AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A federal appeals court preserved access to the abortion pill mifepristone for now but reduced the period of pregnancy when the drug can be used and said it could not be dispensed by mail. The ruling late Wednesday temporarily narrowed a decision by a lower court judge in Texas that had completely blocked the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the nation’s most commonly used method of abortion.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A 1-year-old Australian shepherd took an epic trek across 150 miles of frozen Bering Sea ice that included being bitten by a seal or polar bear before he was safely returned to his home in Alaska. Mandy Iworrigan, Nanuq's owner who lives in Gambell, Alaska, and her family were visiting Savoogna, another St. Lawrence Island community in the Bering Strait, last month when Nanuq disappeared with their other family dog, Starlight, the Anchorage Daily News reported.

FORT LAUDERDALE (AP) — Nearly a foot of rain fell in a matter of hours in Fort Lauderdale – causing widespread flooding, the closure of the city’s airport and the suspension of high-speed commuter rail service for the Broward County region. The city of Fort Lauderdale released a statement Wednesday evening urging residents and visitors to stay off the roads until the water has subsided.

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Somewhere in a remote stretch of forest near Maine's border with Canada, rocks from space crashed to Earth and may be scattered across the ground — just waiting to be picked up. If you're the first person to find a big one, a museum says it'll pay out a $25,000 reward.

MANCHESTER, N.J. (AP) — Firefighters in New Jersey were confronted by 200-foot (60-meter) flames as they battled a wildfire tearing through 6 square miles of the state’s Pine Barrens, raining down embers and prompting evacuations but leaving no one injured and property intact, officials said Wednesday. The blaze in Manchester, near Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, forced the evacuation of around 170 homes late Tuesday, with police and fire officials going door-to-door to ask people to take temporary shelter at a nearby high school.

RICHMOND, Ind. (AP) — An evacuation order affecting more than 1,000 people was expected to remain in place through Wednesday around a large industrial fire in an Indiana city near the Ohio border where crews worked through the night to douse piles of burning plastics, authorities said. Multiple fires, which began burning Tuesday afternoon, continued burning Wednesday morning within about 14 acres of various types of plastics stored both inside and outside buildings at the former factory site in Richmond, 70 miles east of Indianapolis, Richmond fire Chief Tim Brown said.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Fed up by an enormous pothole in his Los Angeles neighborhood, Arnold Schwarzenegger picked up a shovel and filled it himself. The actor and former California governor tweeted a video Tuesday of him and a helper using packaged concrete to repair the road in the Brentwood area.

NEW YORK (AP) — New York City officials unveiled three new high-tech policing devices Tuesday, including a robotic dog that critics called creepy when it first joined the police pack 2 1/2 years ago. The new devices, which also include a GPS tracker for stolen cars and a cone-shaped security robot, will be rolled out in a manner that is "transparent, consistent and always done in close collaboration with the people we serve,” said police Commissioner Keechant Sewell, who joined Mayor Eric Adams and other officials at a Times Square press conference where the security robot and the mechanical canine nicknamed Digidog were displayed.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats announced on Tuesday that they will hold their party’s 2024 national convention in Chicago, choosing the biggest liberal city in the Midwest as they try to keep the momentum going after a strong midterm election performance in the key battleground region.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Safe Haven Baby Boxes and A Safe Haven for Newborns are two charities with similar names and the same goal: providing distressed mothers with a safe place to surrender their unwanted newborns instead of dumping them in trash cans or along roadsides. But a fight between the two is brewing in the Florida Senate.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Tributes were growing Monday for the five people slain in a shooting at a Louisville bank, with friends sharing details of their lives and mourners gathering at vigils. One of the victims was identified as Thomas Elliott. Elliott's father-in-law, Roy Honeycutt, is a former president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A Louisville bank employee armed with a rifle opened fire at his workplace Monday morning, killing five people — including a close friend of Kentucky's governor — while livestreaming the attack on Instagram, authorities said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The online leaks of scores of highly classified documents about the Ukraine war present a “very serious" risk to national security, and senior leaders are quickly taking steps to mitigate the damage, a top Pentagon spokesman said Monday. Chris Meagher, assistant to the secretary of defense for public affairs, told reporters that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin first became aware on Thursday that a number of classified briefing slides detailing the U.S. military efforts in the Ukraine war and intelligence involving other nations were leaked.

