Oklahoma City

Mother of Uber CEO killed in California boating accident

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick's parents Bonnie Kalanick, 71, and Donald Kalanick were on Pine Flat Lake when their boat struck a rock and sank, it said, adding that an autopsy is planned for Sunday. Donald Kalanick was being treated at an area hospital for what were described as moderate injuries.

Two men killed in Oregon train stabbings after anti-Muslim rant

A man fatally stabbed two passengers aboard a Portland, Oregon, commuter train after they tried to stop him from harassing two young women who appeared to be Muslim, police said on Saturday. Police identified the assailant, who was arrested soon after the Friday afternoon attack, as Jeremy Joseph Christian of Portland, a 35-year-old convicted felon. A senior researcher with the Southern Poverty Law Center, in a blog post, said Christian's Facebook page showed he held "some racist and other extremist beliefs." The attack unfolded hours before the start of Ramadan, Islam's holy month, when most of the world's 1.6 billion Muslims observe a daily religious fast.

Judge overturns life sentences for D.C. sniper Lee Boyd Malvo

Lee Boyd Malvo, 32, was one of two men found guilty in the series of sniper shootings in the fall of 2002 that killed 10 people, wounded three others and left residents of Washington, D.C. suburbs traumatized. In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled such sentences unconstitutional for juveniles and later found that the ruling should be applied retroactively.

Texas 'angel of death' nurse charged again in baby killing spree

A former Texas nurse known as the "angel of death" for allegedly having killed up to 60 babies was served a new murder warrant linking her to the death of an infant boy more than 30 years ago, a district attorney said on Friday. Genene Jones, 66, was sentenced to 99 years in prison after being convicted of giving a fatal overdose to 15-month-old Chelsea McClellan in 1982. "She has been suspected in dozens of infant deaths, she has only been held accountable for one," Bexar County District Attorney Nicholas LaHood told reporters on Friday.

Sponsors abandon Puerto Rican parade in NY after nationalist honored

Oscar Lopez Rivera, 74, was convicted in 1981 of numerous charges, along with other members of the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN), who sought to secure Puerto Rican independence from the United States. Rivera's sentence was commuted by former President Barack Obama, and the prisoner was freed this month.

Accused South Carolina serial killer pleads guilty to seven murders: reports

The defendant, Todd Kohlhepp, 46, admitted to chaining a woman inside a storage shed on his rural property for two months and to a 2003 massacre of four people at a motorbike store, among other crimes, the Spartanburg Herald-Journal reported. As a part of the plea deal, Kohlhepp agreed not to contest the validity of the conviction in state or federal court and gave up his right to appeal, the newspaper reported. Lawyers for Kohlhepp and the Spartanburg County prosecutor were not immediately available for comment.

Turkish NBA star tweets 'you can't catch me' at arrest warrant report

ANKARA/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Enes Kanter, the Turkish NBA star whose home country has revoked his passport, on Friday expressed disdain on social media at reports that Turkey's government had issued a warrant for his arrest. Kanter's agent, the National Basketball Association player's union and representatives for the Oklahoma City Thunder, Kanter's team, did not respond to requests for comment. Kanter, a vocal critic of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, was detained in Romania on May 20 when authorities learned his Turkish passport had been revoked.

Hillary Clinton attacks proposed Trump budget cuts as 'cruelty'

Hillary Clinton assailed the man who beat her to the White House, slamming as "unimaginable cruelty" President Donald Trump's proposal to cut $3.6 trillion in government spending over the next decade in a speech on Friday. The defeated Democratic candidate did not name the Republican president in her remarks to the graduating class at her alma mater, Wellesley College. It is an attack of unimaginable cruelty on the most vulnerable among us," Clinton told a crowd at the all-women's college, located in Boston's suburbs.

Fingers crossed! Washington zoo hopes to get panda pregnant again

Zoo officials in Washington hope they can get lucky again with female giant panda Mei Xiang. The Smithsonian's National Zoo is trying to get the 18-year-old giant panda pregnant in hopes she will deliver her fourth living cub in a move to boost the species, officials said on Friday. There are about 1,800 giant pandas in the wild, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which classifies them as "vulnerable." Mei Xiang had artificial insemination performed on her twice on Thursday after she had shown signs of being in estrus, or capable of becoming pregnant, the zoo said in a statement.

