PETALUMA, Calif. — A huge-headed, duck-footed mix of beagle, boxer and basset hound was the upset winner at the 25th annual World’s Ugliest Dog Contest.
Nation and World
ST. PAUL, Minn. — Al Franken barely made it into the Senate the first time, squeaking by with 312 votes after months of recounts and legal skirmishes that left Minnesota Republicans salivating at the prospect of snatching the seat back from the former “Saturday Night Live” star in 2014.
CALGARY, Alberta — At least three people were killed by floodwaters that devastated much of southern Alberta, leading authorities to evacuate the western Canadian city of Calgary’s entire downtown. Inside the city’s hockey arena, the waters reached as high as the 10th row.
DALLAS — A system-wide computer failure forced Southwest Airlines to ground its entire fleet of airplanes preparing for departures late Friday, and at least 64 flights had to be canceled even after the system was fully restored, a company spokeswoman said.
WASHINGTON — A sealed criminal complaint has been filed against Edward Snowden in the National Security Agency surveillance case, a Justice Department official said Friday.
A man armed with a shotgun shot one person outside a North Carolina law firm Friday before darting across a busy street and wounding three others outside a Wal-Mart before officers subdued him, police said.
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama nominated James Comey to be the new FBI director Friday, tapping a Bush-era Justice Department official to lead the agency as it grapples with privacy debates over a host of recently exposed investigative tactics.
WASHINGTON — An agreement to vastly increase fencing, patrols and high-tech monitoring along the U.S.-Mexico border was formally unveiled in the Senate Friday, providing powerful momentum to a far-reaching immigration bill backed by the White House.
A massive wildfire working overtime in hot, windy weather was headed toward a tourist town in Colorado’s southwestern mountains on Friday, and fire managers rate the chances of saving it as slim if the fire continues its course.
Lawyers for a U.S. citizen charged with terrorism in Chicago said Friday in a filing that the government is purposely dodging questions about whether it used expanded secret surveillance programs against their client in a calculated bid to ensure the hotly debated practices can’t be challenged in the Supreme Court.
President Barack Obama is holding his first meeting with a privacy and civil liberties board Friday as he seeks to make good on his pledge to have a public discussion about secretive government surveillance programs.
Rescuers found bodies in the River Ganges and in the muddy, broken earth left by landslides, raising the death toll from monsoon flooding in mountainous northern India to nearly 600 Friday, officials said.
Calgary’s mayor warned Friday that the worst of the flooding is yet to come after a significant portion of his city’s population spent the night pulling back to higher ground. Officials have estimated that as many as 100,000 could be out of their homes.
Brazil awoke Friday to city centers still smoldering after a night that shocked the nation: 1 million protesters took to the streets in scores of cities, with clusters clashing violently with police during anti-government demonstrations.
WASHINGTON — The House rejected a five-year, half-trillion-dollar farm bill Thursday that would have cut $2 billion annually from food stamps and let states impose broad new work requirements on those who receive them.