Author: rpnadmin

Amtrak is considering allowing people to store guns in lockboxes on most of its trains, which critics say would weaken security measures that instead should be strengthened in light of the shooting at last weekend’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. The company has been considering the policy change since at least early this year, after being pressured by Trump administration officials to ease restrictions on transporting weapons, two people familiar with the proposed plan told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak about it publicly. They said the railroad hasn’t abandoned the proposal despite…

Thousands of passengers aboard a Norwegian Cruise Line vessel were trapped on their ship for up to nine hours Tuesday after a customs screening process at the Port of San Francisco ground to a near-standstill — the result of broken facial recognition technology, a late docking and the need to process a passenger’s death onboard. Norwegian Cruise Line’s Encore arrived from Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, but it took nearly nine hours for some passengers to process through customs before they could disembark.  The Breakaway Plus-class ship had departed Miami on April 11 and visited Colombia, Panama…

MIAMI — The wreckage of a U.S. Coast Guard ship lost in a deadly attack more than a century ago, during World War I, was been discovered off the coast of England. The Coast Guard announced Wednesday that the USCGC Tampa was found about 50 miles (80 kilometers) off Newquay, Cornwall, United Kingdom, at a depth exceeding 300 feet (90 meters) deep in the Atlantic Ocean. The cutter’s wreckage was located and confirmed by the British technical-diving team Gasperados. Adm. Kevin Lunday, commandant of the Coast Guard, said in a statement that the courage and sacrifice of the Tampa’s crew…

SANTA FE, N.M. — Meta is raising the prospect of shutting down its social media services in New Mexico in response to a push by state prosecutors for fundamental changes to the company’s platforms, including Instagram, to protect the mental health and safety of children. The possibility emerged amid legal gamesmanship in the runup to a bench trial next week on allegations that Meta poses a public nuisance. It’s the second phase of a case that already resulted in $375 million in civil penalties on a jury’s determination that Meta knowingly harmed children’s mental health and concealed what it knew…

J. Craig Venter, who mapped the first draft of the human genome and helped scientists understand how genes shape our lives, died Wednesday. He was 79. Venter’s death was announced by the J. Craig Venter Institute, a genomics research group with locations in La Jolla, California, and Rockville, Maryland. The institute said he died in San Diego after being hospitalized for side effects from a recent cancer treatment. In the 1990s Venter bet that he could use a different sequencing technique to speed up the process of decoding the human genome and beat an enormous government effort called the Human…

STARKE, Fla. — A Florida man convicted of beating and choking his brother’s 13-year-old stepdaughter to death nearly 50 years ago is set to be executed Thursday evening. James Ernest Hitchcock, 70, is scheduled to receive a three-drug injection starting at 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison near Starke. Hitchcock was initially sentenced to death in 1977 after being convicted of first-degree murder in the July 31, 1976, killing of Cynthia Driggers. Then came years of appeals: Hitchcock’s lawyers argued that the trial judge had barred consideration of mitigating evidence, that they weren’t allowed to keep three people off the…

The Trump administration on Thursday unveiled a regulatory overhaul of the federal student-loan system, streamlining the repayment system and pressuring universities to lower costs by setting borrowing limits on graduate degrees based on earnings potential. The final rule set for publication Friday in the Federal Register seeks to drive down the costs of graduate school by placing a $257,000 lifetime maximum on federal student loans made after July 1, acting to implement the provisions of the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act. “Colleges and universities raked in billions of dollars at the expense of students and taxpayers over the past…

LENEXA, Kan. — The pastor of the largest United Methodist Church in the U.S. launched a campaign Thursday for the Democratic nomination for a U.S. Senate seat in Kansas, upending the race in a normally Republican state as the GOP’s small majority seems less secure than it was a year ago. The Rev. Adam Hamilton enters the race as a potentially formidable candidate, though it wasn’t immediately clear how many of the eight other, lesser-known Democrats who’ve announced for the Aug. 4 primary would drop out. The winner will face incumbent Republican Roger Marshall, who aligned himself closely with President…

Millions of Americans may qualify for dual Canadian citizenship under a recent change to Canada’s requirements that has led to a surge in applications, multiple news outlets report. This new law grants citizenship to anyone who can prove a direct Canadian ancestor, whether a grandparent, great-grandparent, or even more distant relative. Previously, Canadian citizenship by descent could only pass down one generation — from a parent to a child. Canada’s Bill C-3, became law on Dec. 15, erasing decades of restrictive citizenship rules. Local youth skate with a large Canadian flag on the Rideau Canal to launch celebrations for the…

OAKLAND, Calif. — Elon Musk took the stand for the second day Wednesday in the landmark trial that pits the world’s richest person against Sam Altman, a fellow OpenAI co-founder he accuses of betraying promises to keep the company as a nonprofit dedicated to humanity’s benefit. The trial centers on the 2015 birth of the ChatGPT maker as a nonprofit startup primarily funded by Musk before evolving into a capitalistic venture now valued at $852 billion. Musk, who invested about $38 million in OpenAI from December 2015 through May 2017, gave his account of OpenAI’s early years, recounting how he…