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Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock has used his first floor speech on Capitol Hill to blast a wave of Republican-backed measures that would make it harder to cast ballots in many states. Warnock is Georgia's first Black senator, and his election helped secure Democrats' Senate majority. In his speech Wednesday, he noted the country’s history of allowing voter suppression against minorities and the poor, and he warned that some Republican lawmakers are trying to reopen those chapters with “draconian” restrictions he cast as a reaction against Democratic victories like his. Warnock says, “We are witnessing right now a massive and unabashed assault on voting rights and voter access unlike anything we have seen since the Jim Crow era."

Zack Snyder never really believed that his cut of “Justice League” would see the light of day. It has technically existed since January 2017, but it wasn’t in any shape to be released. It was four hours, in black and…

JERUSALEM (AP) — The Palestinian Authority said Wednesday it will receive just over 60,000 coronavirus vaccine doses over the next 48 hours, the first shipment provided by a World Health Organization partnership aimed at helping poor countries. That's only enough…

Sports bars all over the country are again able to show March Madness after cities and states across the country have relaxed or totally done away with restrictions that were put in place to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Fans like Alex Kedzie of Chicago say the experience of watching the games in a favorite watering hole provides a welcome return to some sort of normalcy. But some public health experts worry that crowded bars may lead to an increase in coronavirus cases and deaths. Only a limited number of fans will be allowed in the stands to watch the games in Indiana. As for those who choose to watch at bars or restaurants, their experiences will vary depending on their location.

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. 

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. 

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…

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…

As high-profile police brutality cases have shaken the nation over this past year, many social workers remain divided over one important question: What should their relationship with law enforcement look like? Increased collaboration with police has support among the National Association of Social Workers and other social workers who say their work could reduce racism in policing and improve the relationship between law enforcement and communities of color. But many social workers across the county disagree, saying more cooperation between social work and police risks further harming communities of color and ignoring the systemic racism that exists within the field itself.