COLU @ CONCEPTS

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea’s latest ballistic missile test may be nearly as big a deal as its propaganda machine claims. Although outside experts see several places where North Korea is likely stretching the truth, the missile launched Sunday appears to be the most powerful the country has ever tested. Some analysts believe the missile, if proven in further tests, could reach Alaska and Hawaii if fired on a normal, instead of a lofted, trajectory. There’s also a political victory for North Korea. The test gives a boost to leader Kim Jong Un as he seeks to show his people that he’s standing up to America and South Korea. And it also lifts scientists in the authoritarian nation who are working to build an arsenal of missiles with nuclear warheads that can reach the U.S. mainland. They’re not there yet, but tests like this are the nuts and bolts a successful weapons program needs. Here’s a closer look at what happened in Sunday’s missile launch, which came only a few ...

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The District of Columbia has won back-to-back Miss USA titles. Kara McCullough, a 25-year-old chemist working for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, was crowned Sunday at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center on the Las Vegas Strip. She will go on to compete on the Miss Universe contest. The runner-up was Miss New Jersey Chhavi Verg, a student at Rutgers University studying marketing and Spanish. The second runner-up was Miss Minnesota Meridith Gould, who is studying apparel retail merchandising at the University of Minnesota. Fifty-one women representing each state and the nation’s capital participated in the decades-old competition. McCullough was born in Naples, Italy, and raised in Virginia Beach, Virginia. She said she wants to inspire children to pursue careers in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Last year, District of Columbia resident Deshauna Barber became the first-ever military member to win Miss USA. The top ...

PARIS (AP) — On his first full day in office, France’s freshly inaugurated President Emmanuel Macron was moving quickly Monday on fronts foreign and domestic, with a scheduled first presidential trip to Berlin for talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel and the expected unveiling of his choice for prime minister. Among names being bandied around for the top job in Macron’s first government, speculation mostly centered on Edouard Philippe. The 46-year-old lawmaker, largely unknown to voters, is a member of the mainstream-right Republicans party that was badly battered by Macron’s victory in the presidential campaign. Appointing Philippe could tick several boxes for 39-year-old Macron, France’s youngest president, who took power on Sunday. Philippe’s age would reinforce the generational shift in France’s corridors of power and the image of youthful vigor that Macron is cultivating. It would also make good on Macron’s campaign promises to repopulate French politics with new faces. P...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States is on a collision course with its NATO ally Turkey, pushing ahead with arming Syrian Kurds after deciding the immediate objective of defeating Islamic State militants outweighs the potential damage to a partnership vital to U.S. interests in the volatile Middle East. The Turks are fiercely opposed to the U.S. plans, seeing the Kurdish fighters as terrorists. And when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visits the White House this week, the most he and President Donald Trump may be able to do is agree to disagree, and move on. “The Turks see this as a crisis in the relationship,” said Jonathan Schanzer at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies. The challenge is hardly new. Long before Trump took office, U.S. presidents have grappled with the fragility of partnering with Turkey’s government and the Kurds to carry out a Middle East agenda. Past administrations have sought a delicate balance. Too exuberant in its suppor...

HOUSTON (AP) — Hector and Itza Ayala sat in a conference room at Houston’s prestigious high school for the performing arts, clutching a document they hoped would force administrators to investigate their 15-year-old daughter’s claim of a classroom sex assault. It had been four months since the girl reported being attacked by another student. School district police had been notified, but administrators said they could do nothing else to protect her from the boy, who was still in school. Frustrated, Itza, a teacher in the district, scoured the internet for help. A Google search led her to the website of the U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights. “As I read more and more,” she said, “I thought, ‘This is exactly what happened, this is exactly what they’re not doing. Somebody can help me!’” Three years earlier, the office had issued detailed guidance on what schools must do upon receiving reports of student sexual violence in K-12 schools. An elaboration on years o...

