SEATTLE (AP) — Jim Whittaker, who in 1963 became the first American to reach the top of Mount Everest, has died. He was 97. Whittaker's 1963 ascent to the summit of Mount Everest came 10 years after Sir Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay first scaled the peak. Whittaker died Tuesday at his home in Port Townsend, Washington. according to a statement from his family. His Mount Everest feat made the once-shy, rangy climber an instant celebrity, in demand for public appearances and expected to his...

WASHINGTON (AP) — NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte was meeting with President Donald Trump on Wednesday to try to smooth over the president's anger with the military alliance over the Iran war. Trump had suggested the U. S. may consider leaving the trans-Atlantic alliance after NATO member countries ignored his call to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping waterway, as Iran effectively shut it and sent gas prices soaring. The Republican president's meeting with Rutte, with whom...

HOUSTON (AP) — Lunar love knows no bounds. Now hurtling home from the moon, the Artemis II astronauts took a poignant page from Apollo 8 earlier this week, proposing deeply personal names for a pair of lunar craters. Commander Reid Wiseman and his crew asked permission to name one small, fresh crater after their capsule called Integrity and another after his late wife, Carroll. Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen made the request right before Monday's lunar fly-around. Wiseman was too emotional...