Russia’s emergency situations minister dies in Arctic drill
MOSCOW — Russia’s emergency situations minister has died during drills, the ministry said Wednesday. Yevgeny Zinichev, 55, “tragically died in the line of duty during inter-agency exercises to protect the Arctic zone from emergency situations, while saving a person’s life,” the ministry said in a statement carried by Russian news...
Trial of 20 men accused in 2015 Paris attacks begins
PARIS — In a custom-built secure complex embedded within a 13th-century courthouse, France on Wednesday began the trial of 20 men accused in the Islamic State group’s 2015 attacks in Paris that left 130 people dead and hundreds injured. The defendants were taken one by one into a glass-enclosed box...
Officials: Ethiopia’s Tigray forces kill some 120 civilians
NAIROBI, Kenya — Local officials in Ethiopia allege that Tigray forces have killed more than 120 civilians in recent days following battlefield losses, in what would be one of the deadliest massacres of the country’s 10-month war. Sewunet Wubalem, administrator for the Dabat woreda, or district, in the Amhara region...
They were some of 9/11’s biggest names. Where are they now?
Rudolph Giuliani was a hero before he was a punchline. Lisa Beamer was a wife and mother before she became a symbol of Sept. 11 — and though her celebrity passed, her widowhood cannot. In the aftermath of the planes falling from the sky, America and the world were introduced...
In New York after Ida, Biden calls climate ‘everybody’s crisis’Video
NEW YORK — President Joe Biden declared climate change has become “everybody’s crisis” on Tuesday as he toured neighborhoods flooded by the remnants of Hurricane Ida, warning it’s time for America to get serious about the “code red” danger or face ever worse loss of life and property. Biden spoke...
Girl, 6, dies on mine drop ride at Colorado amusement parkVideo
GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colo. — An investigation is underway after a 6-year-old girl on vacation with her family died at an amusement park in the western Colorado town of Glenwood Springs. Few details have been released, but Suzanne Emery with the Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park says “an incident” occurred Sunday evening...
Missouri doctor: ERs treating people who took ivermectin
ST. LOUIS — Several people have been treated in Missouri emergency rooms after taking the parasite drug ivermectin, even as experts warn of dangerous side effects and a lack of proof that it helps treat covid-19. Dr. Steven Brown told KMOV-TV that cases of ivermectin toxicity have occurred at Mercy...
Arizona attorney general: Tucson employee vaccine mandate is illegal
PHOENIX — Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich said Tuesday that Tucson’s vaccine mandate for its employees is illegal, giving the city 30 days to repeal it or risk losing millions of dollars in state funding. Democratic-led Tucson has repeatedly clashed with the state’s Republican leadership over the city’s aggressive efforts...
Mexico Supreme Court rules that penalizing abortion is unconstitutionalVideo
MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that it is unconstitutional to punish abortion, unanimously annulling several provisions of a law from Coahuila — a state on the Texas border — that had made abortion a criminal act. The decision will immediately affect only the northern border state, but...
Hurricane Ida 9 days later: 430K still without power
NEW ORLEANS — Hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses in Louisiana, most of them outside New Orleans, still didn’t have power Tuesday and more than half of the gas stations in two major cities were without fuel nine days after Hurricane Ida slammed into the state, splintering homes and...
Idaho hospitals begin rationing health care amid covid surge
BOISE, Idaho — Idaho public health leaders announced Tuesday that they activated “crisis standards of care” allowing health care rationing for the state’s northern hospitals because there are more coronavirus patients than the institutions can handle. The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare quietly enacted the move Monday and publicly...
NASA confirms Mars rover’s 1st rock sample grab, 40 to go
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA’s newest Mars rover has completed its first sample grab, tucking away the tube of rock for return to Earth. The Perseverance rover team confirmed last week’s successful drilling and collection, after reviewing photos of the core sample. NASA wanted to be certain the sample was...
Covid-19 boosters are coming but who will get them and when?
Covid-19 booster shots may be coming for at least some Americans but already the Biden administration is being forced to scale back expectations — illustrating just how much important science still has to be worked out. The initial plan was to offer Pfizer or Moderna boosters starting Sept. 20, contingent...
Jill Biden heads back to classroom as a working first lady
WASHINGTON — Jill Biden is going back to her whiteboard. After months of teaching writing and English to community college students in boxes on a computer screen, the first lady resumes teaching in person Tuesday from a classroom at Northern Virginia Community College, where she has worked since 2009. She...
NYPD cops at ground zero still dealing with 9/11 emotional scars
NEW YORK — It seems like yesterday: The smell of death, the gray ash that looked like snow, the falling bodies that sounded like bombs as they smashed into the pavement. For the NYPD cops who responded to ground zero, sifted through the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island or...
Vatican won’t say if women can vote in 2023 church meeting
ROME — Vatican officials declined on Tuesday to say if women would be able to vote on concrete proposals about the future of the Catholic Church at the end of a two-year process of consultation of ordinary faithful that Pope Francis kicks off next month. For years, women activists and...
On TV, 9/11 was last huge story for ‘Big 3’ network anchors
NEW YORK — “Turn on your television.” Those words were repeated in millions of homes on Sept. 11, 2001. Friends and relatives took to the telephone: Something awful was happening. You have to see. Before social media and with online news in its infancy, the story of the day when...
Florida shooter may have first pounded on neighbor’s doorVideo
LAKELAND, Fla. — Someone pounded on Miguel Rivera’s sliding glass door early Sunday, but when he went to investigate, no one was there. Minutes later, gunfire erupted at his neighbor’s house, where authorities say a Marine vet who thought he heard the voice of God killed four people, including a...
Poll: Americans warier of U.S. government surveillance
WASHINGTON — As the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks approaches, Americans increasingly balk at intrusive government surveillance in the name of national security, and only about a third believe that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were worth fighting, according to a new poll. More Americans...
Lake Tahoe evacuation orders lifted, but fire threat remains
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — The lifting of a mandatory evacuation order for South Lake Tahoe’s 22,000 residents is a confident milestone in the fight against the Caldor Fire, but it remains only 48% contained and still threatens areas south of the resort town. Firefighters are confronting aggressive winds and...
Two decades after 9/11, Muslim Americans still fighting bias
NEW YORK — A car passed, the driver’s window rolled down and the man spat an epithet at two little girls wearing their hijabs: “Terrorist!” It was 2001, mere weeks after the twin towers at the World Trade Center fell, and 10-year-old Shahana Hanif and her younger sister were walking...
Virginia is set to remove Richmond’s Lee statue on Wednesday
RICHMOND, Va. — A towering statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Va., is set to come down on Wednesday, more than 130 years after it was built as a tribute to a Civil War hero who is now widely seen as a symbol of racial injustice, state...
Lake Tahoe residents relieved homes spared from wildfireVideo
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — Connor Jones sunbathed with his dog on the otherwise empty beach at Ski Run Marina on Monday, as residents trickling back into town filled up their cars at a gas station behind him and employees of a water sports rental company docked jet skis and...
Justice Department will ‘protect’ abortion seekers in Texas
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department said Monday that it will not tolerate violence against anyone who is trying to obtain an abortion in Texas as federal officials explore options to challenge a new state law that bans most abortions. Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department would “protect those...
Suspect in Georgia shooting that injured 7 is apprehended
ATHENS, Ga. — The suspect in a Georgia shooting that injured seven people as large crowds celebrated a football victory has been apprehended, police announced Monday. Pharoah Devonell Williams, 21, turned himself in at the Wilkes County Jail as police searched for him, Athens Clarke-County police said. He is being...