News category, Page 1059

HARRISBURG — The centerpiece of Gov. Tom Wolf’s plan to fight climate change took another step Tuesday toward the final regulatory threshold to impose a price on carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants in Pennsylvania. The Environmental Quality Board, composed primarily of Wolf appointees, approved the plan 15-4...

FALLS CHURCH, Va. — A federal law that for more than 50 years has banned licensed firearms dealers from selling handguns to young adults between age 18 and 21 is unconstitutional, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday. In a 2-1 opinion, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond...

PHILADELPHIA — Former Attorney General Bill Barr on Tuesday sharply denied that he ordered the top federal prosecutor in Philadelphia at the time not to investigate allegations of 2020 election fraud, and said Bill McSwain is only leveling that accusation to curry favor with former President Donald Trump in his...

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is nominating West Virginia’s former health commissioner as the nation’s top anti-drug official, tapping a doctor who served on the front lines of the nation’s opioid epidemic. The White House said Tuesday that Dr. Rahul Gupta will be the first physician to lead the Office...

CLEVELAND — An Ohio hospital has acknowledged that a patient received a new kidney meant for someone else. Officials at University Hospitals in Cleveland on Monday apologized for the mistake and said two employees have been placed on administrative leave. The kidney given to the wrong patient is compatible and...

The covid-19 curve in the United States is rising again after months of decline, with the number of new cases per day doubling over the past three weeks, driven by the fast-spreading delta variant, lagging vaccination rates and Fourth of July gatherings. Confirmed infections climbed to an average of about...

NEW YORK — A Manhattan jury on Tuesday convicted a Chicago banker of criminal charges for enabling Paul Manafort to get $16 million in loans before the former campaign manager for ex-President Donald Trump helped him get an interview for a job in the Trump administration. The jury returned its...

SURFSIDE, Fla. — Exhausted crews neared the end of their search for victims of a Miami-area condominium tower collapse Tuesday as the death toll reached 95 with just a handful of people still unaccounted for. Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said at a news conference that the number of...

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 — Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration is refusing to provide details on the scope and timeline of an internal investigation...

BAGHDAD — The death toll from a fire that swept through a hospital coronavirus ward in Iraq has climbed to at least 92, the Iraqi state news agency reported Tuesday. The announcement came as anguished family members buried their loved ones and lashed out at the government over the tragedy....

Some trends can be harmless fun — pet rocks, Beanie Babies and the Ice Bucket Challenge, for example. But some trends can be downright harmful — ingesting TidePods, swallowing a spoonful of cinnamon, and the latest: Using Mr. Clean Magic Erasers to whiten your teeth. The trend has been making...

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden will lay out the “moral case” for voting rights as he faces growing pressure from civil rights activists and other Democrats to combat efforts by Republican-led state legislatures to restrict access to the ballot. Biden has declared that protecting voting rights was the central cause...

MOSCOW — Russia has strongly warned the United States against deploying its troops in the former Soviet Central Asian nations following their withdrawal from Afghanistan, a senior diplomat said in remarks published on Tuesday. Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that Moscow conveyed the message to Washington last month...

BERLIN — The German military on Tuesday launched a “space command” tasked with overseeing satellites, watching for dangerous space junk and analyzing other countries’ activities. Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer launched the new operation during a visit to its base at Uedem in western Germany. The military is “responding to the...

The United States has seen a string of covid-19 outbreaks tied to summer camps in recent weeks in places such as Texas, Illinois, Florida, Missouri and Kansas, in what some fear could be a preview of the upcoming school year. In some cases the outbreaks have spread from the camp...

NEW YORK — The finance chief of former President Donald Trump’s business empire has been removed as an officer at some of the company’s subsidiaries amid charges accusing him and the corporation of a long-running tax fraud scheme. Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg was indicted last week by...

NASHVILLE — Tennessee officials have fired the state’s top vaccination official, who had been facing scrutiny from Republican state lawmakers over her department’s outreach efforts to vaccinate teenagers against covid-19. Dr. Michelle Fiscus, the medical director for vaccine-preventable diseases and immunization programs at the Tennessee Department of Health, told The...

PHILADELPHIA — The Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s controversial decision to overturn Bill Cosby’s sex assault conviction has sparked a rare public war of words between the court’s chief justice and Montgomery County prosecutors. In an interview Sunday with Harrisburg’s WHTM-TV, Chief Justice Max Baer justified the ruling that freed Cosby earlier...

DETROIT — A federal judge considering whether to order sanctions against some of former President Donald Trump’s lawyers spent hours Monday drilling deeply into details about an unsuccessful lawsuit that challenged Michigan’s 2020 election results. The lawsuit alleging widespread fraud was dropped after the judge found nothing but “speculation and...

A Florida man who was part of a white supremacist prison gang when he served time for attempted murder pleaded guilty Monday to joining the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol, and will be released from jail this week after serving six months for his role in the Jan. 6...

WASHINGTON — Johnson & Johnson’s covid-19 vaccine may pose a “small possible risk” of a rare but potentially dangerous neurological reaction, U.S. health officials said Monday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement it has received reports of 100 people who got the shot developing Guillain-Barré...