COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — The longest currently serving state senator in the U.S. doesn’t plan to run for office again this year in South Carolina.

Democratic Rep. Nikki Setzler was elected to the Senate in 1976 and has served ever since. He said after prayerful consideration he knew it was time to end his 47 years of public service in the Senate and find a new journey.

“Serving the people of South Carolina has been the honor of a lifetime

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Pleas from transgender children’s pediatricians and parents to keep allowing such kids to receive hormone therapies failed to stop Republican lawmakers from advancing a to the South Carolina House floor on Wednesday.

The GOP-led Medical, Military, Public and Municipal Affairs Committee voted to advance the bill within the first two days of the 2024 legislative session. At least 22 states have enacted similar restrictions amid recent Republican-led crackdowns on transgender medical care, bathroom usage and

OTTAWA — A new Statistics Canada study confirms that financial limitations are keeping people without private or employer-sponsored drug coverage from following through with their prescriptions.

It’s true for both those who have no coverage at all and people who have some coverage through provincial or existing federal prescription programs.

The results of the study come as the New Democrats and the government negotiate the broad principles that will shape a federal pharmacare program.

The government is expected to enshrine those principles in legislation as part of a political pact with the NDP

ATLANTA (AP) — A judge in Georgia has again delayed the racketeering trial of a defendant indicted last summer in connection with protests against a planned Atlanta-area police and firefighter training facility.

Opening arguments had been expected Wednesday in the case against Ayla King, 19, of Massachusetts. King, who uses the pronouns they and them, is one of under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law, knowns as RICO. King is the first defendant to stand trial.

State prosecutors have characterized those behind the

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — The purse has been raised to $5 million for the 150th edition in May.

The increase of $2 million was announced Wednesday by Churchill Downs. The 1 1/4-mile race will be May 4.

This year’s winner will receive $3.1 million. The runner-up will earn $1 million; third is worth $500,000; fourth is $250,000; and

RENO, Nev. (AP) — An avalanche roared through a section of expert trails at a California ski resort near Lake Tahoe on Wednesday, sweeping up four people and killing one, as a with snow and gusty winds moved into the region, authorities said.

The avalanche occurred about 9:30 a.m. and prompted Palisades Tahoe to close as search crews combed the area under the K-22 lift, which 30 minutes earlier had opened for the first time this season. It serves “

Alaska Airlines is canceling through Saturday all flights on Boeing 737 Max 9 planes like the one that suffered an in-flight blowout of a fuselage panel last week as it waits for new instructions from Boeing and federal officials on how to inspect the fleet.

The development came as signs indicate some travelers might try to avoid flying on Max 9 jetliners — at least temporarily.

Seattle-based Alaska Airlines said Wednesday that it would cancel 110 to 150 flights a day while the Max 9 planes remain grounded

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — A Democratic Florida prosecutor will get another chance to show his political advocacy was protected by the First Amendment and could not be the basis for his removal, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sent the case involving ex-prosecutor Andrew Warren back to a trial judge in Tallahassee to determine if the governor’s suspension was improperly focused on statements Warren signed along with other prosecutors opposing

TORONTO — Human-caused climate change is behind a decline in spring snowpack across parts of Southern Canada and the Northern Hemisphere, says a new study that offers widespread caution of how a warming planet could transform winter and affect water security.

The study out of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, cuts through the noise of standalone measurements and models to find climate change has altered spring snowpack across 31 major river basins in the Northern Hemisphere, including a decline in the large St. Lawrence-