COLU @ CONCEPTS

WASHINGTON (AP) — Under pressure to do more to help hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico, President Donald Trump said Wednesday his administration was considering waiving a little-known federal law that prohibits foreign-flagged ships from shuttling goods between U.S. ports. Republicans and Democrats have pushed Trump to waive the Jones Act, saying it could help get desperately needed supplies delivered to the island more quickly and at less cost. Acting Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke waived the law earlier this month to help ease fuel shortages in the Southeast following hurricanes Harvey and Irma. That order included Puerto Rico, but expired last week shortly after Hurricane Maria struck. The Trump administration has said a waiver is not needed this time, because there are enough U.S. flagged ships available to ferry goods to Puerto Rico. Officials at the Homeland Security Department, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ...

ST. LOUIS (AP) — The last time the Cubs went to the postseason three straight years was in 1906-08. The World Series champions won the National Central for the second straight year with a 5-1 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals on Wednesday night. Under .500 and trailing Milwaukee in the division race at the All-Star break, the Cubs turned things around with a stellar second half. “It was tough,” starter John Lackey said. “It’s always a challenge and we got a lot of people’s best shots. We played well and we’re back in the playoffs and we’ll see what happens.” Addison Russell hit a three-run homer and Lackey pitched six strong innings for Chicago. The Cubs are the first defending World Series champion to win their division the next season since the 2009 Philadelphia Phillies and the first defending champion to reach the playoffs the next season since the Cardinals won the wild card in 2012. “It’s fun to be a team that people want to beat,” Cubs infielder Kris Bryant s...

BALUKHALI, Bangladesh (AP) — When their nine children fled to Bangladesh to escape recent violence and persecution in Myanmar, a Rohingya Muslim couple made the tough decision to stay behind. They did not want to leave their land or the grocery store they ran in their village. Sultan Mehmood, 62, also faced another obstacle in fleeing — he had lost the lower half of one of his legs two years earlier when a Myanmar soldier shot him, he says. Their decision to stay behind when soldiers invaded their village in late August left them open to further attack. Mehmood, now in Bangladesh, says his wife was raped by three of the soldiers and he was badly beaten. “The soldiers did a nasty thing with my wife. They did a wrong thing with her,” he said, sighing deeply as his 45-year-old wife, Haseena Begum, sat silently nearby on the floor of a makeshift hut in the Balukhali refugee camp in Bangladesh. Nearly a week later, one of their sons returned to Myanmar to help guide them over...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Rick Pitino couldn’t survive another scandal, with interim Louisville president placing the coach and his boss on administrative leave amid a nationwide federal bribery investigation that has rocked college basketball. President Greg Postel’s decision came after the school acknowledged Tuesday that the program is part of a federal investigation into alleged bribery of recruits . The 65-year-old coach wasn’t named in the indictment that resulted in the arrest of 10 people including four assistant coaches at other schools and an Adidas executive. Postel didn’t stop with Pitino; he also sidelined athletic director Tom Jurich, putting him on paid administrative leave. And though Pitino isn’t officially out of a job — he was placed on unpaid leave — the coach’s attorney, Steve Pence, told the Courier-Journal that Louisville has “effectively fired” Pitino. “I’m more angry than embarrassed,” Postel said Wednesday at a news conference, adding that an ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on the Republican plan to overhaul the tax code (all times local): 8:20 p.m. President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have unveiled the first major revamp of the nation’s tax code in a generation. The sweeping, nearly $6 trillion tax cut would deeply reduce levies for corporations, simplify everyone’s brackets and nearly double the standard deduction used by most Americans. Trump declares the plan would provide badly needed tax relief for the middle class, but there are too many gaps in the proposal to know how it actually would affect taxpayers. There are also major questions about how it would be paid for and how much it might add to the soaring $20 trillion national debt. ___ 4:40 p.m. An organization that advocates for state legislatures says it’s “dismayed” the Republican tax cut proposal unveiled Wednesday would do away with a deduction for state and local taxes paid. The National Conference of State Legislatures...

CLEVELAND (AP) — From worst to wild card, the Minnesota Twins have completed a most remarkable reversal. Their unexpected turnaround season has a new destination — the playoffs. Unable to clinch on their own after losing 4-2 to the Indians, the Twins earned an AL wild-card berth and meeting with either New York or Boston when the Los Angeles Angels lost 6-4 in 10 innings to the Chicago White Sox on Wednesday night. A season after winning just 59 games, the Twins became the first team to lose at least 100 and then make the postseason the following year. October, here they come. Moments after the Angels lost — and almost two hours after they were beaten — Minnesota’s players, coaches and manager Paul Molitor celebrated in their clubhouse with champagne and beer, dousing each other during a party that didn’t seem possible just a few months ago. They threw on dark blue T-shirts, two-tone caps along with the obligatory goggles before spraying each other down. “It’s be...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A state news agency is quoting the CEO of Qatar Airways as saying his airline will continue to fly to Irbil “as long as its airspace remains open and there are no security issues.” That’s according to a late Wednesday night report by the state-run Qatar News Agency. It quoted CEO Akbar al-Baker as making the comments at a tourism event in Doha. Qatar Airways is the only one of three major long-haul Gulf carriers to fly into Irbil. Iraq’s Transport Ministry ordered international airlines to halt service to Irbil, the Kurdish regional capital, and Sulaimaniyah, its second city, beginning Friday evening. That’s due to tensions over an independence referendum held this week in Iraq’s Kurdish region and disputed territories. Low-cost carrier FlyDubai says it is halting flights from Saturday. Source: www.apnews.com 

