by Mauricio Savarese SANTOS, Brazil  — Thousands of mourners, including high school students and supreme court justices, began filing past the body of Pelé on Monday on the century-old field where he made his hometown team one of Brazil’s best. The soccer great died on Thursday after a battle with cancer. He was the only player ever to win three World Cups, and he was 82. Pelé’s coffin, draped in the flags of Brazil and the Santos FC football club, was placed on the midfield area of Vila Belmiro, the stadium outside Sao Paulo that was his home for most…

by Darlene Superville CHRISTIANSTED, U.S. Virgin Islands  — President Joe Biden and top administration officials will open a new year of divided government by fanning out across the country to talk about how the economy is benefiting from his work with Democrats and Republicans. As part of the pitch, Biden and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell will make a rare joint appearance in McConnell’s home state of Kentucky on Wednesday to highlight nearly $1 trillion in infrastructure spending that lawmakers approved on a bipartisan basis in 2021. The Democratic president will also be joined by a bipartisan group of elected…

SPRINGFIELD, Ill.  — The Illinois Supreme Court has halted provisions of a new law that would eliminate cash bail for criminal defendants, issuing a stay hours before the new policies were set to take effect Sunday. The high court said in Saturday’s order that the stay was needed to “maintain consistent pretrial procedures throughout Illinois” as the court prepares to hear arguments on the matter. The order said the court would coordinate an “expedited process” for an appeal the Illinois Attorney General’s Office filed Friday with the court of a local judge’s ruling, which found that eliminating cash bail for…

by Nicole Winfiel VATICAN CITY  — He was the reluctant pope, a shy bookworm who preferred solitary walks in the Alps and Mozart piano concertos to the public glare and majesty of Vatican pageantry. When Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI and was thrust into the footsteps of his beloved and charismatic predecessor, he said he felt a guillotine had come down on him. So it should have come as little surprise that with a few words uttered in Latin on a Vatican holiday in 2013, Benedict ended it all, announcing that he would become the first pope in…

by Ayanna Alexander and Gary Fields WASHINGTON  — Black voters have been a steady foundation for Democratic candidates for decades, but that support appeared to show a few cracks in this year’s elections. Republican candidates were backed by 14% of Black voters, compared with 8% in the last midterm elections four years ago, according to AP VoteCast, an extensive national survey of the electorate. In Georgia, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp more than doubled his support among Black voters to 12% in 2022 compared with 5% four years ago, according to VoteCast. He defeated Democrat Stacey Abrams both times. If that…

HAMMOND, Ind. — A northwestern Indiana hospital said it will close its emergency room Saturday, a day after an Indiana Court of Appeals judge issued a stay of a lower court ruling that it must operate those services for nine more months. The stay, issued Friday afternoon by Chief Appeals Court Judge Cale Bradford, halted a Lake County judge’s ruling that would have postponed the closure of Franciscan Health Hammond’s emergency room for nine months while the city of Hammond searched for another operator. Ambulances were to be diverted elsewhere starting at midnight and the emergency room will close to…

by Andrew Seligman CHICAGO  — Zach LaVine scored a season-high 43 points, and the Chicago Bulls pulled away in the closing minutes to beat the Detroit Pistons 132-118 on Friday night. LaVine looked more like his old explosive self than the guy managing his left knee following offseason surgery. And the Bulls ended the game on a 17-3 run after getting all they could handle from the team with the NBA’s worst record. “Nothing surprising. That’s the Zach we all know,” DeMar DeRozan said. LaVine had the crowd roaring when he capped an 18-point first quarter with a thunderous, right-hand…

by Frazier Moore NEW YORK — Barbara Walters, the intrepid interviewer, anchor and program host who blazed the way as the first woman to become a TV news superstar during a career remarkable for its duration and variety, has died. She was 93. ABC broke into its broadcast to announce Walters’ death on air Friday night. “She lived her life with no regrets. She was a trailblazer not only for female journalists, but for all women,” her publicist Cindi Berger also said in a statement, adding Walters died peacefully at her New York home. An ABC spokesperson did not have…

by Tales Azzoni and Mauricio Savarese SAO PAULO — Pelé, the Brazilian king of soccer who won a record three World Cups and became one of the most commanding sports figures of the last century, died Thursday. He was 82. The standard-bearer of “the beautiful game” had undergone treatment for colon cancer since 2021. The medical center where he had been hospitalized for the last month said he died of multiple organ failure as a result of the cancer. “Pelé changed everything. He transformed football into art, entertainment,” Neymar, a fellow Brazilian soccer star, said on Instagram. “Football and Brazil…

by Mary Clare Jalonick and Lisa Mascaro WASHINGTON  — Virginia Thomas, the wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, says she regrets sending texts to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows after the 2020 election, telling the House Jan. 6 committee that “I would take them all back if I could today.” Thomas — known as Ginni — is a longtime conservative activist. In a transcript of the interview released by the panel on Friday, she told investigators she was “emotional” after the election when she sent several texts to Meadows urging him to stand firm with then-President…