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. (AP) — Thousands of professors, part-time lecturers and graduate student workers at New Jersey's flagship university went on strike Monday — the first such job action in the school's 257-year history. Classes were still being held at Rutgers as picket lines were set up at the school's campuses in New Brunswick/Piscataway, Newark and Camden, though students said some had been canceled due to the strike.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A 23-year-old bank employee armed with a rifle opened fire at his workplace Monday morning, killing four people — including a close friend of the governor — before being shot by police, authorities said. “Let’s be clear about what this was,” Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said. “This was an evil act of targeted violence.” Police arrived as shots were still being fired inside Old National Bank and killed the shooter in an exchange of gunfire, Louisville Metro Police Department Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel said at a news conference.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration named Mike Brennan, who was supervising hurricane forecasters during one of the busiest times for storms hitting America, as the new director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami. Brennan, who started Monday, had been branch chief since 2018 for the center's hurricane specialist unit, which writes warnings and forecasts for the public.

A fire broke out at a Massachusetts church not long after Easter services, with more than 100 firefighters working to save the 114-year-old structure. The fire started at about 5:30 p.m. Sunday at the Faith Lutheran Church in Cambridge. Firefighters from 18 engine companies and eight ladder companies responded, Acting Fire Chief Tom Cahill said.

HOUSTON (AP) — A Houston man declared innocent in 2021 after being convicted in a fatal stabbing and serving seven years in prison has been charged with murder in the shooting a fellow motorist, police said.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Two Black Democratic lawmakers who were expelled by Republican colleagues in Tennessee say they want to be reappointed, then elected back to their seats, following their ouster for a protest on the House floor urging passage of gun-control measures in the wake of a deadly school shooting.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The IRS released details Thursday on how it plans to use an infusion of $80 billion for improved operations, pledging to invest in new technology, hire more customer service representatives and expand its ability to audit high-wealth taxpayers. The agency's newly released strategic operating plan lays out the specifics of how the IRS will allocate the $80 billion, through fiscal year 2031, that was approved in that legislation.

VENICE, Fla. (AP) — The bodies of two men and two women have been recovered following a small plane crash just off Florida's Gulf Coast, police said Thursday. The plane had just taken off from Venice Airport when it crashed into the Gulf of Mexico west of the city’s fishing pier just after 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, Venice police said in a news conference.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — The threat of wildfires is growing in Florida over the coming weeks as more than half the state is experiencing severe to extreme drought conditions likely to persist until rainy season resumes around mid-May, state and federal officials said Thursday. The National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center reported Thursday that 55% of Florida is in the severe to extreme drought category, with most of the rest of the state listed as “abnormally dry.”

Deadly storms in the past two weeks have unleashed dozens of tornadoes in the United States, mainly in the South and Midwest, killing at least 63 people and damaging or destroying hundreds of people’s homes. This year's early severe weather, especially in the Midwest, is part of a trend seen over the past few years, according to Bill Bunting, chief of forecast operations at the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma.

FOLSOM, Calif. (AP) — Water levels fell so low in key reservoirs during the depth of California's drought that boat docks sat on dry, cracked land and cars drove into the center of what should have been Folsom Lake. Those scenes are no more after a series of powerful storms dumped record amounts of rain and snow across California, replenishing reservoirs and bringing an end — mostly — to the state's three-year drought.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Bob Lee, a technology executive who created Cash App and was currently chief product officer of MobileCoin, was fatally stabbed in San Francisco early Tuesday, according to the cryptocurrency platform and police. The San Francisco Police Department said in a press release that officers responded to a report of a stabbing on Main Street at 2:35 a.m. Tuesday and found a 43-year-old man suffering from apparent stab wounds. The victim died at a hospital.