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Playboy founder Hugh M. Hefner, the pipe-smoking hedonist who revved up the sexual revolution in the 1950s and built a multimedia empire of clubs, mansions, movies and television, symbolized by bow-tied women in bunny costumes, has died at age 91. Hefner died of natural causes at his home surrounded by family on Wednesday night, Playboy said in a statement. As much as anyone, Hefner helped slip sex out of the confines of plain brown wrappers and into mainstream conversation. In 1953, a time when states could legally ban contraceptives, when the word “pregnant” was not allowed on “I Love Lucy,” Hefner published the first issue of Playboy, featuring naked photos of Marilyn Monroe (taken years earlier) and an editorial promise of “humor, sophistication and spice.” Playboy soon became forbidden fruit for teenagers and a bible for men with time and money, primed for the magazine’s prescribed evenings of dimmed lights, hard drinks, soft jazz, deep though...

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Vanuatu officials on Thursday ordered the complete evacuation of an island in the Pacific archipelago where a rumbling, belching volcano is threatening to blow. Boats were soon to begin ferrying residents off Ambae island, which is home to about 11,000 people, in a process expected to take about a week. The Manaro volcano has been increasingly active for a week or more, raising fears of a major eruption. Government spokesman Hilaire Bule said ministers decided they couldn’t risk people’s lives and so ordered the compulsory evacuation. Previously, people had been evacuated to other areas on the island itself. Ambae resident Lilian Garae said she could see “smoke coming out from the hills” and hear regular booming noises from the volcano. She said she was waiting to hear when she might have to leave her home and where she might be sent. Ambae is about 400 square kilometers (154 square miles), making it a little larger than the city of Det...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republicans are reckoning with an insurgent’s win in Alabama that poses clear threats to their own grip on power and the leadership of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Nearly $10 million spent by a McConnell-backed super PAC couldn’t save incumbent GOP Sen. Luther Strange, who had been endorsed by President Donald Trump as well. It came the same day that McConnell, short of votes, pulled the plug on the latest and possibly final GOP effort to repeal and replace “Obamacare.” Coming together, the events raised questions Wednesday about McConnell’s leadership within the Senate and without, casting doubt on his reputation both as a seasoned political operator and a nearly unbeatable vote-counter on Capitol Hill. “I’d hate to think about where we would be without Sen. McConnell’s efforts. But I think we’ll learn from it, and we’ll adjust,” McConnell’s No. 2, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, said of the victory of rabble-rousing former jurist Roy Moore, know...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says he’s “not happy” with his top health official, putting Tom Price’s job in jeopardy after his costly charter flights triggered a congressional investigation of administration travel. Asked whether he’s planning on firing Price, Trump responded Wednesday: “We’ll see.” A former GOP congressman from Georgia, Price played a supporting role in the fruitless Republican effort to repeal Barack Obama’s health care law, which has been another source of frustration for the president. Price is known as a conservative policy expert, but his penchant for taking private charter aircraft on the taxpayer’s dime is creating new headaches for the White House. Late in the day, Price’s office said he’s heard the criticism and has taken it to heart. There was no indication he’d be stepping down. Prompted partly by controversy over Price, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Wednesday sent requests for detailed travel records to th...

WASHINGTON (AP) — When President Donald Trump announced plans to go to Indiana Wednesday to sell the GOP tax overhaul plan, party leaders cheered his engagement on the high-stakes issue. When the White House said one of Trump’s traveling companions would be Indiana’s Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly — a top target in next year’s midterm elections — the hopes turned to head-smacking disbelief. The episode underscores the extent to which Trump has been an uneven — or at best, unpredictable — ally for his party, both on policy and politics. Time and again, Trump has complained about his party as loudly as he vents about Democrats, or shifted his position as Republicans leaned on him for support. The dysfunctional dynamic now stands at the center of Republicans’ last chance this year to prove they can pass major legislation — a sweeping, multitrillion-dollar tax cut that GOP officials believe is crucial to the party maintaining its congressional majority in the midterms. “Literally, i...