Moderna: Initial booster data shows good results on omicron
Moderna said Monday that a booster dose of its covid-19 vaccine should offer protection against the rapidly spreading omicron variant. Moderna said lab tests showed the half-dose booster shot increased by 37 times the level of so-called neutralizing antibodies able to fight omicron. And a full-dose booster was even stronger,...
Pope says parents should never slap their kids
ROME — Pope Francis has denounced domestic violence against woman as “nearly satanic” and said parents should never slap their children. Francis made the comments in a televised encounter with an abused woman who recently fled her home with her four children. Their meeting was broadcast late Sunday on the...
Sens. Warren and Booker test positive for breakthrough covid
WASHINGTON — Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Cory Booker of New Jersey say they have tested positive for covid-19, as the country deals with another surge in cases and the emergence of the omicron variant. In separate statements Sunday, the Democrats said they had been fully vaccinated with two...
Japanese space tourists safely return to Earth
MOSCOW — A Japanese billionaire, his producer and a Russian cosmonaut safely returned to Earth on Monday after spending 12 days on the International Space Station. Fashion tycoon Yusaku Maezawa, his producer Yozo Hirano and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin made a soft landing in a Russian Soyuz capsule in the...
Royal Caribbean ship docks at Miami port with 48 cases of covid, cruise line says
MIAMI — Forty-eight passengers and crew members tested positive for covid-19 on Royal Caribbean’s Symphony of the Seas ship, which docked Saturday at PortMiami, the cruise company said. Miami-based Royal Caribbean said in a statement Sunday that each person who tested positive immediately went into quarantine. Six people who had...
Adult taken into custody after child, 4, shot in Harrisburg home
HARRISBURG — An adult was taken into custody after a 4-year-old child was critically wounded in a shooting in Pennsylvania’s capital over the weekend, police said. Harrisburg police said patrol units were called to a home in the city at about 10:15 a.m. Sunday and found the child with a...
Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker test positive for covid breakthrough
BOSTON — Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Cory Booker of New Jersey say they have tested positive for covid-19, as the country deals with another surge in cases and the emergence of the omicron variant. In separate statements Sunday, the Democrats said they had been fully vaccinated with two...
Washington state Sen. Doug Ericksen dies after covid battle
SEATTLE — Washington state Sen. Doug Ericksen, a staunch conservative, has died at age 52. Ericksen’s death Friday came weeks after he said he had tested positive for the coronavirus while in El Salvador, though his cause of death wasn’t immediately released. The state Senate Republican Caucus confirmed his passing...
German experts urge stricter coronavirus measures, more boosters
VIENNA — Germany should implement stricter measures this week to slow the spread of the omicron variant, the German government’s new expert council said Sunday, a day after the government announced it would impose travel restrictions on people coming from Britain. The council — comprised of Germany’s top virologists and...
Fauci says omicron variant is `just raging around the world’
WILMINGTON, Del. — The covid-19 omicron variant is “just raging around the world,” the White House’s top medical adviser said Sunday, and President Joe Biden is planning to give “a stark warning of what the winter will look like” for unvaccinated Americans. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease...
Johnny Isakson, former Georgia Republican U.S. senator, dies
ATLANTA — Johnny Isakson, an affable Georgia Republican politician who rose from the ranks of the state Legislature to become a U.S. senator known as an effective, behind-the-scenes consensus builder, died Sunday. He was 76. Isakson’s son John Isakson told The Associated Press his father died in his sleep before...
Sen. Joe Manchin says no to $2T bill: ‘I can’t vote for it’
WASHINGTON — Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin said Sunday he cannot back his party’s signature $2 trillion social and environment bill, dealing a potentially fatal blow to President Joe Biden’s leading domestic initiative heading into an election year when Democrats’ narrow hold on Congress was already in peril. Manchin told “Fox...
