President Donald Trump invited the Dodgers to the White House. Many of their fans feared that the team, by accepting, would humiliate themselves and betray the team’s large Latino, Asian and African-American fan base. Dodgers controlling owner Mark Walter, along with co-owner Magic Johnson, have proposed a solution. Trump has promised that if he can keep the championship trophy, the Commissioner’s Trophy, he will end all seizures and deportations of immigrants.   read more

Lima, Ohio, police say Donald "Chip" Pugh was arrested Tuesday in Century, Florida, and is being held on another warrant out of Georgia. Police in Ohio say Pugh also is wanted for failing to appear in court and is a person of interest in several other cases. Lima police say Pugh, displeased with his mug shot, sent them a picture of himself in a sport coat and sunglasses along with a message stating, "Here is a better photo that one is terrible."   read more

An untold number of "ghost" Afghan troops are paid salaries but only exist on paper. "When we say we have 100 soldiers on the battlefield, in reality it is just 30 or 40," said Afghan lawmaker Nasiri. "It is an indication of massive corruption — the reason Afghanistan is one of the most corrupt nations in the world." Nasiri said the government "doesn't seem to want to know about it," and that he received death threats after revealing the names of those who are allegedly in on the scam.   read more

Florida's unique system for sentencing people to death is unconstitutional because it gives too much power to judges — and not enough to juries — to decide capital sentences, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday. Writing for the court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said a jury's "mere recommendation is not enough. The Sixth Amendment requires a jury, not a judge, to find each fact necessary to impose a sentence of death." News of the high court's decision stunned Florida legislators.   read more

By far, the U.S. is the country with the largest portion of the world's migrants: 47 million. Germany and Russia had about 12 million each, followed by Saudi Arabia (10 million), Britain (9 million) and the United Arab Emirates (8 million). Asia is the biggest regional source of international migrants, with 104 million. Europe contributed 62 million. Migrants made up just 3.3% of the global population in 2015, yet global migration is growing faster than the world's population,   read more

Sixty-three percent of Americans overall said they would like to see the next president push for stricter gun laws. Nearly 80 percent of Democrats and 66 percent of Republicans said they would support the next president, who takes office next January after the Nov. 8 election, pushing for more research. Forty-four percent of Republicans said the next president should work to tighten federal gun control laws, while 49 percent were opposed.   read more

Prosecutors say Swisher enlisted in the Marine Corps a year after the Korean War ended but was never wounded in the line of duty. Swisher was honorably discharged in 1957, and discharge documents indicate that he didn't receive any medals, according to the 9th Circuit ruling. During his 2007 trial, prosecutors showed the jury a photograph of Swisher wearing several military medals and awards, including the Silver Star, Navy and Marine Corps Ribbon and Purple Heart.   read more

An investigation by the NTSB revealed that pilots weren't closely monitoring the plane's airspeed, which began to decrease to dangerously slow levels. Thus the captain was startled when a safety system activated, violently rattling the control yoke. Instead of pointing the plane downward to pick up speed, the captain pulled back on the yoke to increase altitude. That slowed the plane even more, eventually leading to an aerodynamic stall. The plane fell from the sky and landed on a house.   read more

There are bans on TV commercials and some other types of marketing for regular cigarettes but there are no restrictions on advertisements for e-cigarettes. About 7 out of 10 kids said they've seen the ads, mostly in stores. CDC officials worry e-cigarettes may hook a new generation on nicotine, and lead some to take up cigarettes — possibly reversing a long and gradual decline in smoking rates. Its marketing "has the potential to compromise decades of progress," said CDC's Brian King.   read more

Animal rights groups on Monday applauded Ringling's new timeline and announcement. "Ringling had been one of the biggest defenders of this kind of archaic animal exploitation, and the imminent end of its traveling elephant acts signaled that even one of the most tough-minded and hardened animal-use companies now recognized that the world is changing and it had to adapt," wrote Wayne Pacelle, CEO of Humane Society of United States. Elephants have been a symbol of the Ringling circus for decades.   read more

Joining other major U.S. Internet firms who oppose the bill, Apple said the British proposals could weaken online security by providing a backdoor to users' data for "bad guys" as well as "good guys." If approved, the bill will let police and spies access Internet connection records —websites, apps and messaging services someone has visited. Civil liberties groups have also expressed alarm at the bill. A previous version of the legislation was thrown out by lawmakers in 2013 as overly intrusive.   read more

Oklahoma has become one of the most earthquake-prone areas in the world, with the number of quakes magnitude 3.0 or greater skyrocketing from a few dozen in 2012 to more than 800 in 2015. Many of the quakes are occurring in swarms in areas where injection wells pump salty wastewater — a byproduct of oil and gas production — deep into the earth. Among the recent quakes was a 4.2 magnitude temblor on New Year's Day.   read more

“In 2016, 1,685,210 new cancer cases and 595,690 cancer deaths are projected to occur in the United States,” according to the American Cancer Society's latest annual report. "Overall cancer incidence trends...are stable in women, but declining by 3.1% per year in men (from 2009-2012), The cancer death rate has dropped by 23% since 1991... Despite this progress, death rates are increasing for cancers of the liver, pancreas, and uterine corpus."   read more

"I think it's appropriate for people to feel frustrated about hearing this in the news. Bottom line is that if this were an easy problem, we would have solved it years ago," said Nate Galbreath, the senior executive adviser for the Pentagon's Sexual Assault Prevention Office. "Unfortunately, this is a very hard problem to solve." The Army, Navy and Air Force academies received a total of 91 sexual assault reports in 2014-15, up from 59 in the previous school year, an increase of 54 percent.   read more

A new U.S. government report estimates 900 million short tons of coal were produced last year, a drop from about 1 billion short tons in 2014. That's the lowest volume since 1986. Power plants are increasingly relying on cheaper and cleaner-burning natural gas to provide electricity and comply with regulations aimed at reducing pollution that contributes to climate change. Last year's drop in demand hit hardest in the central Appalachian basin, where production plunged 40 percent.   read more

The photos were taken during a 2011 trip to Sulawesi by British nature photographer David Slater. The monkey took the photos by "purposely pushing the shutter release multiple times, understanding the cause-and-effect relationship between pressing the shutter release, the noise of the shutter, and the change to his reflection in the camera lens," PETA said in its lawsuit. PETA had sought a court order allowing it to it administer all proceeds from the photos for the benefit of the monkey.   read more

Confronting ISIS on the Internet has raised difficult questions for U.S. policymakers about how to balance counterterrorism against privacy. While tech industry leaders say they want to be good citizens, they don't want to undercut free speech or be viewed as government agents. Especially thorny is the fed's desire for a way to circumvent encryption technology that individuals use to protect their privacy but that terrorists can exploit to keep their actions hidden from law enforcement.   read more