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WASHINGTON (AP) — Trump loyalist and ally Roger Stone was sentenced Thursday to 40 months in federal prison, following an extraordinary move by Attorney General William Barr to back off his Justice Department's original sentencing recommendation.

U.S.

LAS VEGAS – From the opening bell, Democrats unleashed an aggressive verbal assault on New York billionaire Mike Bloomberg and raised new questions about Bernie Sanders’ take-no-prisoners politics in a contentious debate Wednesday night that threatened to scramble even further the party’s urgent quest to defeat President Donald Trump.

The former New York City mayor was forced to defend his divisive record on race, gender and Wall Street in his debate-stage debut, while Sanders, appearing in his ninth of the 2020 primary season, tried to beat back poin

CHICAGO – Former Illinois Democratic Gov.

CHICAGO – When Patti Blagojevich made repeated public pleas for her husband’s release from federal prison, there was no mistaking her intended audience: President Donald Trump.

For nearly two years, the wife of disgraced former Illinois Gov.

SPRINGFIELD – Gov. JB Pritzker proposed a $40.7 billion state budget Wednesday – virtually flat from the current level – but dressed it up by dangling the prospect of a $1.4 billion revenue boost if voters approve a radical income-tax overhaul this fall.

The second-year Democrat presented a fiscal outline that would boost spending in key areas.

WASHINGTON – Federal Reserve officials were mostly optimistic about the U.S. and global economies last month, although they noted the risk posed by China’s viral outbreak and said they were ready to keep their benchmark interest rate at its current low level in the coming months.

Fed policymakers observed at their Jan. 28-29 meeting that risks to the U.S. economy had faded since their previous meeting in December, according to minutes released Wednesday.

SALT LAKE CITY – Like millions of other Americans in the 1950s and ’60s, Duane Ruth-Heffelbower spent his formative years learning to tie knots, build campfires and pitch tents with the Boy Scouts, whose wholesome, God-fearing reputation was burnished by Normal Rockwell’s magazine-cover paintings of fresh-faced Scouts, brave, courteous and cheerful.

Although he’s no longer involved in Scouting, the 70-year-old Mennonite minister from Fresno, California, has followed the slow deterioration of the Boy Scouts of America from afar and cringes to think w

YOKOHAMA, Japan – About 500 passengers left the Diamond Princess cruise ship Wednesday at the end of a much-criticized two-week quarantine that failed to stop the spread of the new virus among passengers and crew.

The quarantine’s flop was underlined as Japanese authorities announced 79 more cases, bringing the total on the ship to 621.

RICHMOND, Va. – The young woman who walked into an emergency room in Milwaukee began her journey about 12 hours earlier, at a Chicago-area hospital, more than 90 miles away.

She had been raped, but there was no one trained to do a forensic examination at the first hospital she went to – or the next, or the next, or the next. So she drove herself from place to place.

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump has ousted the Pentagon's top policy official who had certified last year that Ukraine had made enough anti-corruption progress to justify the Trump administration's release of congressionally authorized aid to Kyiv in its conflict against Russian-backed separatists.

John Rood resigned Wednesday, saying he was leaving at Trump's request.

The Trump administration's delay in releasing the aid to Ukraine was central to the president's impeachment by the House on charges of abuse of powe