MCMINNVILLE, Tenn. By the time Nashville songwriter Travis Meadows took the stage on a recent Sunday afternoon, more than 500 music fans had found their way 333 feet below the ground, some taller guests ducking their heads just a bit. They took their seats in lounge chairs and on a handful of rock outcroppings beneath […]

BOSTON Longtime Boston television personality and entertainer Frank Avruch, who was the star of the popular children’s TV program “Bozo the Clown,” has died. He was 89. Avruch died Tuesday at his Boston home from heart disease, his family said in a statement to WCVB-TV . Avruch played Bozo the Clown from 1959 to 1970, […]

In his first news conference as head of the world’s leading central bank, Jerome Powell avoided any professorial lectures. His replies were briefer than his predecessors’. He said nothing of himself personally. He projected the air of an experienced technocrat, more steeped in finance than the complexities of economic theory. If anyone was wondering how […]

WASHINGTON Congressional leaders have finalized a sweeping $1.3 trillion budget bill that substantially boosts military and domestic spending but leaves behind young immigrant “Dreamers,” deprives President Donald Trump some of his border wall money and takes only incremental steps to address gun violence. As negotiators stumbled toward an end-of-the-week deadline to fund the government or […]

WASHINGTON The tempest over President Donald Trump’s congratulatory phone call to Vladimir Putin quickly grew into an uproar over White House leaks, sparking an internal investigation and speculation over who might be the next person Trump forces out of the West Wing. The White House, which has suffered frequent leaks — at times of notable […]

NEW YORK (AP) — Toy company executive Isaac Larian says he and other investors have pledged a total of $200 million in financing and hope to raise four times that amount in crowdfunding in order to bid for up to 400 of the Toys R Us stores being liquidated in bankruptcy. The unsolicited bid still […]

NEW YORK (AP) — New York City’s buildings regulator launched investigations at more than a dozen Kushner Cos. properties Wednesday following an Associated Press report that the real estate developer routinely filed false paperwork claiming it had zero rent-regulated tenants in its buildings across the city. The Department of Buildings is investigating possible “illegal activity” […]

PFLUGERVILLE, Texas A 25-minute cellphone video left behind by the bomber whose deadly explosives terrorized Austin for weeks details the differences among the weapons he built and amounts to a confession, police said. But his motive remains a mystery. Mark Anthony Conditt, an unemployed college dropout who bought bomb-making materials at Home Depot, recorded the […]

GREAT MILLS, Md. Tuesday’s school shooting in southern Maryland that left the shooter dead and two students wounded increasingly appears to be the action of a lovesick teenager. Authorities on Wednesday released a few additional details into the shooting at Great Mills High School in St. Mary’s County. Austin Rollins, 17, was killed after shooting […]

WASHINGTON Farmers, electronics retailers and other U.S. businesses are bracing for a backlash as President Donald Trump targets China for stealing American technology or pressuring U.S. companies to hand it over. The administration is expected to slap trade sanctions on China today, perhaps including restrictions on Chinese investment and tariffs on as much as $60 […]