Fire damages QVC distribution center in North Carolina
ROCKY MOUNT, N.C. — A fire ripped through a distribution center in North Carolina for the QVC home-shopping television network early Saturday, causing extensive damage to the facility, officials said. More than 300 employees were working at the facility near Rocky Mount when the fire was reported shortly after 2...
Vaccine data gaps point to millions more in U.S. who lack shots
The U.S. government has overcounted the number of Americans who are at least partly vaccinated against the coronavirus, state officials warn, meaning millions more people are unprotected as the pandemic’s winter surge gathers steam. Last weekend, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revised a bellwether metric — the share...
Governor: No one still missing in Kentucky after tornadoes
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — All of the people reported missing in Kentucky after tornadoes swept through the state last weekend have been accounted for, Gov. Andy Beshear said Saturday. Beshear hailed the report by state emergency management officials and said he hoped it meant that no additional people in Kentucky would...
Do employers have to follow Biden’s vaccine mandates?
Tens of millions of workers across the U.S. are in limbo as federal courts have issued different rulings related to President Joe Biden’s covid-19 vaccine mandates for larger private companies, certain health care workers and federal government contractors. A federal appeals court panel has allowed a vaccine requirement for employers...
New front in Pa.’s GOP election ‘investigation’ draws challenges
HARRISBURG — Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration and a voting-system manufacturer are trying to prevent Republican lawmakers from expanding what they call a “forensic investigation” of Pennsylvania’s 2020 election to a new front: inspecting voting machines. It is another step driven by former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims about election fraud....
U.S. Senate to vote on Nord Stream 2 after Schumer-Cruz deal
WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate legislation targeting the Nord Stream 2 pipeline will go to a vote under a deal that ended Sen. Ted Cruz’s blockade on several of President Joe Biden’s nominees, leading to the confirmation of a slate of his judicial and diplomatic appointments early Saturday. The agreement between...
OSHA vaccine mandate penalties to start Jan. 10
The Occupational Health and Safety Administration said Saturday that it would not issue citations tied to its coronavirus vaccination mandate before Jan. 10, so that companies have time to adjust to and implement the requirements. The federal agency separately said there would be no citations of companies regarding its testing...
Gas explosion in sewer kills 12 in Pakistan’s largest city
KARACHI, Pakistan — A powerful gas explosion in a sewage system in Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi, killed at least 12 people and injured 11 others Saturday, police and a health official said. Police spokesman Sohail Jokhio said the blast was apparently caused when something ignited gas that had accumulated in...
Biden marks anniversary of 1972 car crash that killed wife
GREENVILLE, Del. — President Joe Biden on Saturday commemorated the 49th anniversary of the car crash that killed his first wife and infant daughter, visiting their graves at the Saint Joseph on the Brandywine Roman Catholic Church. Their deaths occurred just after Delaware voters elected Biden to the Senate in...
Ransomware persists even as high-profile attacks have slowed
In the months since President Joe Biden warned Russia’s Vladimir Putin that he needed to crack down on ransomware gangs in his country, there hasn’t been a massive attack like the one last May that resulted in gasoline shortages. But that’s small comfort to Ken Trzaska. Trzaska is president of...
GOP Oklahoma House leader, wife accused of multiple felonies
OKLAHOMA CITY — An Oklahoma County grand jury indicted a top Republican House leader on multiple felony counts, alleging he misused his power to change state law so his wife could become a tag agent. House Speaker Pro Tempore Terry O’Donnell, the second-highest ranking member in the House, was charged...
Court allows Biden employer vaccine mandate to take effect
A federal appeals court panel on Friday allowed President Joe Biden’s covid-19 vaccine mandate for larger private employers to move ahead. The 2-1 decision by a panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reverses a decision by a federal judge in a separate court that had paused the...
Ghislaine Maxwell declines to testify as defense rests case
NEW YORK — After 12 days of testimony over three weeks, jurors heard from the final witnesses Friday in the sex trafficking trial of British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, who told the judge she wouldn’t testify because she was confident prosecutors hadn’t proved their case. Closing arguments are now set for...
