Town Hall News

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Shohei Ohtani doesn’t like to get in the way of his catchers. The way the Los Angeles Dodgers superstar looks at it, when he’s on the mound, his job is to throw the ball. It’s up to the guys behind the plate to decide whether to challenge an umpire’s call of a ball or a strike. That deference might have cost Ohtani and the Dodgers in a […]

By Brenda Goh and Liz Lee SEOUL/BEIJING, June 10 (Reuters) – North Korea and China both walked away claiming major wins from Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit this week to the isolated state, which helped elevate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s global stature and pulled Pyongyang more tightly into China’s orbit. The two countries each lavished the other with praise and spoke of deeper cooperation during the two-day trip, which […]

ASHTON-IN-MAKERFIELD, England (AP) — About 75,000 voters in a pocket of northwest England are about to make a momentous decision. They will cast ballots in a contest that may well pick the U.K.’s next prime minister, or plunge Britain’s febrile politics into even more turmoil. Possibly both. Some of them aren’t too enthusiastic. “I think they’re all a waste of time,” said Shirley Prior on the choice of candidates in […]

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The man charged in the political assassinations of the top Democrat in the Minnesota House and her husband, as well as the attempted murders of a state senator and his wife, is due to appear in federal court Thursday to change his not-guilty plea, after federal prosecutors said they would not seek the death penalty against him. The U.S. attorney’s office in Minneapolis notified the court Wednesday […]

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama is waging a last-minute legal fight to execute a man with nitrogen gas on Thursday night, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to set aside a judge’s findings that the method violates the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. A federal judge on Tuesday ruled that Alabama’s nitrogen protocol is unconstitutional and blocked the state from using it to execute Jeffery Lee, 49. The Alabama […]

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A New Mexico judge is scheduled Thursday to consider arguments in a challenge to the state’s fledgling universal childcare program, an ambitious and closely watched effort to eliminate daycare costs for all working families. A lawsuit brought by former Republican gubernatorial candidate Duke Rodriguez and other plaintiffs challenges the process used by Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s administration to eliminate an income cap and co-pays for […]

WASHINGTON (AP) — A rare lapse in a law that allows the U.S. to gather intelligence abroad is growing more likely after President Donald Trump resisted calls from Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill to immediately name a permanent head of the nation’s intelligence agencies. Trump has doubled down on his temporary pick for director of national intelligence, federal housing finance regulator Bill Pulte, even though he has little experience […]

At first glance, a recent Democratic primary in California’s Central Valley was just another skirmish between the party’s progressive wing and its more moderate establishment. This time, the contest was won by populist insurgent Randy Villegas. But what sets the outcome apart from similar primary battles is the stakes. This wasn’t a fight over a safe Democratic seat. Villegas will be the standard bearer against Republican Rep. David Valadao, one […]

By Arathy Somasekhar HOUSTON, June 11 (Reuters) – The United States has become the world’s largest oil exporter, upending a decades-old order long dominated by Saudi Arabia and Russia, a shift that tightens American companies’ grip on energy markets as Washington’s war with Iran reshapes global energy trade. America’s ascendancy to the top spot marks a stunning reversal for a country that was dependent on Middle Eastern oil for decades […]