The Associated Press

Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling has been banned for life by the NBA in response to racist comments the league says he made in a recorded conversation.

Commissioner Adam Silver said he will try to force the controversial owner to sell his franchise. Sterling has also been fined $2.5 ...

New Yorker writer Dexter Filkins finds an increasingly authoritarian prime minister — Nouri al-Maliki — sectarian violence, and concern for the future. Iraq holds parliamentary elections Wednesday.

A phenomenon where pranksters call in phony emergencies that elicit a strong police response is being used by video gamers in a twisted competition where their success is based on the level of that response, according to a suburban New York police commissioner.

The phenomenon is known as “swatting.”

More ...

Three years after a tornado devastated the Little Rock suburb of Vilonia, its residents again huddled in storm cellars as the most powerful twister this year carved an 80-mile path of destruction through suburbs north of the state capital, killing at least 16 people.

Emergency officials began to pick through ...

The federal government wants to ban sales of electronic cigarettes to minors and require approval for new products and health warning labels under regulations being proposed by the Food and Drug Administration.

While the proposal being issued Thursday won’t immediately mean changes for the popular devices, the move is aimed ...

The Supreme Court on Wednesday said a federal law limits how much money victims of child pornography can recover from people who viewed their images online, throwing out a nearly $3.4 million judgment in favor of a woman whose childhood rape has been widely seen on the Internet. Two dissenting ...

The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld Michigan’s ban on using race as a factor in college admissions.

The justices said in a 6-2 ruling that Michigan voters had the right to change their state constitution in 2006 to prohibit public colleges and universities from taking account of race in admissions ...

A somber anniversary is being marked in Boston today. It’s the one-year anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombings.

The tribute is being held inside Boston’s Hynes Convention Center, just a few blocks from the marathon finish line where two bombs exploded on April 15, 2013.

Three people were killed and ...

A college visit by more than 40 high school students turned tragic when a FedEx tractor-trailer veered across a grassy highway median and slammed into their bus in a fiery wreck that left 10 people dead, authorities said.

Someone kicked out a window on the bus, and many of those ...

President Barack Obama says he’s nominating his budget director, Sylvia Mathews Burwell, to succeed Kathleen Sebelius as Health and Human Services secretary.

The Cabinet shuffle lets Obama put a new face on his new health care law.

The move comes more than a week after the close of sign-ups for ...

A police chief says a 16-year-old boy “was flashing two knives around” when he injured 19 students and a school police officer who eventually subdued him with the help of an assistant principal at a high school near Pittsburgh.

Murrysville police Chief Thomas Seefeld says the bloody crime scene left ...

A new poll shows nearly half of respondents approved of the job New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is doing.

The New York Times/NY1/Siena College poll released Monday found that 49 percent of those polled liked how he was performing, while 31 percent disapproved.

Seventy-three percent of those ...

Former President George W. Bush has found painting as his new passion to fill the void in his life after he left the White House.

In an interview on NBC’s “Today” show, Bush tells his daughter, Jenna Bush Hager, “I paint a lot because, as you know, I’m a driven ...

The Army’s top civilian official says the soldier accused in the Fort Hood shooting this week was deployed for the final months of the Iraq war but did not see combat.

Three people died and 16 were wounded before the shooter committed suicide. At least three military personnel remain in ...

The new CEO for General Motors is headed to Capitol Hill today to answer questions about the defect in some of the automaker’s small cars that’s linked to 13 deaths.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration chief David Friedman also is expected to testify that GM had information connecting defective ignition ...

A rare 1719 Stradivarius viola is expected to sell for more than $45 million in a private sale.

Five former employees of imprisoned financier Bernard Madoff were convicted Monday at the end of a six-month trial.

The Coast Guard could soon reopen the Houston Ship Channel that was the scene of an oil spill over the weekend.

The channel is one of the nation’s busiest seaports. Coast Guard Warrant Officer Kimberly Smith says the goal is to reopen part of it sometime Monday. The closure has ...

There are concerns that the number of deaths from a mudslide over the weekend in Washington state will climb far above the eight people who’ve been confirmed dead so far.

A 1-square-mile mudslide on Saturday swept through part of a former fishing village about 55 miles north of Seattle. The ...

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — For 18 seconds, it was happening. Harvard owned basketball, too.

Laurent Rivard made a 3-pointer from the corner, flashed his 3-point goggles toward an unhinged group of Crimson fans and ran down the court. The Ivy Leaguers had overcome a 16-point deficit to take a two-point ...