The children who sexually assault other children may be the popular jocks, the loners or anyone in between. There is no typical attacker, no way for schools to predict who might inflict that kind of torment on a classmate. Thousands of school-age offenders are treated annually for sexual aggression in the United States, yet experts see no standard profile of personality, background or motivation. They say that while anti-social behavior can suggest a greater risk of offending, the cool kid may attack and the rebel may reform. The reasons are rarely as straightforward as physical gratification and range from a sense of entitlement to desperation to fit in. Thousands of school-age offenders are treated for sexual aggression each year in the U.S. The Associated Press sought to understand who they are. It turns out there is no typical attacker and identifying potential offenders is difficult. (May 15) Though many sexual assaults aren’t reported to authorities, research sh...

SEATTLE (AP) — For the second time in a week, government lawyers will try to persuade a federal appeals court to reinstate President Donald Trump’s revised travel ban — and once again, they can expect plenty of questions Monday about whether the ban was designed to discriminate against Muslims. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has scheduled arguments in Seattle over Hawaii’s lawsuit challenging the travel ban, which would suspend the nation’s refugee program and temporarily bar new visas for citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Last week, judges on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments over whether to affirm a Maryland judge’s decision putting the ban on ice. They peppered Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall with questions about whether they could consider Trump’s campaign statements calling for a ban on Muslims entering the U.S., with one judge asking if there was anything other than “willful blindness” that would p...

WASHINGTON (AP) — As President Donald Trump considers a replacement for fired FBI Director James Comey, lawmakers are urging the president to steer clear of appointing any politicians. The advice came Sunday amid more criticism over Trump’s dismissal of Comey during an FBI probe of Russia’s meddling with last year’s election and any ties to the Trump campaign. James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, said the Founding Fathers created three co-equal branches of government with checks and balances, but with Trump as president, that was now “eroding.” President Donald Trump said Saturday that “we can make a fast decision” on a new FBI director, possibly by late next week, before he leaves on his first foreign trip since taking office. (May 13) “I think, in many ways, our institutions are under assault, both externally — and that’s the big news here, is the Russian interference in our election system,” Clapper said “I think as well our institutions are u...

HONG KONG (AP) — Experts are trying to figure out who’s behind a global “ransomware” software cyberattack that shut down hundreds of thousands of computers around the world by exploiting a software vulnerability. Some details about the “WannaCry” attack, which emerged late Friday, and what you can do to stay safe: HOW THE VIRUS WORKS Cybersecurity experts say the worm affects computers using Microsoft operating systems and takes advantage of a vulnerability in the software to spread the infection. “WannaCry” is particularly malicious because it takes just one person to click on an infected link or email attachment to cause the virus to spread to other machines on the same network. Infected computers are frozen and display a big message in red informing users, “Oops, your files have been encrypted!” and demanding about $300 in online bitcoin payment. Victims have only hours to pay the ransom, which rises to $600 before the files are destroyed. Money has been trickling in, ...

TOKYO (AP) — The worldwide “ransomware” cyberattack wreaked havoc in hospitals, schools and offices across the globe on Monday. Asia reported thousands of new cases but no large-scale breakdowns as workers started the week by booting up their computers. The full extent of the damage from the cyberattack felt in 150 countries was unclear and could worsen if more malicious variations of the online extortion scheme appear. The initial attack, known as “WannaCry,” paralyzed computers running Britain’s hospital network, Germany’s national railway and scores of other companies and government agencies around the world. As a loose global network of cybersecurity experts fought the ransomware, the attack was disrupting computers that run factories, banks, government agencies and transport systems in scores of countries, including Russia, Ukraine, Brazil, Spain, India and Japan, among others. Among those hit were Russia’s Interior Ministry and companies including Spain’s Telefonica and...

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea on Monday boasted of a successful weekend launch of a new type of “medium long-range” ballistic rocket that can carry a heavy nuclear warhead. Outsiders also saw a significant technological jump, with the test-fire apparently flying higher and for a longer time period than any other such previous missile. Amid condemnation in Seoul, Tokyo and Washington, a jubilant North Korean leader Kim Jong Un promised more nuclear and missile tests and warned that his country’s weapons could strike the U.S. mainland and Pacific holdings. The “Hwasong-12” missile, which North Korea test-fired over the weekend, may have appeared in a military parade in Pyongyang last month. North Korea says the missile is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. (May 15) North Korean propaganda must be considered with wariness — Pyongyang has threatened for decades to reduce Seoul to a “sea of fire,” for instance — but Monday’s claim, if confirmed, would mark anothe...