criticized Szijjártó's visit as "unacceptable and immoral.”

Despite a long string of recalls that began more than two decades ago, about 6.2 million vehicles with potentially dangerous Takata air bag inflators remain on U.S. roads today. On Wednesday, Nissan warned drivers of about 84,000 older Nissan and Infiniti vehicles not to drive them because the front passenger inflators can explode with too much force in a crash, spewing metal fragments that could kill or injure people. In all, 67 million front driver and passenger inflators were included in what turned out to be the largest automotive recall in U.S. history. About 100 million inflators were recalled worldwide. But despite years of publicity, recall letters and phone calls from automakers, about 9% of the recalled vehicles remain on the road without repairs.

The Scripps National Spelling Bee had its toughest day of competition with the quarterfinal and semifinal rounds. Wednesday began with 148 spellers on stage and by early afternoon, more than 100 had been eliminated. Among them were some veteran spellers who hoped to improve on their previous performances and qualify for Thursday night's finals. Spellers say a lot of luck can come into play as Scripps pulls from more than half a million words in Webster's Unabridged dictionary. And those who've performed well in prior years often fall short of expectations.

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Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has filed an election complaint alleging CNN is colluding with Democratic President Joe Biden and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump to exclude him from a debate the network is hosting next month. CNN says the complaint is without merit. A lawyer for Kennedy laid out his argument in a filing Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission. The Kennedy campaign says the requirements to participate in the June 27 debate were designed to ensure only Biden and Trump would qualify. Kennedy still has time to meet the requirements, but the window is narrowing.

Baseball players and fans alike are learning more about the Negro Leagues after the statistics for more than 2,300 players — historic figures like Josh Gibson, Oscar Charleston, Satchel Paige and Mule Suttles — were incorporated into the major league record book following a three-year research project. A 17-person committee chaired by John Thorn, Major League Baseball’s official historian, met six times as part of the meticulous process of examining statistics from seven Negro Leagues from 1920-1948. Cincinnati Reds pitcher Hunter Greene calls the move “long overdue.” Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Andrew McCutchen says he is doing some “deep diving” into some Negro Leagues players that he hadn't heard of before.

NEW YORK — Donald Trump lashed out at actor Robert De Niro in a middle-of-the-night rant posted to Truth Social.

A nurse was fired by a New York City hospital after she referred to Israel’s war in Gaza as “genocide” during a speech accepting an award. Hesen Jabr was being honored by NYU Langone Health for her compassion in caring for mothers who had lost babies when she drew a link between her work and the suffering of mothers in Gaza. Jabr said that Palestinian women are going through unimaginable losses "during the current genocide in Gaza,” She was fired the next time she reported for work. A spokesperson for NYU Langone said some of Jabr's colleagues were upset by her comments.

Facing a tidal wave of pushback from community groups, the Seattle City Council voted Tuesday to table a proposal that would withhold new funding for development projects in areas where many people of color and low-income people live.

CHICAGO — The Illinois legislature has passed a bill that would require more health care facilities to report allegations of patient abuse to the state— a measure that follows a Tribune investigation into the issue.

CHICAGO — A Chicago-area man who made a national media splash when he filed a lawsuit against dozens of women who allegedly bad-mouthed him on a tell-all Facebook dating page was sentenced Wednesday to a year in federal prison for a tax fraud that the judge called “patently outrageous.”

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 29, 2024--

A criminal court in Argentina has postponed to Oct. 1 the start of a trial in a criminal negligence case brought against eight people allegedly involved in the death of soccer star Diego Maradona. The 1986 World Cup winner died at age 60 on Nov. 25, 2020 due to a cardiorespiratory arrest. The criminal court in San Isidro, in the outskirts of Buenos Aires, said in a decision published by local media Tuesday night that “several questions have been raised” by all parts involved in the homicide case, adding that “at this date they are still to be resolved.” The court did not elaborate.

Controversial proposals to double the populations of Hillcrest and University City by allowing more high-rise housing will be debated this week by San Diego's Planning Commission.

After nearly two dozen witnesses, 16 days of testimony and hours of lawyers’ closing arguments, it’s time for jurors to have their say in former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial. Jury deliberations began Wednesday in the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president. The discussion of a potential verdict is taking place behind closed doors in a room reserved for the jury. The deliberations are secret, though jurors can communicate a bit by having a court officer deliver notes from them to the judge. The seven-man, five-woman, anonymous jury is tasked with deciding whether Trump is guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying his company’s records. The presumptive Republican nominee has pleaded not guilty.