U.S. home prices to rise at a strong pace on tight supply: Reuters poll

After climbing 5.0 percent in each of the last two years, the S&P/Case Shiller composite index of home prices in 20 metropolitan areas is expected to gain another 5.6 percent this year and 4.2 percent next year. This is the fifth straight quarterly Reuters poll in which analysts have bolstered their view of higher prices in 2017.

U.S. college teaches veterans to heal each others' mental wounds

Former U.S. Army Specialist Tara Barney will never forget the 2013 night when a fellow soldier cried as he described holding a dying friend in his arms, a wartime memory he had not shared with anyone. Barney, now 34, says that moment defined her future. Founded in 2011, the school's programs aim to address the high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and other mental health conditions experienced by veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and other conflicts.

Alabama executes 75-year-old inmate convicted of 1982 murder

Tommy Arthur was put to death by lethal injection at 12:15 a.m. (0515 GMT) in Atmore, Alabama, prison spokesman Bob Horton said, adding there were no complications during the execution. Arthur said goodbye to his children before his execution, Horton said. Arthur was executed shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a stay on his execution as it considered arguments from his attorneys.

Republican wins Montana special election despite assault charge

By Justin Mitchell BOZEMAN, Mont. (Reuters) - Republican Greg Gianforte defeated a political novice to win Montana's seat in the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday, barely 24 hours after he was charged with assaulting a reporter who asked him about the Republican healthcare bill. A race that was expected to be a test of President Donald Trump's political influence ahead of next year's U.S. congressional elections was jolted by the charge against Gianforte, a wealthy technology executive who had urged voters to send him to Congress to help Trump. "I should not have treated that reporter that way." Gianforte beat Democrat Rob Quist, a banjo player and first-time candidate who had focused his campaign on criticism of the Republican effort to repeal and replace former President Barack Obama's healthcare law.

Up to 600,000 immigrants in U.S. South may have path to legal status: analysis

A statistical review of immigrant screenings done by Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC) determined that around 15 percent of the 4 million illegal immigrants in seven southern U.S. states had grounds to apply for legal status based on fears of persecution in their homeland, family ties or other factors. The percentage of the 11 million illegal immigrants across the country who might be eligible to stay in the United States could be even higher, according to University of California at San Diego political scientist Tom Wong, who conducted the analysis for CLINIC. "As we ramp up immigration enforcement in the United States, we should take this figure and remind ourselves that we shouldn't deport first and then ask questions," Wong said in a telephone interview.

California inmate firefighter killed in line of duty

One of thousands of prison inmate volunteers trained to fight wildfires in California was killed by a falling tree in the far northwestern corner of the state, marking the fourth such fatality in 60 years, state corrections officials said on Thursday. Matthew Beck, 26, who had been serving a six-year sentence for burglary and was due to be paroled in October, was leading a crew in clearing brush to contain a fire in the Hoopa Valley area of Del Norte County on Wednesday. Beck was one of roughly 3,900 specially trained prison inmates, all volunteers and all non-violent offenders, who form the backbone of California's wildfire protection force.

Alabama inmate seeking to avoid eighth execution date given temporary reprieve

In a two-sentence order, the court issued a temporary stay for the execution of Tommy Arthur, with the action announced less than an hour before he was scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection at 6 p.m. CDT (2300 GMT) in Atmore, Alabama. Alabama was still planning for the execution to be held on Thursday night, Department of Corrections spokesman Bob Horton said. Three juries have found him guilty of shooting Troy Wicker to death as he slept.

Trump son-in-law Kushner under FBI scrutiny in Russia probe: media reports

President Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a senior White House adviser, is under scrutiny by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the Russia probe, the Washington Post and NBC News reported on Thursday. Kushner is being investigated because of his meetings in December and other possible interactions with the Russian ambassador and a banker from Moscow, the Post reported, citing people familiar with the investigation. Kushner is the only current White House official known to be considered a key person in the probe, the newspaper reported.

Protest in New York over Palestinian-American graduation speaker

Dozens of right-wing demonstrators, including far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos, gathered in New York on Thursday to protest a university's decision to invite a Palestinian-American activist to deliver its graduation speech next week. The City University of New York's (CUNY) Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy, which will have its commencement on Tuesday, described liberal, Muslim speaker Linda Sarsour on its website as a "powerful public health and social justice" leader. Yiannopoulos, 32,said she should be allowed to speak but should be held accountable for actions he considered anti-American.

