California coronavirus death count tops 70,000 as cases fall
SACRAMENTO — California’s coronavirus death toll reached another once-unfathomable milestone — 70,000 people — on Monday as the state emerges from the latest infection surge with the lowest rate of new cases among all states. Last year at this time, cases in the state started ticking up and by January...
Experts: Colorado supermarket shooting suspect not competent
DENVER — State experts concluded that the man charged with killing 10 people at a Colorado supermarket is not competent to stand trial but a judge granted prosecutors’ request for his mental health to be evaluated a second time, according to court filings released Monday. The initial evaluation report was...
Georgia election workers accused of shredding voter applications
ATLANTA — Officials in Georgia’s most populous county, where election operations are already under review by the state, have fired two workers accused of shredding paper voter registration applications, according to a county statement released Monday. Preliminary information indicates that the employees checked out batches of applications for processing. Instead...
GOP wants personal voter data to root out fraud, but Pa. already uses a more secure system
Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan newsroom powered by The Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with PennLive/The Patriot-News, TribLIVE/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and WITF Public Media. Sign up for our free newsletters. HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania has spent nearly half a million dollars over the past six years to find and remove outdated registrations...
North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson under attack over anti-LGBT viewsVideo
RALEIGH — North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson is facing calls to resign from elected officials and LGBTQ advocacy groups over comments he made criticizing sexual education and likening gay and transgender people to “filth.” “There’s no reason anybody anywhere in America should be telling any child about transgenderism, homosexuality,...
Fiona Hill, a nobody to Trump and Putin, saw into them both
Vladimir Putin paid scant attention to Fiona Hill, a preeminent U.S. expert on Russia, when she was seated next to him at dinners. Putin’s people placed her there by design, choosing a “nondescript woman,” as she put it, so the Russian president would have no competition for attention. Fluent in...
Pa. attorney general Josh Shapiro jumps into ’22 governor’s race
Pennsylvania’s high-profile attorney general, Josh Shapiro, will formally announce his candidacy for governor on Wednesday, entering the 2022 race months after making his intentions known and effectively clearing the field of potential rivals for the Democratic nomination. Shapiro, a familiar presence on cable TV news who has spent nearly two...
Appellate court sets hearing in South Carolina abortion case
An appellate court is set to debate a lawsuit challenging South Carolina’s abortion law about a week after the U.S. Supreme Court considers a similar measure in Mississippi. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has tentatively calendared the South Carolina case for oral arguments the week of Dec. 6,...
Tropical Storm Pamela strengthens off Mexico’s Pacific coast
Tropical Storm Pamela rapidly strengthened as it moved along Mexico’s Pacific coast Monday and it was forecast to become a major hurricane before hitting shore somewhere near the port of Mazatlan at midweek. The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Pamela’s center was about 455 miles south-southwest of Mazatlan Monday and...
Week in pictures: Oct. 4-Oct. 10, 2021
Here’s a selection of images that caught our eye in the past week from Tribune-Review photographers....
Russia’s new covid-19 infections, deaths near all-time highs
Russia’s daily coronavirus infections and deaths hovered near all-time highs Monday amid sluggish vaccination rates and the Kremlin’s reluctance to toughen restrictions. Russia’s state coronavirus task force reported 29,409 new confirmed cases — the highest number this year and just slightly lower than the pandemic record reached in December. After...
Israeli archaeologists discover ancient winemaking complex
YAVNE, Israel — Israeli archaeologists on Monday said they have unearthed a massive ancient winemaking complex dating back some 1,500 years. The complex, discovered in the central town of Yavne, includes five wine presses, warehouses, kilns for producing clay storage vessels and tens of thousands of fragments and jars, they...
Gun violence claiming more lives of American teens, children
Gun violence is killing an increasing number of American children, from toddlers caught in crossfires to teenagers gunned down in turf wars, drug squabbles or for posting the wrong thing on social media. Shootings involving children and teenagers have been on the rise in recent years, and 2021 is no...
