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After a year of pandemic lockdowns, mass shootings are back — but the guns never went away. As the U.S. inches toward a post-pandemic future, guns are arguably more present in the American psyche and more deeply embedded in discourse than ever before. The past year's anxiety and loss fueled a rise in gun ownership across political and socioeconomic lines. Dozens of big and midsized cities documented steep increases in gun-related homicides as COVID-19 took its toll. For years, the debate about guns — and the violence they can cause — will hold echoes of our shared pandemic trauma.

America's normal temperature is now a degree hotter than just 20 years ago. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Tuesday released climate figures showing the nation's new normal temperature keeps getting hotter. They also show normal is wetter in the eastern and central U.S. while drier in the West. Meteorologists every decade update normal climate numbers for the United States based on 30 years of data. The figures show climate change at work. The U.S. normal annual temperature is now 53.3 degrees Fahrenheit based on data from 1991 to 2020. Normal was 52.3 degrees just 20 years earlier.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration will begin shifting how it allocates COVID-19 shots to states, moving doses from states with lower demand to those with stronger interest in vaccines, an administration official said. The change away from a strict…

Former New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has been released from a federal prison on furlough, while he awaits potential placement to home confinement. That's according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke with The Associated Press on Tuesday. Silver was serving his more than six-year sentence at a federal prison in Otisville, New York, in a corruption case. The person says he's been released on furlough while awaiting potential placement to home confinement to serve his sentence at home. The 77-year-old began serving his sentence in August after years of fending off going behind bars. He has a projected release date from federal custody in 2026.

José Mourinho has been hired to coach Italian club Roma starting next season. The move came a few hours after the club’s American owners announced that current coach Paulo Fonseca will depart at the end of this season. Mourinho’s contract is for three seasons. Mourinho previously coached in Serie A at Inter Milan. He led the Nerazzurri to a treble of titles in 2010 that included the Champions League. Mourinho has also coached Porto, Chelsea, Real Madrid, Manchester United and Tottenham. Tottenham fired Mourinho last month.

Carmelo Anthony looked like he was done just a couple of seasons ago. Now, he’s part of a truly exclusive club in the NBA. Welcome to the Top 10, Melo. Anthony scored 14 points in Portland’s 123-114 loss to Atlanta to move past Elvin Hayes for 10th place on the career scoring list with 27,318. Anthony reached the milestone early in the second quarter Monday night when hitting a 3-pointer while getting fouled and completing a 4-point play. Unlike some other milestones, Anthony calls this a truly special moment that he doesn't plan to take for granted.

Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, is releasing her first children's book next month. Random House Children’s Books announced Tuesday that “The Bench,” a story about the moments a diverse group of fathers and sons share, will be out on June 8. Meghan will also narrate an audiobook edition. In a statement, Meghan says the book grew out of a poem she wrote for Prince Harry for their first Father's Day, which was a month after their son Archie was born in May 2019. “The Bench” is illustrated by Christian Robinson," whose books include “Another” and “You Matter.”

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is amplifying pressure on No. 3 House Republican leader Liz Cheney. He took to the Fox News Channel to describe concerns by rank-and-file Republicans about “her ability to carry out her job” after she traded insults with former President Donald Trump. McCarthy’s comments underscore the growing hold that the former president has on the House GOP. Rather than standing by Cheney, McCarthy essentially landed himself in the camp of her critics. Their increasingly outspoken attacks on her suggest her hold on her leadership job may be in renewed peril.

BERLIN (AP) — Berlin police arrested a 53-year-old German man on suspicion of sending dozens of threatening letters to politicians, lawyers and journalists that were signed with the acronym of a neo-Nazi group, as officials warned Tuesday that statistics show…

BUCARAMANGA, Colombia (AP) — Doris Tejada last heard from her son on New Year’s Eve 2007. Óscar Alexander had left her home in central Colombia to travel to a city on the border with Venezuela to earn money selling clothes…

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — The European Union started delivering EU-funded coronavirus vaccines Tuesday to the Balkans, a region that wants to join the 27-nation bloc but where China and Russia have already been making political gains by supplying the much-needed…

Ethiopia faces a growing crisis of ethnic nationalism that some fear could tear Africa’s second most populous country apart. Six months have passed since the government launched a military operation in the Tigray region to capture its fugitive leaders. Widespread atrocities are reported and thousands have been killed. Meanwhile, in other parts of Ethiopia, other ethnic groups say they have been targeted, too. Scores of people have been killed in clashes this year between the Amhara and the Oromo, Ethiopia’s two largest ethnic groups. With the rising violence, some wonder how the government will pull off national elections in June. 

BERLIN (AP) — Recent pledges by the United States and other nations could help cap global warming at 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, but only if efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions to “net…

He is a surgeon and a father, and every morning he wakes up under a plastic tarp, he is reminded that he’s now a refugee, too. Tewodros Tefera is one of more than 60,000 people who have fled ethnic violence in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, crossing the border into a remote corner of Sudan. Horrified by what he saw when the fighting between Ethiopian and Tigray forces began six months ago, and by the tales of new arrivals, the 44-year-old chronicles the pain even as he treats it. He used to write down reflections so emotional that he later burned them. “It’s getting worse,” he says of life back home.

A jury in Rome will soon be weighing the fate of two young American men, charged with slaying an Italian police officer while they were on vacation in 2019. The trial of Finnegan Lee Elder, now 21, and Gabriel Natale-Hjorth, now 20, began in February 2020, just as the pandemic was bearing down on Italy. They were taken into police custody on July 26, 2019, hours after Carabiniere Vice Brigadiere Mario Cerciello Rega was fatally knifed 11 times on a street near their hotel. The officer and his partner, both in plainclothes, were pursuing an alleged extortion attempt after a botched drug deal. Elder testified that he stabbed the officer in self-defense and both defendants said they thought the officers were thugs.

From the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp to the Tri-City Dust Devils, minor league teams are set to host opening day across the country following more than a year of uncertainty and empty ballparks. Much has changed since the end of the 2019 campaign. The pandemic wiped out the entire 2020 season, Major League Baseball eliminated 40 affiliates, and Commissioner Rob Manfred instituted experimental rules changes that will differ by level in an effort to speed up play and improve player safety. Meanwhile, Dodgers pitcher Dustin May needs Tommy John surgery and will miss the rest of the season.

There will be three types of people in the NBA two weeks from now. Group 1 is those who won’t be in the play-in tournament. Group 2 is those who will use it to get to the playoffs. Group 3 is those who will make the tournament and see their seasons end there. Let’s make a few things clear about the play-in tournament, which starts May 18, just two weeks away. Fans are going to embrace it and the ratings will be big, since the games will all absolutely matter and that’s what everybody wants. The games will have an NCAA Tournament feel. All six games will either send a team to the playoffs, or send a team home, or both. There’s a lot to like about all of that.

Anthony Davis scored 25 points and had key plays on both ends of the floor in the final minute as the short-handed Los Angeles Lakers snapped a three-game losing streak with a 93-89 victory over the Denver Nuggets. The Lakers led by 14 points midway through the fourth quarter before the Nuggets got within 89-87 with a late rally. Davis hit a jumper with 41.8 seconds remaining to give the Lakers a 91-87 lead. Nikola Jokic hit a pair of free throws to cut it in half but Talen Horton-Tucker though hit a reverse layup with 15.1 seconds left to push the advantage up to four. After a Denver timeout, Davis blocked Facundo Campazzo’s 3-point attempt to end any hopes of a Nuggets’ comeback and end their five-game winning streak.