Web of tracks, switches complicates NY Penn Station summer repairs

Down in a damp, cavernous space beneath the western end of New York's Pennsylvania station, national rail operator Amtrak showed on Thursday the three tracks it will take offline for emergency repairs, outlining the complicated operation. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said the coming months will be a "summer of agony" for commuters between the Empire State and New Jersey along with those riding the entire northeast rail corridor, Amtrak's busiest and most profitable route.

Facebook's Zuckerberg urges Harvard grads to contemplate risk

By Valerie Vande Panne CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (Reuters) - Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg returned on Thursday to Harvard University, the school he dropped out of to start the pioneering social network, to urge its graduating class to help create a new social safety net to allow creative risk-taking. The 33-year-old tech founder of the world's largest social networking company said he would never have been able to risk leaving the elite Ivy League school if he had not known that his family would have been able to support him if he failed. "There is something wrong with our system when I can leave here and make billions of dollars in ten years when millions of students can't afford to pay off their loans, let alone start a business," Zuckerberg told the crowd on a cold, drizzly day when graduates' dark academic robes stood in contrast to the brightly colored plastic rain ponchos scattered through the audience.

GM is accused in lawsuit of cheating on diesel truck emissions

General Motors Co was accused in a lawsuit on Thursday of rigging hundreds of thousands of diesel trucks with devices similar to those used by Volkswagen AG , to ensure they pass emissions tests. The proposed class-action lawsuit covers people who own or lease more than 705,000 Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups fitted with "Duramax" engines from the 2011 to 2016 model years. It said GM used at least three "defeat devices" to ensure that the trucks met federal and state emission standards, even if they generated more pollution in real-world driving.

U.S. weather forecasters predict above-normal hurricane season

U.S. weather forecasters on Thursday predicted more tropical storms in 2017 than normal for the Atlantic hurricane season, which last year brought one of the deadliest recorded storm systems that killed several hundred people. Meteorologists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center said there was a 70 percent chance of seeing between 11 and 17 named tropical storms this season, which begins on June 1 and runs for six months. "There is a potential for a lot of storm activity this year," Ben Friedman, acting NOAA administrator, said at a press conference in College Park, Maryland.

Wikipedia can pursue NSA surveillance lawsuit: U.S. appeals court

A federal appeals court on Tuesday revived a Wikipedia lawsuit that challenges a U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) program of mass online surveillance, and claims that the government unconstitutionally invades people's privacy rights. By a 3-0 vote, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, said the Wikimedia Foundation, which hosts the Wikipedia online encyclopedia, had a legal right to challenge the government's Upstream surveillance program. The decision could make it easier for people to learn whether authorities have spied on them through Upstream, which involves bulk searches of international communications within the internet's backbone of cables, switches and routers.

U.S. auto sales seen up 0.5 percent in May: JD Power and LMC

U.S. new vehicle sales in May will be about 1.54 million units, compared with 1.53 million units, a year earlier. The forecast was based on the first 17 selling days of the month. The consultancies cut new vehicle sales forecast for 2017 to 17.2 million units from 17.5 million units.

Some Uber and Lyft riders are giving up their own cars: Reuters/Ipsos poll

“I take Uber like pretty frivolously,” he said. It is not clear whether ride service drivers, who rack up vehicle miles and are likely to buy new cars relatively frequently, will make up for any long term drop in personal car ownership.

Ivanka Trump meets human trafficking victims in Rome

Ivanka Trump spoke with African women who were trafficked into prostitution and discussed ways to tackle the problem at a meeting on Wednesday in Rome that she described as a "privilege". The daughter of U.S. President Donald Trump, who as a White House adviser is seen as having increasing influence, met the women while accompanying her father on his first foreign trip. On her way to the closed-door encounter, Trump said she was looking forward to hearing how the 11 women, originally from Nigeria and the Horn of Africa, had rebuilt their lives.

Five charged with insider trading involving U.S. health agency

Five men, including a Washington political consultant and a federal employee, were criminally charged on Wednesday with engaging in an insider trading scheme based on leaks from within a federal healthcare agency.