Ingested Articles

With all the stops, starts and pauses across women’s basketball, this has been a season of survive and advance just to reach the NCAA Tournament. Each of the 64 teams in this year's tourney and the four on stand-by have been affected by COVID-19 in one way or another. The luckiest teams were merely inconvenienced by a game being canceled or rescheduled due to an opponent's positive test results or tracing issues. Duke, Virginia and Vanderbilt were among the teams that decided to end their seasons and stop trying to play through the pandemic. But the journey is not over, and teams recognize their dreams can still be derailed by the virus.

The political crisis engulfing New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has triggered a flurry of comparisons to Virginia's Ralph Northam. Both high-profile Democrats have found themselves at odds with their party and faced widespread calls for their resignations. But Northam’s supporters and some outside political observers say that’s where the similarities end. Northam has effectively recovered two years after a scandal erupted over a racist photo in his 1984 medical school yearbook. He has evolved from a one-time pariah to a leader whose endorsement is coveted in this year’s competitive statewide elections. The accusations against Cuomo deal with alleged behaviors during his term in office; those against Northam stem from a time decades before he entered politics. 

Conductor James Levine, who ruled over the Metropolitan Opera for more than four decades before being eased aside when his health declined and then was fired for sexual improprieties, has died. He was 77. Levine died March 9 in Palm Springs, California, of natural causes, his physician of 17 years, Dr. Len Horovitz, said Wednesday. Levine made his Met debut in 1971 and became one of the signature artists in the company’s history, conducting 2,552 performances and ruling over its repertoire, orchestra and singers as music or artistic director from 1976 until forced out by general manager Peter Gelb in 2016.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate confirmed Katherine Tai as the top U.S. trade envoy in an overwhelming bipartisan vote on Wednesday . She will be the first Asian American and first woman of color to hold the position. Tai is…

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — In the latest crackdown on Turkey’s pro-Kurdish opposition party, Turkish authorities on Wednesday stripped a prominent legislator and human rights advocate of his parliamentary seat and took a step toward disbanding the entire party. Omer Faruk…

An unexpected group, not known for activism, emerged in 2020 as an unlikely financier of social change: corporations. The philanthropy research organization Candid says corporations pledged about $8.2 billion out of the $12 billion in contributions. Experts say its the first time direct corporate giving to racial equity causes has reached this magnitude. But tracking those funds can pose a challenge since many of the initial pledges lack details on where the money is going. Candid's figures don’t even count other types of investment pledges by companies, which a report by the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company December found reached $66 billion in October. 

Paige Bueckers is the third freshman to ever make The Associated Press women's All-America team. The UConn star has already delivered record-breaking performances for the top-ranked Huskies. Bueckers received 28 first place votes from the national panel of 30 media members that vote each week in the AP Top 25 poll. She was joined by Dana Evans of Louisville, Aliyah Boston of South Carolina, Rhyne Howard of Kentucky and NaLyssa Smith of Baylor.

For years, West Virginia has had the nation's highest rate of drug overdose deaths. Now the state is wrestling with another, not entirely unrelated health emergency: a spike in HIV cases related to intravenous drug use. The surge is being attributed at least in part to the cancellation of a needle exchange program in the county where the capital of Charleston is located. Needle exchanges offer clean syringes to injection drug users who have not been able to quit the habit altogether. Critics of the programs say they don't do enough to prevent or stop drug abuse. 

A former Olympian and longtime track coach has pleaded not guilty to sexually molesting boys while working at a sports camp in western Massachusetts in the 1970s. Sixty-nine-year-old Conrad Mainwaring of Los Angeles was ordered held on $200,000 bail at his arraignment Tuesday. Massachusetts authorities started investigating after a 2019 ESPN report in which more than 50 men alleged Mainwaring abused them. Mainwaring was a hurdler who represented Antigua and Barbuda in the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. His attorney says that they are old allegations and that his client is entitled to a fair trial. Mainwaring declined to comment after the hearing.

A new report finds that minority students are significantly underrepresented when it comes to  getting nominations from members of Congress to study at military service academies in the United States. The analysis released Wednesday by they the Connecticut Veterans Legal Center and the Veterans Legal Services Clinic at Yale Law School found congressional members have awarded 6% of their total nominations to Black students and 8% to Hispanic students. White students received 74% of the nominations. About 15% of students in public schools nationwide are Black and 27% are Hispanic. 

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The cool kids. The usual suspects. The ones everyone knows about. That’s how a law professor wryly describes the constitutions of South Africa, Canada and other countries commonly discussed as blueprints for democracy when a nation,…

President Joe Biden defended his decision to waive any punishment for Saudi Arabia's crown prince in the killing of a U.S.-based journalist, claiming that acting against the Saudi royal would have been diplomatically unprecedented for the United States. Biden, in…

Moscow is hosting the first of three Afghan conferences ahead of a May 1 deadline for the withdrawal from Afghanistan of U.S. and NATO troops. That pullout was promised under a year-old agreement Washington had signed with the Taliban. The conferences are aimed at finding an end to more than four decades of war in Afghanistan. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered an eight-page peace proposal to Afghan leaders earlier this month. Turkey is to host the last of the three conferences and the signing of a deal, if one is reached. The date for the second conference, to be convened by the U.N., still hasn't been set.

BRUSSELS (AP) — A Belgian bishop has lashed out at the Vatican over its decree that the Catholic Church won’t bless same-sex unions since God “cannot bless sin.” Antwerp Bishop Johan Bonny wrote in an opinion piece Wednesday that he…

BERLIN (AP) — Police raided sites in Germany on Wednesday as part of an investigation into a crime ring suspected of forcing Vietnamese people into prostitution after they were smuggled into the country. Berlin prosecutors and federal police said the…

Freshly minted Grammy-winning songwriter Starrah has long helped others be stars. Now it’s her turn to shine. The hitmaker for the likes of Drake, Rihanna, Maroon 5, Camila Cabello, Nicki Minaj, Halsey and Katy Perry is releasing her debut full-length album this month. It's a natural extension for the self-taught studio prodigy. The 13-track “Longest Interlude” showcases her command of R&B, hip-hop and pop skills, all delivered in an achingly personal collection she likens to opening her diary. Starrah has tapped some musical royalty for producing help, including James Blake, Skrillex, Boi1da and Nile Rogers. 

A largely virtual St. Patrick’s Day is planned for New York City on Wednesday, one year after the annual parade celebrating Irish heritage became one of the city’s first coronavirus casualties. The large parade with floats and marching bands has been canceled, but Mayor Bill de Blasio joined parade leaders and several dozen National Guard troops in marching up Madison Avenue early Wednesday morning to keep the tradition alive. A live broadcast of the St. Patrick’s Day Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral took place. And a virtual parade featuring clips of marching groups from past years was to follow at 10 a.m.

NEW YORK (AP) — The new chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy, Katharine Hayhoe, has written a book about climate change. One Signal Publishers announced Wednesday that Hayhoe's “Saving Us” will be released Sept. 21. Hayhoe will combine research and…