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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — For years, Nashville leaders have watched Tennessee’s GOP-dominated Legislature repeatedly kneecap the liberal-leaning city’s ability to set its own minimum wage, regulate plastic bag use and place higher scrutiny on police officers. Yet that simmering tension has only escalated this year as Republican lawmakers have introduced a string of proposals that local officials warn would drastically upend Music City. It’s a common scenario felt in cities […]

BANGKOK (AP) — Myanmar’s military government plans to allow loyal civilians, including government employees and retired military personnel, to carry licensed firearms, but they must comply with orders from local authorities to participate in security and law enforcement actions, the military and media reports said. The announcement fanned fears of even more violence in a country wracked by what some U.N. experts have called a civil war. A 15-page document […]

WASHINGTON (AP) — Ted Lerner, the billionaire real estate developer whose family bought the Washington Nationals in 2006, has died, the team announced Monday. he was 97. A Nationals spokesperson said Lerner died Sunday of complications from pneumonia at his home in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Lerner’s group purchased the Nationals from Major League Baseball in 2006 for $450 million after the team was moved to the U.S. capital from Montreal. […]

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — The wild blueberry, Maine’s most important fruit, could get some help fighting off a pest under legislation proposed by the state’s Republican U.S. senator. Maine is the only state in the country with a significant harvest of wild blueberries, which are smaller cousins to the more ubiquitous cultivated berries. The wild blueberry, which grows in the sprawling barrens of Maine’s rural east, is the state’s official […]

BRUSSELS (AP) — NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg warned Monday that Ukraine is using up ammunition far faster than its allies can provide it and putting pressure on Western defense industries, just as Russia ramps up its military offensive. “The war in Ukraine is consuming an enormous amount of munitions and depleting allied stockpiles,” Stoltenberg said. “The current rate of Ukraine’s ammunition expenditure is many times higher than our current rate […]

A 2010 federal law that boosted nutrition standards for school meals may have begun to help slow the rise in obesity among America’s children — even teenagers who can buy their own snacks, a new study showed. The national study found a small but significant decline in the average body mass index of more than 14,000 schoolkids ages 5 to 18 whose heights and weights were tracked before and after […]

RIP Medical Debt has found a working formula to relieve medical debt for millions of people. It still has room to grow. The New York nonprofit uses donations to buy medical debt in bulk from hospitals and debt collectors for pennies on the dollar. It mostly targets the debt of people with low incomes and then forgives the amounts. Founded in 2014, the organization says that it has relieved more […]

TOKYO (AP) — Japanese nuclear regulators on Monday approved contentious safety evaluation changes and draft legislation to allow aging reactors to operate longer, in a rare split decision in which one of the five commissioners dissented. The Nuclear Regulation Authority, responding to a new government policy to scrap the current 60-year operating limit for reactors, adopted a new system in which additional operating extensions can granted every 10 years after […]

ATLANTA (AP) — A Georgia judge on Monday ordered the partial release later this week of a special grand jury report into efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn his 2020 election loss. The report’s introduction and conclusion, as well as a section in which the grand jurors expressed concerns that some witnesses may have lied under oath, will be released on Thursday, said Fulton County […]