Vehicle strikes cancer center building

As mass shootings are again drawing public attention, states across the U.S. seem to be deepening their political divide on gun policies. A series of recent mass shootings in California come after a third straight year in which U.S. states recorded more than 600 mass shootings involving at least four deaths or injuries. Democratic-led states that already have restrictive gun laws have responded to home-state tragedies by enacting or proposing even more limits on guns. Many states with Republican-led legislatures appear unlikely to adopt any new gun policies after last year's local mass shootings. They're pinning the problem on violent individuals, not their weapons.

The families of five passengers killed in a plane crash off the North Carolina coast have settled wrongful death lawsuits for $15 million. Their attorneys told the court the companies that owned the plane and employed the pilot paid the money. The suits claimed the pilot failed to properly fly the single-engine plane in weather conditions with limited visibility. All eight people aboard died off the Outer Banks. The passengers included four teenagers and two adults, returning from a hunting trip. The founder of the company that owned the plane was killed, and his family wasn't involved in the lawsuits.

The University of Wisconsin System has joined a number of universities across the country in banning the popular social media app TikTok on school devicies. UW System officials made the announcement Tuesday. A number of other universities have banned TikTok in recent weeks, including Auburn, Arkansas State and Oklahoma. Nearly half the states have banned the app on state-owned devices, including Wisconsin, North Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana and South Dakota. Congress also recently banned TikTok from most U.S. government-issued devices over bipartisan concerns about security. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company that moved its headquarters to Singapore in 2020. Critics say the Chinese government could access user data.

Stocks are falling on Wall Street ahead of the Federal Reserve’s latest decision on interest rates. The S&P 500 was 0.5% lower Wednesday. The market is coming off a strong January, where stocks rose on hopes that cooling inflation could get the Federal Reserve to ease up on its barrage of hikes to interest rates that have rattled Wall Street. Later Wednesday, the Fed is expected to announce its latest increase, one that would be the smallest since March at 0.25 percentage points. Perhaps more important than that will be what the Fed says about where rates are heading next.

Missy Elliott, Willie Nelson, Kate Bush, Iron Maiden, Cyndi Lauper, Soundgarden, Sheryl Crow and the late George Michael are nominees for 2023 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, a list that includes a mix of country, soul, hip-hop, metal, pop, rap-rock and grunge. The Cleveland-based institution announced Wednesday the 14 artists and groups being considered for Rock Hall induction, also including Rage Against the Machine, The Spinners, A Tribe Called Quest, The White Stripes, Warren Zevon and Joy Division/New Order. Artists must have released their first commercial recording at least 25 years before they’re eligible for induction.

A deadly storm system is lashing a large swath of the southern U.S. with bands of sleet and snow for a third day. The storm grounded an additional 2,200 flights on Wednesday, including the majority to and from the Dallas area's two major airports, which are major hubs for American Airlines and Southwest Airlines. It has also cut power to hundreds of thousands customers, forced school closures and made already treacherous driving conditions worse. Watches and warnings about wintry conditions have been issued for an area stretching West Texas’ border with Mexico through Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana, and into western Tennessee and northern Mississippi. The slick conditions have been blamed for at least six traffic deaths in Texas.

Local climate activists in Congo are hoping Pope Francis' visit will help spur action to protect the country's rainforest from oil and gas interests.

Startup OpenAI released its ChatGPT artificial intelligence tool into the wild late last year with great fanfare. But Google has been more cautious about who gets to play with its AI advancements despite growing pressure for the internet giant to compete more aggressively with rival Microsoft, which is pouring billions of dollars into OpenAI and fusing its technology into Microsoft products. Generative AI can churn out paragraphs of readable text and new images as well as music and video. And some of the technological breakthroughs driving the red-hot field have been pioneered in Google’s vast research arm.

The official curriculum for a new Advanced Placement course on African American studies was released Wednesday downplays some components that had drawn criticism from conservatives including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who said the class would be outlawed in his state. In the new framework, topics including Black Lives Matter, queer life and intersectionality are not part of the exam. They are included only on a list of optional areas of research that that local states and school systems could choose from for assignments. The course is currently being tested at 60 schools around the U.S.