COLU @ CONCEPTS

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Jerred Kiloh’s eyes narrowed as he checked his mirror again. The black Chevy SUV with tinted windows was still behind him. It had been hanging off Kiloh’s bumper ever since he nosed out of the parking lot behind his medical-marijuana dispensary with $40,131.88 in cash in the trunk of his hatchback. Kiloh was unarmed, on his way to City Hall to make a monthly tax payment, and managing only stop-and-start progress in the midday traffic. He was afraid of one thing above all else: getting robbed. Two security guard workers patrol the Higher Path medical marijuana dispensary, which has been targeted by thieves. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong) That fear is a constant part of doing business in California’s flourishing medical cannabis industry, in which transactions are conducted mostly in cash, sometimes in stunningly large amounts. “The thing I need the least right now is to have to go through any sort of money disappearing,” Kiloh said. On Jan. 1, recreationa...

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela’s president defiantly dismissed allegations that official turnout figures for the election of an all-powerful constituent assembly were manipulated, accusing the international software firm behind the claim of bowing to U.S. pressure to cast doubt over a body that he hopes will entrench an even more staunchly socialist state. In his first meeting with assembly delegates Wednesday night, President Nicolas Maduro not only stood by the official count of 8 million-plus votes cast in Sunday’s divisive election, but proclaimed that an additional 2 million people would have voted if they hadn’t been blocked by anti-government protesters. Two of Venezuela’s leading opposition figures, Antonio Ledezma and Leopoldo Lopez, were taken from their homes in the middle of the night by state security agents on Tuesday. Both incidents were purportedly captured on video. (Aug. 1) Maduro also announced a one-day delay in the assembly’s installation, say...

YOKOSUKA, Japan (AP) — North Korea’s flurry of missile launches — 20 of them just in the past year — is a new and alarming fact of life for Japan and its other neighbors. But Pyongyang’s recent demonstrations of its capacity to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles, while worrying, are drawing shrugs from many in the region who reckon there’s not much anyone can do about them. “We have no idea when and where (a missile) would strike. Honestly, I don’t think there is any way to prepare for it,” Akira Fukatsu, a 65-year-old retiree, said as he sat drinking a beer on a bench in a park overlooking a U.S. Navy base in Yokosuka, south of Tokyo. “We’re simply unlucky if one strikes here.” Many Japanese, South Koreans and Chinese appear to share that sense of resignation over North Korea’s apparent newfound capacity to launch missiles capable of reaching much of the continental United States. A Hwasong-14 intercontinental ballistic missile, ICBM, launches from a site in N...

WASHINGTON (AP) — One of the key lawyers in President Donald Trump’s corner navigated a popular United States senator through crisis, produced a damning investigative report that drove a baseball star from the game and, early in his career, took on organized crime as a Justice Department prosecutor. John Dowd, a retired Marine Corps captain with a deep voice, has played a role in some of the defining legal quagmires of the last four decades — among them, the Iran-Contra affair, the Keating Five, the Enron collapse and a scandal over the firing of U.S. attorneys. It’s no surprise that such battle-tested experience would be attractive to a White House needing legal talent to grapple with investigations into potential Russia ties by congressional committees and Special Counsel Robert Mueller. And his scorched-earth, aggressive professional style and a bombastic streak — he cursed at a journalist who approached him for comment and is currently being sued for defamation by Pete Ros...

