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NEW YORK (AP) — Walmart on Tuesday reported strong sales during the holiday season as budget-conscious consumers looking for better deals flocked to its stores. The report was a good showing for the company, considering consumers had overall cut back on their spending during the traditional November-December shopping period. Though sales rebounded at stores and restaurants last month, showing shoppers are still spending despite higher prices and several interest rate […]

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A senior member of a U.S.-based Iranian opposition group accused of orchestrating a deadly 2008 mosque bombing has been sentenced to death in Iran, authorities said Tuesday. Iranian authorities say Jamshid Sharmahd, an Iranian-German national and U.S. resident, is the leader of the armed wing of a group advocating the restoration of the monarchy that was overthrown in the 1979 Islamic Revolution. His family […]

NEW YORK (AP) — Advocacy group Global Citizen will convene political, philanthropic, business and cultural leaders for a thought leadership conference in New York to tackle extreme poverty more quickly. The group announced Tuesday that Global Citizen NOW will be a two-day conference beginning April 27, co-chaired by Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, as well as leaders of Barbados and Ghana, along with Coldplay’s Chris Martin […]

FORT PIERCE, Fla. (AP) — An 85-year-old woman was killed by an alligator while walking her dog in a senior living community on Florida’s Atlantic Coast, officials said. The woman was walking her dog on Monday afternoon beside a canal in Spanish Lakes Fairway near Fort Pierce when the nearly 11-foot (3.3-meters) gator attacked the dog, St. Lucie Sheriff Ken Mascara said. A trapper from the Florida Fish and Wildlife […]

Democratic governors in 20 states are launching a network intended to strengthen abortion access in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision nixing a woman’s constitutional right to end a pregnancy and instead shifting regulatory powers over the procedure to state governments. Organizers, led by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, described the Reproductive Freedom Alliance as a way for governors and their staffs to share best practices and affirm abortion […]

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iranian attacks in the waterways of the Middle East and elsewhere in the region “have the attention of everyone” as tensions rise over Tehran’s advancing nuclear program, the head of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet said Tuesday. Vice Adm. Brad Cooper also told The Associated Press that he’s seen a rise in what he described as Iran’s “malign activities” in the region over […]

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — The main crossing on the Afghan-Pakistan border remained shut Tuesday for the third straight day, officials said, after Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers earlier this week closed the key trade route and exchanged fire with Pakistani border guards. The closure has added to increasing tensions between the two neighboring countries and concerns for traders, for whom the Torkham crossing is a key commercial artery. Trucks carrying various items […]

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis has intervened for the third time to crack down on the celebration of the old Latin Mass, a sign of continued friction with Catholic traditionalists. Francis reasserted in a new legal decree published Tuesday that the Holy See must approve new celebrations of the old rite by signing off on bishops’ decisions to designate additional parish churches for the Latin Mass or to let newly […]

Twenty-six words tucked into a 1996 law overhauling telecommunications have allowed companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google to grow into the giants they are today. A case coming before the U.S. Supreme Court this week, Gonzalez v. Google, challenges this law — namely whether tech companies are liable for the material posted on their platforms. Justices will decide whether the family of an American college student killed in a terror […]