SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — The Illinois Supreme Court on Thursday overturned actor Jussie Smollett’s conviction on charges that he staged a racist and homophobic attack against himself in downtown Chicago in 2019 and lied to police. Smollett’s appeal argued that a special prosecutor should not have been allowed to intervene after the Cook County state’s […]

WASHINGTON (AP) — Russia’s third largest bank, Gazprombank and its six foreign subsidiaries were hit with U.S. sanctions on Thursday — in a move intended to curtail Russia’s ability to evade the thousands of sanctions imposed on the nation since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said […]

By Sarah N. Lynch WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Deputy Attorney General has suspended a controversial civil asset forfeiture program by the Drug Enforcement Administration that targeted unsuspecting airline passengers and subjected them to potentially unlawful seizures of cash from their bags. The Justice Department’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz announced the suspension of the DEA’s program […]

WASHINGTON (AP) — The leaders of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security declined to testify publicly at a scheduled Senate hearing Thursday on global national security threats, a break from precedent following years of open testimony before the panel. “Their choice to not provide public testimony about their departments’ efforts to address wide-ranging […]

By Rich McKay (Reuters) – A second powerful wind storm, called a bomb cyclone, will hit the Pacific Northwest by Thursday evening, even as hundreds of thousands of people remain without power from the torrential rain and snow still falling from the first one. The first bout of winds had eased across the region of […]