USA

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. (AP) — The new chair of Disney World’s revamped governing body said Wednesday that new supervisors had good intentions about collaborating with the company after they were appointed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, so it was “shameful” when Disney signed agreements with their predecessors stripping them of most of their authority.

BOWDOIN, Maine (AP) — A man confessed to killing four people, including his parents, and then firing on motorists on a busy interstate highway, just days after being released from prison, police said Wednesday.

Mike Sauschuck, commissioner of the Maine Department of Public Safety, called the shootings of four people at a home in Bowdoin and then three more people on Interstate 295 to the south in Yarmouth “an attack on the soul of our state” that shook neighbors, law enforcement and the state at large.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Donald Trump has emerged largely unscathed politically from his New York indictment. But a new poll suggests that investigations in Georgia and Washington could prove more problematic.

COLE, Okla. (AP) — Strong storms including tornadoes, winds and hail moved through parts of the Central U.S. on Wednesday, killing at least two people, causing injuries, destroying homes and leaving thousands without power.

The National Weather Service began issuing tornado and severe thunderstorm warnings Wednesday evening in Oklahoma, Kansas and Iowa with forecasters warning people to find shelter.

Central Oklahoma saw multiple tornadoes, including one that raced through the communities of Shawnee and Cole Wednesday night.

LIBERTY, Mo. (AP) — The 84-year old man who shot Ralph Yarl when the Black teenager went to his door by mistake pleaded not guilty Wednesday in a case that has shocked the country and renewed national debates about gun policies and race in America.

NEW YORK (AP) — Before pulling back from the brink of a trial, Fox News and Dominion Voting systems faced a stern deadline — not from an impatient judge or jury, but from a man on a Danube River cruise with his wife half a world away.

A mediator hired late Sunday pushed the two sides toward a $787 million settlement that brought a stunning end to the most-watched media libel case in decades, one that sought to put a price on lies told about the 2020 presidential election on conservative America’s most popular news outlet.

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 19 (APP):The United Nations Tuesday denied a press report that the organization plans to pull out of Afghanistan in May if the efforts to persuade the Taliban to let the Afghan women work for it do not succeed, saying there has been either “misinterpretation or misunderstanding” of what the world body officials have said in this regard.

“We are staying in Afghanistan,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, declared while replying to a question at the regular noon briefing at UN Headquarters in New York.

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 19 (APP): Pakistan is set to present its climate investment portfolio Wednesday evening at a session of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Investment Fair 2023, which brings together governments, the private sector, and financial intermediaries to boost financing for development.

WASHINGTON, April 19 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The US Justice Department on Tuesday charged the founder and three members of a half-century-old Black nationalist group with working with Russian intelligence to influence elections in the United States.

Omali Yeshitela, the founder of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) and the Uhuru Movement, and two other party members, Penny Joanne Hess and Jesse Nevel, were charged with acting as unregistered agents of Russia, which carries a maximum five-year prison sentence.

WASHINGTON, April 19 (Reuters) - It was huge, expensive and top secret.

In the early 1970s the CIA built a gigantic ship called the Hughes Glomar Explorer to lift a sunken Soviet submarine from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, according to a declassified history by the U.S. intelligence agency.

But the elaborately woven CIA cover story - that the ship was built by Howard Hughes to mine manganese nodules from the ocean depths - began to unravel with a February 1975 Los Angeles Times story, eventually forcing the agency to abandon the project.