Wire
Isaac’s impact may go well beyond New Orleans
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — With its massive size and ponderous movement, a strengthening Isaac could become a punishing rain machine depending on its power, speed and where it comes ashore along the Gulf Coast. The focus has been on New Orleans as Isaac takes dead aim at the city seven years after Hurricane Katrina, but the impact will be felt well beyond the city limits. The storm’s winds could be felt more than 200 miles from the storm’s center. The...
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Galena tries to save bordello
Effort under way to save notorious Galena bordello ROGER MCKINNEY,The Joplin Globe GALENA, Kan. (AP) — A Main Street building in southeast Kansas with loads of history and notoriety — and maybe even some ghosts — has been spared from demolition. An online petition, "Save the Steffleback Bordello," has gathered 230 signatures. It initially was directed at Galena Mayor Dale Oglesby, but it turns out that Oglesby is fully on board with the pla...
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Race offers voters clear choices
WASHINGTON (AP) — November’s presidential election offers Americans one of the starkest choices in years. On this, at least, President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney can agree. Obama says voters will choose between “two fundamentally different visions of where we take America.” To which his Republican rival counters: “If you want to know where his vision leads, open your eyes...It leads to lost jobs, lost homes, lost dreams.” Romney promises a c...
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Gunshots kill two at Empire State Building
NEW YORK (AP) — A laid-off clothing designer fatally shot an executive at his former company outside the Empire State Building on Friday, setting off a chaotic showdown with police in front of one of the world’s best-known landmarks. Officers killed the gunman and at least nine others were wounded, some by stray police gunfire, authorities said. The gunshots rang out on the Fifth Avenue side of the building at around 9 a.m., when pedestrians o...
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Early heart death raises risk for family
MILWAUKEE (AP) — Paul Ryan works out and watches his diet, but a new study shows that clean living can only go so far to help people like the vice presidential candidate overcome a strong family history of heart disease. The study of 4 million people — the largest ever on heart risks that run in families — found that having a close relative die young of cardiovascular disease doubles a person’s odds of developing it by age 50. This risk was in...
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Congressman fights to save Senate bid after rape comment
ST. LOUIS (AP) — Rep. Todd Akin fought to salvage his Senate campaign Monday, even as members of his own party turned against him and a key source of campaign funding was cut off in outrage over the Missouri congressman’s comments that women are able to prevent pregnancies in cases of “legitimate rape.” Akin made no public appearances but went on former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee’s national radio show to apologize. He vowe...
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Obama defends tenor of campaign
WASHINGTON (AP) — Denounced by his Republican rival for divisiveness, President Barack Obama on Monday defended the tone of his campaign in a combative election year and insisted it’s actually Mitt Romney’s ads that are “patently false.” But Obama did distance himself from a particularly provocative negative ad by a political group that supports him. Obama also joined the cascade of criticism from both parties for comments on rape and abortion...
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Gambling regulators say charity poker runs are illegal
GARDEN CITY (AP) — Increasingly popular fundraising activities such as poker runs and charity poker tournaments are illegal in Kansas, state gambling regulators said, though violations are rarely prosecuted. Bill Miskell, a spokesman for the state Racing and Gaming Commission, told The Garden City Telegram for a story published Saturday that most people aren’t aware that they’re breaking law when they organize such events. He said the state le...
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Democrats say Romney supports Ryan’s budget
COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa (AP) — Led by President Barack Obama, Democrats claimed on Monday that Republican challenger Mitt Romney privately backs controversial plans to overhaul Medicare and cut trillions from social programs that his new vice presidential running mate has publicly proposed. Rep. Paul Ryan “has given definition to the vague commitments that Romney has been making,” Vice President Joe Biden said as the Democrats welcomed the Wiscon...
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Study supports junk food laws
CHICAGO (AP) — Laws strictly curbing school sales of junk food and sweetened drinks may play a role in slowing childhood obesity, according to a study that seems to offer the first evidence such efforts could pay off. The results come from the first large national look at the effectiveness of the state laws over time. They are not a slam-dunk, and even obesity experts who praised the study acknowledge the measures are a political hot potato, s...
