CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — SpaceX launched four astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA on Wednesday, less than two days after completing a flight chartered by millionaires. …

WASHINGTON (AP) — Russia and the United States carried out a dramatic prisoner exchange on Wednesday, trading a Marine veteran jailed in Moscow for a convicted Russian drug trafficker serving a long prison sentence in America, a senior U.S. official and the Russian foreign ministry said.

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — Texas’ oldest death row inmate was executed Thursday for killing a Houston police officer during a traffic stop nearly 32 years ago. Carl Wayne Buntion, 78, …

Charlie Duke is part of a tiny fraternity that’s getting even smaller: People who walked on the moon. Duke on Wednesday visited his Apollo 16 spaceship at a space museum in Huntsville, Alabama, to mark the 50th anniversary of his one and only trip to the moon. Only four of the 12 U.S. astronauts to who walked on the moon are still alive, and Duke stays busy with speaking engagements. Duke says he still has vivid memories from the journey, and he is looking forward to NASA’s upcoming return flight to the moon with its new Space Launch System rocket that’s at the core of the Artemis program.

Winds that are expected to intensify through the end of the week have been a major obstacle for firefighters battling blazes across the Southwest. Resources are tight, and fire managers are scrambling to get crews on board. Hundreds of residents have been evacuated because of multiple wildfires. One of the largest outside of Flagstaff, Arizona, more than tripled in size Wednesday. Firefighters haven't been able to get ahead of it because of erratic winds that have grounded air resources. One incident commander on a fire south of Prescott, Arizona, says conditions are some of the worst he's seen in nearly five decades of firefighting.

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — An Arizona wildfire doubled in size overnight into Wednesday, a day after heavy winds kicked up a towering wall of flames outside a northern Arizona tourist and college town, ripping through two dozen structures and sending residents of more than 700 homes scrambling to flee.

NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — Dede Robertson, the wife of religious broadcaster Pat Robertson and a founding board member of the Christian Broadcasting Network, died Tuesday at her home in Virginia Beach, the network said in a statement. Robertson was 94. The statement did not provide her cause of death.

Three mass shootings in the U.S. over the Easter holiday weekend capped a monthlong spate of gun violence that has touched both big cities and small, rural communities across the nation.

HAMPTON, S.C. (AP) — Authorities in South Carolina say they are investigating shooting at a club in Hampton County early Sunday that left at least nine people injured. It was the third mass shooting in the U.S. over the Easter holiday weekend.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A South Carolina prisoner scheduled to be the first man executed in the state in more than a decade has decided to die by firing squad rather than in the electric chair later this month, according to court documents filed Friday.

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — The coronavirus pandemic ushered in what may be the most rapid rise in homeschooling the U.S. has ever seen. Two years later, even after schools reopened and vaccines became widely available, many parents have chosen to continue directing their children’s educations themselves.

Firefighters scouted the drought-stricken mountainsides around a New Mexico village on Wednesday as they looked for opportunities to slow a wind-driven wildfire that a day earlier had burned at least 150 homes and other structures while displacing thousands of residents and forcing the evacuation of two schools.

SALADO, Texas (AP) — Nearly two dozen people were injured when tornadoes swept through central Texas as part of a storm system that was expected to spawn more twisters and damaging winds Wednesday.

NEW YORK (AP) — Last year was the deadliest in U.S. history, and new data and research are offering more insights into how it got that bad.

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt signed a bill into law on Tuesday that makes it a felony to perform an abortion, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, as part of an aggressive push in Republican-led states across the country to scale back abortion rights.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Two families with transgender teens and two physicians sued the state of Alabama on Monday to overturn a law that makes it a crime for doctors to treat trans youth under 19 with puberty blockers or hormones to help affirm their gender identity.

A Texas district attorney said Sunday that he will ask a judge to dismiss a murder charge against a woman over a self-induced abortion.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate confirmed Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court on Thursday, shattering a historic barrier by securing her place as the first Black female justice and giving …

Officials in Michigan are set to break ground on one of the few state-specific World War II memorials in the country. The first phase of the memorial includes the laying of more than 1,200 donated Walk of Honor paver bricks and the installation of both a statue called “Joe,” which depicts a soldier in a foxhole reading a letter from home, and flagpoles representing all military branches. A groundbreaking was scheduled for Thursday. Future phases are to feature a Wall of Stars honoring the 15,000-plus Michigan lives lost during World War II; additional statues, including one dedicated to Rosie the Riveter; an amphitheater and a colonnade of pillars. The memorial, recognized by the Legislature as the state’s tribute to the war, is to be built in the Detroit suburb of Royal Oak.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The mass killing that left six people dead and 12 wounded outside bars just blocks from California’s Capitol last weekend was a gunfight involving at least five shooters from rival gangs, Sacramento police said Wednesday.

AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP) — Mary Gray hadn't even made it all the way to the first tee at Augusta National Golf Club when the reality of the protective bubble that settles over the course during Masters' …

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Violent storms killed one person in Texas on Tuesday as hail pelted communities and high winds knocked trees into power poles elsewhere in the South. Authorities issued a flurry of tornado warnings at the start of what could be two days of violent weather in the region.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Sacramento police arrested a man Monday connected to the shooting that killed six people and wounded a dozen others in the heart of California’s capital as multiple shooters fired more than 100 rapid-fire rounds and people ran for their lives.

SACRAMENTO, Calif (AP) — At least two shooters opened fire before dawn Sunday in Sacramento in the city's second mass shooting in five weeks, killing six people and wounding 12 others, police said.

ASHLAND, Ky. (AP) — Attorneys for a former Kentucky clerk who wouldn't issue marriage licenses to two same-sex couples have appealed a federal court ruling that she violated the couples' constitutional rights and might have to pay damages.