Congress off the rails? Lawmakers barrel toward fall fights
Year-end pileups of crucial legislation and the brinkmanship that goes with them are normal behavior for Congress. This autumn, lawmakers are barreling toward battles that are striking for the risks they pose to both parties and their leaders. Though few doubt that Congress will again extend the government’s borrowing authority...
Bosnian makes rotating house a monument of love for his wife
SRBAC, Bosnia-Herzegovina — It’s not exactly on par with India’s Taj Mahal, but a family house in a small town in northern Bosnia is in its own way a monument to love. The house in Srbac was designed and built by 72-year-old Vojin Kusic. With a green facade and red...
U.K. police won’t act against Prince Andrew over abuse claim
LONDON — British police have announced they will not take any action against Prince Andrew after a review prompted by a Jeffrey Epstein accuser who claims that he sexually assaulted her. Virginia Giuffre claims she was trafficked by Epstein to have sex with Andrew in London in 2001, when she...
Poll: Cyberattacks seriously concerning to most in U.S.
RICHMOND, Va. — Most Americans across party lines have serious concerns about cyberattacks on U.S. computer systems and view China and Russia as major threats, according to a new poll. The poll by The Pearson Institute and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that about 9 in...
Huge fire extinguished at oil facility in southern Lebanon
ZAHRANI, Lebanon — Firefighters extinguished a huge blaze that broke out in a storage tank at one of Lebanon’s main oil facilities in the country’s south Monday after it sent orange flames and a thick black column of smoke into the sky. Energy Minister Walid Fayad said the fire broke...
Tornadoes cause damage in Oklahoma; storms rock central U.S.
COWETA, Okla. — Several reported tornadoes ripped through Oklahoma late Sunday into early Monday morning, causing damage but no immediate word of deaths or injuries. The severe weather system also brought heavy rain, lightning and wind to parts of Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri and Texas, and more stormy weather is predicted...
Pittsburgh-raised researcher wins Nobel Prize in economics with 2 others
STOCKHOLM — Three U.S-based economists — including one raised in Pittsburgh — won the 2021 Nobel prize for economics on Monday for pioneering research on the labor market impacts of minimum wage, immigration and education, and for creating the scientific framework to allow conclusions to be drawn from such studies...
Merck asks FDA to authorize promising anti-covid pill
WASHINGTON — Drugmaker Merck asked U.S. regulators Monday to authorize its pill against covid-19 in what would add an entirely new and easy-to-use weapon to the world’s arsenal against the pandemic. If cleared by the Food and Drug Administration — a decision that could come in a matter of weeks...
Actor dies in accident at Bolshoi Theater
MOSCOW — Russian news reports say an actor has died in an accident during a scene change at Moscow’s Bolshoi theater. The reports cited witnesses as saying that the actor appeared to have exited the stage on the wrong side during a Saturday evening performance of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera “Sadko”...
1 killed, 14 wounded in shooting inside St. Paul bar; 3 men arrested
MINNEAPOLIS — DJ Peter Parker knows how to read the room from a bird’s-eye view on stage to anticipate any trouble from crowds, after two decades of shows spanning Baltimore, D.C., Boston and beyond. But the former GO 95.3 radio host could have never anticipated a show in St. Paul...
Allen West, Texas GOP candidate for governor, contracts covid-19
AUSTIN — Republican gubernatorial hopeful Allen West has contracted covid-19 and suspended in-person campaign events as he recuperates. West spokesman Luke Twombly confirmed late Saturday that West, 60, tested positive for the virus. West, who hours earlier tweeted that he had not been vaccinated against coronavirus, disclosed that his wife,...
Navy nuclear engineer charged with trying to pass secrets
WASHINGTON — An engineer who worked at Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory in West Mifflin faces federal espionage-related charges for allegedly trying to sell U.S. military secrets to an undercover agent posing as a foreign government representative, the Justice Department said Sunday. In a criminal complaint detailing espionage-related charges against Jonathan...
