Do we need humans for that job? Automation booms after covid
Ask for a roast beef sandwich at an Arby’s drive-thru east of Los Angeles and you may be talking to Tori — an artificially intelligent voice assistant that will take your order and send it to the line cooks. “It doesn’t call sick,” says Amir Siddiqi, whose family installed the...
Biden to mark 20th anniversary of 9/11 at 3 memorial sites
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden will visit all three 9/11 memorial sites to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and pay his respects to the nearly 3,000 people killed that day. Biden will visit ground zero in New York City, the Pentagon and the memorial outside Shanksville,...
Trafford man dies in motorcycle crash
The Westmoreland County Coroner’s office has released the identity of a man killed early Saturday in a motorcycle crash on Mt. Pleasant Road in Hempfield Township. The coroner’s office said Tanner B. Van Woundenberg, 19, of Trafford was headed north on Mt. Pleasant Road on a 2008 Yamaha motorcycle when,...
‘Hallowed ground’: Families of those on United jetliner, Shanksville community and others forged resolve to see Flight 93 National Memorial come to lifeVideo
Fate threw them together. Two decades later, the unlikely coalition of Flight 93 family members, residents of Somerset County and the National Park Service that worked for years to preserve the story of what happened aboard that United Airlines jetliner will meet this week at the Flight 93 National Memorial,...
Navy declares 5 missing sailors dead after helicopter crash
SAN DIEGO — The U.S. Navy declared five missing sailors dead nearly a week after a helicopter crashed in the Pacific Ocean, shifting the search for them to a recovery operation on Saturday. The move followed more than 72 hours of coordinated rescue efforts and nearly three dozen search and...
German man attacks health workers giving covid shots
BERLIN — A man has injured two members of a vaccination team in eastern Germany after he demanded a vaccination certificate without wanting to get vaccinated and was denied it. German news agency dpa reported that the man, whose identity was not given because of national privacy rules, attacked and...
Northeast deals with muck, waterlogged homes in Ida cleanup
CRANFORD, N.J. — Flood-stricken families and business owners across the Northeast were hauling waterlogged belongings to the curb Saturday and scraping away noxious mud as cleanup from the deadly remnants of Hurricane Ida moves into high gear. The White House said President Joe Biden will survey storm damage in New...
Biden tells storm-ravaged Louisiana: ‘I know you’re hurting’
LAPLACE, La. — Giant trees knocked sideways. Homes boarded up with plywood. Off-kilter street signs. Less than a week after Hurricane Ida battered the Gulf Coast, President Joe Biden walked the streets of a hardhit Louisiana neighborhood and told local residents, “I know you’re hurting, I know you’re hurting.” Such...
Russians rally against government pressure on independent media
MOSCOW — Several dozen Russians gathered in the center of Moscow on Saturday to protest Russian authorities’ recent crackdown on independent media. The small rally was organized by several opposition candidates in Russia’s Sept. 19 parliamentary election and officially billed as a meeting between candidates and voters in order to...
Police: Driver, 45, critical, 4 Akron officers injured in crash
AKRON, Ohio — A driver was critically injured and four Akron officers were hurt when a car crashed into two police cruisers that had responded to a disabled vehicle over the weekend, authorities said. Akron police said the officers were in the process of towing the disabled vehicle when the...
Collision between train, minibus leaves 6 dead in Turkey
ISTANBUL — A collision between a freight train and a minibus in northwest Turkey killed six people and injured seven others Saturday, the Turkish news agency Demiroren reported. The crash at a railroad crossing in Ergene, Tekirdag province, involved a minibus carrying textile factory workers returning from a night shift...
Surviving 9/11 was ‘just the first piece of the journey’
NEW YORK — Trapped deep in the wreckage of the World Trade Center, Will Jimeno lived through the unthinkable. Twenty years later, he’s still living with it. A brace and a quarter-sized divot on his left leg reflect the injuries that ended his police career, a lifetime dream. He has...
