WASHINGTON A Brooklyn jurist has scolded the government in a stinging rebuke of arguments it has used to shame Apple for refusing to surrender information from its customers’ iPhones, saying it’s stretching a 1789 law to get “impermissibly absurd results.” The ruling Monday by U.S. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein in Brooklyn came a day before […]

WASHINGTON President Barack Obama is due to meet face-to-face today with the Senate Republican leaders vowing to block his Supreme Court nominee — no matter who it is — with the hope of keeping the seat open for a Republican president to fill next year. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Judiciary Committee Chairman […]

HEMEIMEEM AIR BASE, Syria Dozens of Russian warplanes sat idle today on the tarmac at a Russian air base in Syria on the fourth day of a cease-fire brokered by Moscow and Washington. The apparent lull in action witnessed by the AP on a trip to the base, which was organized by the Russian defense […]

JERUSALEM A recent gathering of American Reform rabbis in Jerusalem was meant to celebrate the small gains the liberal Jewish movement has made in Israel in recent years. But a series of comments by Israeli officials denigrating the group marred the event, reflecting an awkward relationship that many fear is alienating the world’s second-largest Jewish […]

TOKYO A Japanese government study has found nearly a third of working women who responded to a survey reported being sexually harassed on the job, such as being subjected to unwanted physical contact or degrading comments. The study, released today and the first of its kind, examined responses from more than 9,600 women employees, submitted […]

IDOMENI, Greece On foot or in taxis, hundreds of exhausted refugee families trying to reach central Europe flocked today to a burgeoning tent city on Greece’s border with Macedonia, which has not allowed anybody in for 24 hours citing a similar policy by Serbia further north. Well over 7,000 — police say there could be […]

LOS ANGELES A Ku Klux Klan leader who was injured when his small group of demonstrators brawled with counter-protesters in a Southern California park this weekend says he called police beforehand asking for security and was told, “We don’t do that.” Will Quigg said in an interview with The Associated Press that he contacted the […]

LOS ANGELES George Kennedy, the hulking, tough-guy character actor who won an Academy Award for his portrayal of a savage chain-gang convict in the 1960s classic “Cool Hand Luke,” has died. His grandson Cory Schenkel says Kennedy died on Sunday morning of old age in Boise, Idaho. He was 91. He had undergone emergency triple […]