Trent Dilfer has been head coach for the national high school quarterback competition known as Elite 11 since 2011, and even in that short period of time the quality of players coming through the program has drastically improved.

“We’ve always had our handful of clearly the best,” said ...

Barring ties in Week 17 — and there are some wild scenarios should certain games end in draws Sunday — the road to the playoffs is quite straight in the NFC. The path to a first-round bye in the AFC has a bunch of curves in it.

Already in are NFC division winners Dallas (East), New Orleans ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday wished U.S. troops stationed around the country and the world a merry Christmas.

“I know it’s a great sacrifice for you to be away from your families, but I want you to know that every American family is eternally grateful to you, and ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says parts of the government will stay shut as long as Democrats refuse to build more barriers on the U.S.-Mexico border, seemingly dashing hope for a Christmas miracle that would soon allow several departments to reopen and employees to return to ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is recycling familiar fictions concerning the Iran nuclear deal as he lashes out at a Republican senator who criticized him and a U.S. official who resigned in protest against Trump’s plan to pull troops from Syria.

Trump slapped both critics in one ...

TOKYO (AP) — Nissan Motor Co. executive Greg Kelly was released from detention in Japan on Tuesday after being granted bail over the alleged underreporting of his boss Carlos Ghosn’s pay.

The late-night release of Kelly, who is American, followed the Tokyo District Court’s approval earlier ...

TOKYO (AP) — The Latest on the Japanese finance allegations against Nissan executive Greg Kelly (all times local):

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11:05 p.m.

Nissan Motor Co. executive Greg Kelly has been released from detention in Japan after being granted bail over the alleged underreporting of his boss ...

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Once a year, hundreds of horseback riders gather on an island in Utah’s Great Salt Lake to nudge bison toward holding pens in a roundup of one of America’s largest and oldest public herds.

Bison have occupied Antelope Island, about 25 miles (80 kilometers) northwest ...

BEIJING (AP) — Japanese stocks plunged Tuesday and other Asian markets declined following heavy Wall Street losses triggered by President Donald Trump’s criticism of the U.S. central bank.

The Nikkei 225 fell by an unusually wide margin of 5 percent to 19,155.14. The Shanghai Composite ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The lights were not twinkling. The toy trains were not whirring. Even the nearby bathrooms were locked.

The national Christmas tree, symbol of a country’s seasonal cheer, instead stood as an icon of a government in paralysis, as the partial shutdown stretched into the ...

JuJu Smith-Schuster began Week 16 with a promise to tough it out for all those fantasy football owners trying to win their league championships. He ended it with

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — After the final seconds ticked off, Derek Carr ran straight to the Black Hole with several teammates before taking a victory lap around the Coliseum to celebrate with his fans.

If this truly is the final game ever in Oakland, the Raiders gave their fans plenty to ...

A look at where the investigations related to President Donald Trump stand and what may lie ahead for him:

WHAT’S THIS ALL ABOUT?

Trump is facing criminal investigations in Washington and New York.

Special counsel Robert Mueller is looking into whether the Trump campaign ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge ordered North Korea to pay more than $500 million in a wrongful death suit filed by the parents of Otto Warmbier, an American college student who died shortly after being released from that country.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell harshly condemned North ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — As the first two years of President Donald Trump’s administration close, Republican allies still haven’t figured out how best to influence a leader who takes cues from the forces that swept him to office and seems to fear losing them above all else.

Republicans on Capitol ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump met Monday with his Homeland Security secretary and other officials to discuss border security issues as a partial government shutdown over his U.S.-Mexico border wall entered Christmas without a clear resolution in sight.

Though both sides have ...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California Gov. Jerry Brown ordered new DNA tests that a condemned inmate says could clear him in a 35-year-old quadruple murder case, which has drawn national attention.

On Monday, Brown ordered tests of four pieces of evidence that Kevin Cooper and his attorneys ...

We may remember 2018 as the year when technology’s dystopian potential became clear, from Facebook’s role enabling the harvesting of our personal data for election interference to a seemingly unending series of revelations about the dark side of Silicon Valley’s connect-everything ...

HOUSTON (AP) — A judge on Monday ordered the U.S. government not to deport a Honduran woman, whose lawyers worry about her being separated from her 15-year-old daughter who has been detained with her for six months.

U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss issued the temporary restraining order ...

There are lot of movies in theaters right now trying to grab your attention, and dollars, from big superhero spectacles and musical extravaganzas to awards darlings and wannabes. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the options in the multiplex (and, frankly, at home) and when something like, say, ...

BOSTON (AP) — Kevin Spacey has been charged with groping the 18-year-old son of a Boston TV anchor in 2016 — the first criminal case brought against the Oscar-winning actor since his career collapsed amid a string of sexual misconduct allegations over a year ago.