Judge shields Texas clinics from anti-abortion group’s suits
AUSTIN, Texas — A state judge has shielded, for now, Texas abortion clinics from lawsuits by an anti-abortion group under a new state abortion law in a narrow ruling handed down Friday. The temporary restraining order Friday by state District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble in Austin in response to the...
Butler County parents among those in lawsuit challenging Pa.’s new school mask mandate
The Republican leader of the state Senate and a group of parents — some of which are from the Butler Area School District — filed a lawsuit Friday seeking to overturn the Wolf administration’s new mask mandate for Pennsylvania schools. Gov. Tom Wolf’s spokesperson dismissed what she called the GOP’s...
Arizona man who wore horns in Capitol riot pleads guilty to felony
PHOENIX — An Arizona man who sported face paint, no shirt and a furry hat with horns when he joined the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 pleaded guilty Friday to a felony charge and wants to be released from jail while he awaits sentencing. Jacob Chansley,...
U.S. to bolster firefighter ranks as wildfires burn year-round
BOISE, Idaho — U.S. wildfire managers have started shifting from seasonal to full-time firefighting crews to deal with what has become a year-round wildfire season as climate change has made the American West warmer and drier. The crews also could remove brush and other hazardous fuels when not battling blazes....
U.S. building ‘small cities’ at bases for Afghans
WASHINGTON — U.S. military bases housing Afghanistan evacuees are building their own city-type leadership organizations to deal with sanitation, food and other challenges as the numbers of Afghans coming into the U.S. grows. Air Force General Glen VanHerck, who heads U.S. Northern Command, said there were more than 25,000 Afghan...
Pa. to refund $19M to 109,000 people it overcharged in unemployment error
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 — The state Department of Labor and Industry will pay out more than $19 million in refunds after it overcharged...
U.S. booster plan faces complications, some may miss Sept. 20
President Joe Biden’s plans to start delivery of booster shots by Sept. 20 for most Americans who received the covid-19 vaccines are facing new complications that could delay the availability of third doses for those who received the Moderna vaccine, administration officials said Friday. Biden announced last month that his...
Deal with OxyContin maker leaves families angry, conflicted
Among the families who lost children and other loved ones in the nation’s opioid crisis, many had held out hope of someday facing OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma and its owners in a courtroom. That prospect all but vanished Wednesday after a bankruptcy judge conditionally approved a settlement worth an estimated...
Collectible prices skyrocket, to the dismay of hobbyists
Americans have become obsessed with collectibles, bidding up prices for trading cards, video games and other mementos of their youth. The frenzy has brought small fortunes to some, but a deep frustration for those who still love to play games or trade cards as a hobby. Among the items most...
Sen. Toomey says it’s ‘completely unacceptable’ for GOP to pick Trump in 2024
Don’t make the same mistake twice, GOP. U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, a Pennsylvania conservative who is retiring next year, said that Republicans must not back Donald Trump as the Republican presidential nominee in 2024 because of his “completely unacceptable” effort to overturn his loss to President Joe Biden. “After what...
In Ida’s miserable wake, New Orleans to get power next week
NEW ORLEANS — Power should be restored to New Orleans by the middle of next week, utility officials said Friday, and sheriff’s deputies warned people returning to communities outside the city to come equipped like survivalists because of the lack of basic services in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida. The...
Cleanup and mourning continue after Ida soaks Northeast
The cleanup — and mourning — continued Friday as the Northeast U.S. recovered from record-breaking rainfall from the remnants of Hurricane Ida. At least 48 people in five states died as storm water cascaded into people’s homes and engulfed automobiles, overwhelming urban drainage systems never meant to handle so much...
Ex-Cardinal McCarrick, 91, pleads not guilty to sex assault
DEDHAM, Mass. — Former Roman Catholic Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the once-powerful American prelate who was expelled from the priesthood for sexual abuse, pleaded not guilty Friday to sexually assaulting a 16-year-old boy during a wedding reception in Massachusetts nearly 50 years ago. McCarrick, 91, wore a mask and entered suburban...
