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BY THALIA BEATY The presidents of a wide-ranging group of 13 universities are elevating free speech on their campuses this academic year, as part of a new nonprofit initiative announced Tuesday to combat what organizers call dire threats to U.S. democracy. The Campus Call for Free Expression will take different forms on different campuses. The campaign, created by The Institute for Citizens & Scholars with funding from the Knight Foundation is

BY HILLEL ITALIE NEW YORK (AP) - Clarence Avant, the judicious manager, entrepreneur, facilitator and adviser who helped launch or guide the careers of Quincy Jones, Bill Withers, and many others and came to be known as the "Black Godfather" of music and beyond, has died. He was 92. Avant, inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2021, died Sunday at his home in Los Angeles, according to

BY DÁNICA COTO SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - A human rights group urged the international community on Monday to intervene quickly to end spiraling violence by gangs in Haiti as it detailed the brutal rapes and killings committed in the troubled nation's capital. The call by Human Rights Watch comes as Haiti awaits a response from the U.N. Security Council to its request in October for the immediate deployment of

BY KATE BRUMBACK ATLANTA (AP) - Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis opened her investigation into Donald Trump after the release of a recording of a January 2021 phone call between Trump and Georgia's secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger. Trump suggested during the call that Raffensperger, a Republican and the state's top elections official, could help "find" the votes needed to overturn his narrow loss to Democrat Joe Biden. More than two

JONESBORO, Ga. (AP) - The jail in a suburban Atlanta county held inmates for days who were due for release because a state database had crashed, preventing jailers from being able to check whether a person was wanted in another jurisdiction. Officials in Clayton County said they stopped releasing inmates, including those who had been bailed out, because they didn't want to release someone who might be wanted elsewhere for

BY DAVID KOENIG A federal judge has set off a debate among legal scholars by ordering lawyers for Southwest Airlines to undergo "religious-liberty training" by a conservative Christian legal group. Critics say that if the judge believes such training is necessary, he should have found a less polarizing group to conduct it. U.S. District Judge Brantley Starr made the decision after ruling that Southwest was in contempt of court for defying

LONDON (AP) - The Russian ruble has reached its lowest value since the early weeks of the war in Ukraine as Moscow increases military spending and Western sanctions weigh on its energy exports. On Monday, the Russian currency passed 101 rubles to the dollar, continuing a more than 25% decline in its value since the beginning of the year and hitting the lowest level in almost 17 months. President Vladimir

BY JOHN HANNA AND MARGERY A. BECK MARION, Kan. (AP) - A small central Kansas police department is facing a torrent of criticism for raiding a local newspaper's office and the home of its owner and publisher, seizing computers and cellphones, and, in the publisher's view, stressing his 98-year-old mother enough to cause her weekend death. Several press freedom watchdogs condemned the Marion Police Department's actions as a blatant violation of

NEW YORK (AP) - The signs of hip-hop's influence are everywhere - from Pharrell Williams becoming Louis Vuitton's men's creative director to billion-dollar brands like Dr. Dre's Beats headphones and retail mainstays like Diddy's Sean John and Jay-Z's Rocawear. It didn't start out that way. The music genre germinated 50 years ago as an escape from the poverty and violence of New York City's most distressed borough, the Bronx, where

BY JESSE BEDAYN Bobbie Boyd is in a losing battle against near triple-digit temperatures in northwest Arkansas. Her window air conditioner runs nonstop and the ballooning electric bill carves about $240 out of her $882-a-month fixed income. So the 57-year-old cuts other necessities. Boyd eats one meal a day so her 15-year-old grandson, who she's raising alone, can have two. She stopped paying car insurance and skips medical appointments. "The rent