U.S. News

MIAMI (AP) — The Miami Seaquarium, an old-Florida style tourist attraction that was home to Lolita, the beloved Orca that died last year, is being evicted from the waterfront property it leases from Miami-Dade County. Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava cited a “long and troubling history of violations” in a lease termination notice sent Thursday to the chief executive …

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Republicans in Iowa’s House of Representatives approved a bill Thursday that would criminalize the death of an “unborn person” — over Democrats’ concerns about how it might apply to in vitro fertilization, after an Alabama court found frozen embryos can be considered children. Iowa’s law currently outlines penalties for termination or serious injury to a …

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Missouri’s attorney general filed a lawsuit Thursday accusing Planned Parenthood of illegally taking minors into Kansas to obtain abortions without parental consent, basing the allegation on a video from a conservative group that has promoted false claims on other issues. Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s lawsuit accuses Kansas City, Missouri-based Planned Parenthood Great Plains of violating …

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Authorities have released a video showing a person of interest in their investigation of an explosive device that detonated outside the Alabama attorney general’s office last weekend. The short security camera clip shared by the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency on Wednesday shows a person strolling down a sidewalk, wearing a facemask, stocking cap, dark jacket and …

BOSTON (AP) — A Massachusetts panel charged with reviewing judicial appointments voted Wednesday to approve the nomination to the state’s highest court of Gabrielle R. Wolohojian, a former romantic partner of Gov. Maura Healey. The 6-1 vote assures Wolohojian, an Appeals Court associate justice, a seat on the seven-member Supreme Judicial Court. Healey nominated Wolohojian to the post and has …

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A panel of North Carolina judges weighed arguments Wednesday on whether a new law that transfers Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s powers to choose election board members to the now Republican-controlled legislature should be struck down or can be enforced. The same three trial judges already sided in late November with Cooper and blocked the new structures …

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — LeeLee Ray went through eight miscarriages, one ectopic pregnancy and multiple surgeries before turning to surrogacy in her hopes of having a child. She and her husband found a surrogate through a matching program, and they hoped to soon transfer frozen embryos. But now that plan is in doubt as Alabama fertility clinics paused IVF services …

A nuclear weapons facility was forced to briefly evacuate most of its staff due to a fast-moving wildfire in the Texas Panhandle. The Pantex plant, northeast of Amarillo, evacuated nonessential staff Tuesday night as the blaze rapidly grew. On Wednesday, the Texas A&M Fire Service said the blaze rivaled the largest in state history. WHAT IS PANTEX? Pantex is one …

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Maryland voters would decide in a special election whether people who are appointed to vacancies in the state legislature keep their seats in the first two years of a term, under a proposed constitutional amendment approved by the state Senate on Tuesday. The measure, which passed on a 43-2 vote, now goes to the Maryland House. …

A Washington state man accused of helping kill more than 3,000 birds — including eagles on a Montana Indian reservation — then illegally selling their carcasses and feathers intends to plead guilty to illegal wildlife trafficking and other criminal charges, court documents show. Federal prosecutors say Travis John Branson and others killed about 3,600 birds during a yearslong “killing spree” …