The prison staff didn't know much about the new acting warden. Then, they say, he made a bizarre and startling confession: Years ago, he beat inmates ??" and got away with it. Thomas Ray Hinkle, a high-ranking federal Bureau of Prisons official, was sent to restore order and trust at a women's prison wracked by a deplorable scandal. Instead, workers say, he left the federal lockup in Dublin, California, even more broken. Staff saw Hinkle as a bully and regarded his presence there ??" just that...

WASHINGTON (AP) ??" Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona announced Friday she has registered as an independent, a renegade move that could bolster her political brand but won't upend the Democrats' narrow Senate majority, She says she will not caucus with Republicans. Sinema, who faces reelection in 2024, has modeled her political approach on the maverick style of the late Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona. A vibrant yet often unpredictable force in the Senate, she tends toward the a...

TOKYO (AP) ??" Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa said Friday that K-pop star T. O. P will be among eight people who will join him on a flight around the moon on a SpaceX spaceship in the coming years. The Japanese tycoon launched plans for the lunar voyage in 2018, buying all the seats on the spaceship. He began taking applications from around the world in March 2021 for what will be his second space journey after his 12-day trip to the International Space Station on the Soyuz Russian last 1...