Spacey, 59, is due in ...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Supermodel Heidi Klum is engaged to her musician boyfriend.

The 45-year-old German model announced her engagement to Tokio Hotel guitarist Tom Kaulitz in an Instagram ...

NEW YORK (AP) — The longtime secretary of imprisoned financier Bernard Madoff should be released from prison in March because her advanced age entitles her to take advantage of a new prison reform law, her lawyer says.

By March 19, Annette Bongiorno, 70, will have served two-thirds of her ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The departure of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in a week will thrust President Donald Trump’s largely unknown choice for acting Pentagon chief into the military hot seat and shift attention to the search for a permanent replacement who will probably face sharp Capitol Hill ...

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Philip Sasser had a familiar, sinking feeling when he saw the yellow envelope in his mailbox. He figured it was another past-due medical bill, but it turned out to be quite the opposite.

“I opened it up and it said these bills had been paid off,” said Sasser, of Milton, ...

The depths of Larry Nassar’s depravity began to emerge some 15 months before the calendar flipped to 2018 — when reports of his sexual abuse first appeared in newspaper stories that would eventually lead to a trial and, ultimately, to the doctor’s imprisonment.

But it was January 2018, the ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is up and working as she recuperates from cancer surgery.

A spokeswoman for the court, Kathy Arberg, also says that Ginsburg remained in New York at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center on Sunday. No information has been ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Last year, during one particularly frenetic stretch in Donald Trump’s presidency, a top Republican senator said there were three men guarding the country from chaos: Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, White House chief of staff John Kelly and then-Secretary of State Rex ...

NEW YORK (AP) — Meghan Trainor has wed actor Daryl Sabara in nuptial exchanged at the couple’s Los Angeles home.

A publicist for the Grammy-winning singer on Sunday confirmed the two married Saturday. People magazine

NEW YORK (AP) — In a flood of new releases, “Aquaman” easily swam past “Mary Poppins Returns” and “Bumblebee” to lead the busy pre-Christmas weekend with an estimated $67.4 million over the weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday.

Without a “Star Wars” film on the December schedule ...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — SpaceX has launched the U.S. Air Force’s most powerful GPS satellite ever built.

A Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Sunday, hoisting the satellite into orbit.

The satellite was supposed to soar Tuesday but rocket concerns and ...

NEW YORK (AP) — Actress Debby Ryan and Twenty One Pilots drummer Josh Dun are engaged.

Both Ryan and Dun announced their engagement on social media Saturday. The 30-year-old Dun proposed to the 25-year-old Ryan in a treehouse in New Zealand. Dun posted a photo of himself proposing on one ...

DENVER (AP) — The government may be partially shut down, but that won’t stop hundreds of volunteers dressed in Christmas hats and military uniforms Monday from taking calls from children around the world who want to know when Santa will be coming.

The military says the NORAD Tracks Santa ...

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — The rollout of statewide medical and recreational marijuana programs typically is a grindingly slow process that can take years. Not so in Oklahoma, which moved with lightning speed once voters approved medical cannabis in June.

The ballot question received 57 percent ...

NEW YORK (AP) — The huddled masses are still able to visit the Statue of Liberty. The Grand Canyon is open for business. The government says other national parks “will remain as accessible as possible,” although some roads at Rocky Mountain National Park are closed as snow goes ...

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — The acquisition of 1,500 documents and artifacts for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum a decade ago firmly established Illinois as a leading repository of all things Lincoln, the prairie lawyer who led the U.S. through the Civil War.

So forgive ...

SEATTLE (AP) — The hemp industry still has work ahead to win legal status for hemp-derived cannabidiol, or CBD oil, as an ingredient in food or dietary supplements despite the big farm bill President Donald Trump signed this week designating hemp as an agricultural crop.

CBD oils have ...

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — U.S. government attorneys filed notice Friday that they are appealing a court ruling that blocked the first public hunts of grizzly bears in the Northern Rockies in decades.

The appeal challenges a judge’s ruling that restored threatened species protections for more ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A divided Supreme Court won’t let the Trump administration begin enforcing a ban on asylum for any immigrants who illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border.

Chief Justice John Roberts joined his four more liberal colleagues Friday in ruling against the administration in the ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Uranus is a lopsided oddity, the only planet to spin on its side. Scientists now think they know how it got that way: It was pushed over by a rock at least twice as big as Earth.

Detailed computer simulations show that an enormous rock crashed into the seventh planet from ...

HERSHEY, Pa. (AP) — Bakers are complaining that something is amiss with Hershey’s Kisses.

The chocolate candy’s trademark tips have been mysteriously missing from batches around the country. Bakers have taken to social media to complain that the lopped-off tops are ruining the look of ...