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Flights become timelier
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. airlines are more punctual and less likely to lose your bag than at any time in more than two decades. Travelers still have to put up with packed planes, rising fees and unpredictable security lines, but they are late to fewer business meetings and are not missing as many chances to tuck their kids into bed. Nearly 84 percent of domestic flights arrived within 15 minutes of their scheduled time in the first half of the yea...
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Drone pilot becomes popular Air Force job
WASHINGTON (AP) — Becoming a fighter pilot is still a hotly coveted goal at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo. But slowly, a culture change is taking hold. Initially snubbed as second-class pilot-wannabes, the airmen who remotely control America’s arsenal of lethal drones are gaining stature and securing a permanent place in the Air Force. Drawn to the flashy drone strikes that have taken out terrorists including al-Qaida leader ...
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Romney, Obama bemoan attack ads, but both benefit
PUEBLO, Colo. (AP) — Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama both deplored the pervasive presence of televised attack ads in the race for the White House on Thursday, though neither acknowledged being helped as well as harmed. Each blamed his foe. Romney went first, saying of the president’s campaign, “They just blast ahead” with ads that have been judged false by independent fact checkers. “I don’t know whatever happened to a campaign of ‘hope...
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Obama’s welfare waiver becomes campaign issue
WASHINGTON (AP) — Welfare is causing a ruckus in the presidential campaign. But the program is a shadow of its old self from the 1970s, when Ronald Reagan used the image of “welfare queens” to assail government poverty programs promoted by liberals. Nowadays government cash assistance to the poor is mainly conditioned on work. And the Obama administration waivers excoriated by Mitt Romney as gutting welfare reform are unlikely to reverse that ...
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Negotiators back new Iran sanctions
WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress is pressing ahead with a new package of crippling sanctions on Iran, expanding on financial penalties and targeting Tehran’s energy and shipping sectors in the hope that economic pressure undercuts its suspected nuclear weapons program. House and Senate negotiators reached agreement late Monday on legislation that builds on the current penalties directed at financial institutions that do business with Iran’s central ...
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Egypt’s leaders promise democracy
CAIRO (AP) — Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Tuesday that Egypt’s new president and its military chief have reassured him they will steer the country to full democracy. “It’s clear that Egypt, following the revolution, is committed to putting into place a democratic government,” Panetta told reporters after meetings in Cairo with President Mohammed Morsi and Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi. It was Panetta’s first encounter with Mors...
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Problems grow in besieged Syrian city
BEIRUT (AP) — Humanitarian conditions have grown even more dire in the besieged Syria city of Aleppo with activists reporting on Tuesday dwindling stocks of food and cooking gas and only intermittent electricity supplies as droves of residents flee 11 days of intense clashes between rebels and regime forces. Government helicopters pounded rebel neighborhoods across Syria’s largest city and main commercial hub. Activists said the random shellin...
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Japan pro-nuclear voices grow louder
TOKYO (AP) — A contentious debate over nuclear power in Japan is also bringing another question out of the shadows: Should Japan keep open the possibility of making nuclear weapons — even if only as an option? It may seem surprising in the only country ever devastated by atomic bombs, particularly as it marks the 67th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima on Monday and Nagasaki three days later. The Japanese government officially renounces ...
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Task force seizes designer drugs
SALINA (AP) — Kansas law enforcement officers seized herbal potpourri from three Salina businesses and one alleged supplier even as federal agents nationwide were embarking on an unrelated crackdown against manufacturers and sellers of synthetic designer drugs. The Salina Journal reported Thursday that no arrests were made during the Salina seizures, which were conducted Wednesday by the I-135-I-70 Drug Task Force. Separately, the Drug Enforce...
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Google sets price for its ultra-fast Internet
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Google Inc. revealed Thursday what it will charge for its long-awaited, ultra-fast Internet service in Kansas City: $70 per month. The service is intended as a showcase for what’s technically possible and as a testbed for the development of new ways to use the Internet. Bypassing the local cable and phone companies, Google has spent months and an unknown amount of money pulling its own optical fiber through the two-stat...
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