TAUNTON, Mass. (AP) — A Massachusetts woman who encouraged her boyfriend to kill himself in dozens of text messages and told him to “get back in” a truck filled with toxic gas faces up to 20 years in prison when a judge sentences her on a charge of involuntary manslaughter. Michelle Carter was convicted in June by a judge who said her final instruction to Conrad Roy III caused his death. Juvenile Court Judge Lawrence Moniz will sentence Carter Thursday. Carter was 17 when the 18-year-old Roy was found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning in July 2014. In dozens of text messages, Carter urged Roy to follow through on his talk of taking his own life. “The time is right and you are ready ... just do it babe,” Carter wrote in a text the day he killed himself. The sensational trial was closely watched on social media, in part because of the insistent tone of Carter’s text messages. “You can’t think about it. You just have to do it. You said you were gonna do it. Like I don’t get...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Ousted White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci had high hopes for improved relationships with reporters, according to a memo posted online Wednesday. The memo list five priorities for the communications staff, including “Improve the culture” and “Fill the content void.” Scaramucci writes that President Donald Trump “can choose to fight with the media, but Comms can not,” and he even suggests “a constructive ‘complaint box’ for the media to make complaints.” Still, the memo points out, “Comms is a Customer Service Operation — POTUS is the Number One Customer.” It says the office needs to “humanize” Trump and suggests “a national online lottery to play a round of golf with him ... or a charity auction.” Scaramucci also calls for “video content that constructively operates as ‘The President Donald J. Trump’ show.” Scaramucci envisions running the communications department “like a news channel with producers, scripts, and narration” that will...

David Price sure has a lot of issues for a guy making $31 million a year. It showed in June when the pitcher went off on the Boston media over some perceived slights. Nothing terribly newsworthy there, and Price is certainly not the first player to take his frustration out on those who cover baseball. But when he went after Dennis Eckersley, it became a different story. We saw it Tuesday night at Fenway Park, where Eckersley basked in a warm ovation from the home crowd when introduced between innings. They’ve decided who the good guy is in this dustup, and it’s not Price. What was even better was what analyst Jim Kaat had to say while announcing the game for MLB Network. “David Price didn’t confront Dennis Eckersley, he attacked him like a schoolyard bully,” Kaat said. “In front of all his teammates to make him look like a big man.” That is pretty much in nutshell what happened, at least according to accounts of the altercation in the Boston Globe. In front of a group ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Fake news or fib? Two phone calls described by President Donald Trump that didn’t actually happen represent the latest chapter in a long-running series of disputes revolving around the president’s rocky relationship with facts. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders on Wednesday found herself explaining that compliments Trump had described receiving in phone calls from the Mexican president and the Boy Scouts did happen — just not on the phone. “I wouldn’t say it was a lie. That’s a pretty bold accusation,” she told reporters. “The conversations took place, they just simply didn’t take place over a phone call. ... He had them in person.” The non-calls weren’t earth-shattering news. But they fit a pattern that also involves weightier issues and that has raised larger questions about Trump’s credibility six months into his presidency. After Donald Trump Jr. put out a statement, later shown to be misleading, about his meeting with a Russian lawyer in 20...

AIN ISSA, Syria (AP) — The 17-year old Indonesian girl made a persuasive case to her family: lured by what she had read online, she told her parents, sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins they should all move to Syria to join the Islamic State group. Each of her two dozen relatives found something in it for them. Free education and health care for the girls. Paying outstanding debts for her father and uncle, finding work for the youngest men. And the biggest bonus: a chance to live in what was depicted as an ideal Islamic society on the ascendant. Lured by social media posts from people living in the Islamic State group’s self-declared capital, more than two dozen family members migrated to Syria. It didn’t take long before their dream was crushed. (Aug. 3) It didn’t take long before their dreams were crushed and their hopes for a better life destroyed as each of those promised benefits failed to materialize. Instead, the family was faced with a society where single wom...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s endorsement of legislation to restrict and reshape legal immigration is based on some shaky assumptions, such as the idea that low-wage green-card holders are flooding in to take jobs from Americans. Trump swung behind a bill from Republican Sens. David Purdue of Georgia and Tom Cotton of Arkansas, calling it “the most significant reform to our immigration system in half a century” if made law. A look at statements about the bill Wednesday: TRUMP: “The current, outdated system depresses wages for our poorest workers and puts great pressure on our taxpayers.” THE FACTS: That doesn’t reflect the weight of recent economic research. Many economists dispute a major study, cited by the White House, that claims low-skilled immigrants hurt wages. Harvard economist George Borjas said the arrival of thousands of Cuban refugees in Miami in 1980 led to lower wages for existing low-skilled workers, but red flags have been raised about his me...