CHARLOTTE, N.C. — North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto stamp won’t be as heavy in the 2023 legislative session.

For the first two years of the North Carolina Democrat’s first term, Republicans had a veto-proof supermajority in the state legislature, and managed to override all but five of Cooper’s 28 vetoes.

Then Democrats knocked ...Read more

NASA’s Orion capsule, a new spacecraft designed to carry future astronauts to deep space, successfully entered orbit around the moon on Friday.

The uncrewed spacecraft ignited its main engine at 4:52 p.m. Eastern time for one minute and 28 seconds, allowing it to enter what NASA terms a distant retrograde orbit, completing one of the primary ...Read more

DENVER — The sign of the Colorado Springs headquarters of the evangelical Christian ministry Focus on the Family was defaced days after a gunman attacked the city’s sole LGBTQ+ nightclub.

“Their blood is on your hands” and “five lives taken” were spray-painted onto the sign following Saturday night’s mass shooting in Colorado ...Read more

SAN DIEGO — With construction on a border barrier replacement project paused, a design team organized by advocates for Friendship Park has recommended that the federal government not go through with its plans to erect 30-foot walls at the historic binational meeting place.

The recommendation is the latest move in a back-and-forth between ...Read more

MIAMI — A group of Florida-bound migrants, including almost 50 children, who reached the Florida Keys in a rickety sailboat from Haiti on Monday, resulting in a frantic federal, state and local rescue effort, have been returned to the Caribbean nation.

The U.S. Coast Guard said a cutter arrived in Haiti on Friday with the migrants on board. ...Read more

Following back-to-back mass shootings in Colorado and Virginia, President Joe Biden spoke in favor of an assault weapons ban, a perennially proposed piece of legislation.

His comments come as nationwide support for stricter gun laws has slipped in recent months. In response to the Nov. 19 mass killing at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, the...Read more

A group of children and young adults including Greta Thunberg have filed a class-action lawsuit against the Swedish state for failing to take adequate measures to stop climate change.

The lawsuit is part of an international wave of climate-related legal action, some of it targeting national governments.

It follows a high-profile case in the ...Read more

Escalated Russian shelling of the recently liberated Ukrainian city of Kherson killed 10 people, wounded dozens more and forced hospital evacuations, the Ukrainian government said Friday.

Kherson, the only regional capital captured by Russia in its nine-month-old war on its neighbor, has faced President Vladimir Putin’s wrath since Ukrainian ...Read more

Pete Buttigieg’s husband trashed Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Friday for accusing the trailblazing transportation secretary of lying about being gay while serving in the U.S. Naval Reserve.

Chasten Buttigieg denounced Carlson for taking a judgmental pot shot at Pete Buttigieg for not disclosing his sexuality in an era when coming out of ...Read more

A maskless President Xi Jinping met Cuban counterpart Miguel Diaz-Canel in Beijing, resuming his flurry of in-person summits even as a record COVID-19 surge fanned lockdown fears in the Chinese capital.

Xi expressed a willingness to “deepen trust” between the two nations during the talks, according to a video clip posted by state ...Read more

Peru’s President Pedro Castillo on Friday named a close ally already censured by congress as his new prime minister in an apparent escalation of the government’s fight with the legislature.

Castillo swore in Betssy Chavez, who was labor minister until congress forced her resignation in May, as his fifth prime minister since taking power in ...Read more

A half-ton of confiscated marijuana disappeared from a storage room in India — and police are now pointing fingers at tiny, four-legged trespassers.

Police in Mathura, a city about 100 miles south of New Delhi, said rats consumed the sizable stockpile, filled with enough marijuana to roll 1.3 million joints, after a court mandated that the ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Another lawsuit has been filed against the company that owns a Northern California lumber mill linked to a deadly wildfire that destroyed dozens of homes in Siskiyou County this summer.

A complaint filed in San Francisco Superior Court alleges that Roseburg Forest Products Co. conducted operations at its mill “in a ...Read more

OTTAWA, Canada — Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau defended his decision to invoke emergency powers to quell a trucker convoy protest in February, arguing during public testimony that the move was aimed at staving off the threat of violence.

Speaking Friday at a televised public inquiry into the government’s decision, Trudeau cited the...Read more

NEW YORK — No civilians will be allowed to ride on New York City Fire Department fireboats unless the trip is approved by the department’s chief of fire operations, the FDNY said Friday — five months after a rogue fireboat trip ended in the death of a Belgian firefighter visiting the U.S.

The codified rules come as the estate of Sgt. ...Read more

The American outbreak of avian influenza is officially the worst on record with 50.54 million dead birds, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The highly pathogenic virus was found at a commercial turkey farm in South Dakota this week, resulting in tens of thousands of birds being killed to avoid further spread. That pushed the 2022...Read more