Californians endure intense weekend of wildfire fearsVideo
After four years of homelessness, Kesia Studebaker thought she finally landed on her feet when she found a job cooking in a diner and moved into a house in the small community of Greenville. She had been renting for three months and hoped the stability would help her win back...
GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy knocks bans on local mask mandates
WASHINGTON — Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy says he disagrees with GOP governors in Florida and Texas who are blocking mask mandates even as covid-19 cases spike higher. Cassidy, a Louisiana physician, said Sunday that “local officials should be listened to” if hospital ICUs in a community are full because of...
Cuomo digs in, shows no sign of heeding calls to resign
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has dug in for the fight of his political life despite the threat of potential criminal investigations and widespread calls for his impeachment over findings that he sexually harassed 11 women, including close aides. Scores of Democrats, including President Joe Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi...
Hundreds in Warsaw protest political repression in Belarus
Hundreds of people, among them many Belarusians living in exile in Poland, marched Sunday in Warsaw to protest political repression in neighboring Belarus — a demonstration held on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the Belarus presidential election that they consider rigged. Many carried the Belarusian opposition’s red-and-white flag...
Census experts puzzled by high rate of unanswered questions
Census Bureau statisticians and outside experts are trying to unravel a mystery: Why were so many questions about households in the 2020 census left unanswered? Residents did not respond to a multitude of questions about sex, race, Hispanic background, family relationships and age, even when providing a count of the...
Crime historian conducts dig for D.B. Cooper case evidence
Nearly 50 years after skyjacker D.B. Cooper vanished out the back of a Boeing 727 into freezing Northwest rain — wearing a business suit, a parachute and a pack with $200,000 in cash — a crime historian is conducting a dig on the banks of the Columbia River in Vancouver,...
Mark Zuckerberg’s cash fuels GOP suspicion and new election rules
When Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg donated $400 million to help fund election offices as they scrambled to deal with the coronavirus pandemic late last summer, he said he hoped he would never have to do it again. Republican legislatures are granting him that wish. At least eight GOP-controlled states have...
Fauci hopeful covid vaccines get full OK by FDA within weeks
The U.S. government’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said Sunday that he was hopeful the Food and Drug Administration will give full approval to the coronavirus vaccine by month’s end and predicted the potential move will spur a wave of vaccine mandates in the private sector as well...
New push to disband Minneapolis police after Floyd’s death
On a hot summer afternoon, Latrell Snider and his partner knocked on Abdullahi Mohamed’s door, introduced themselves and launched their pitch: Minneapolis, they said, has a chance to replace its police department with something new, and they wanted Mohamed’s support. With his children looking on from a living room window,...
Taliban takes key northern Afghan cities as battles rage on
KABUL — Taliban fighters seized most of the capital of northern Afghanistan’s key Kunduz province on Sunday, and took another neighboring provincial capital after a monthlong siege. The advances were the latest in a series of blows to government forces as U.S. troops complete their pullout after nearly two decades...
Some praise, some doubts as Facebook rolls out a prayer tool
Facebook already asks for your thoughts. Now it wants your prayers. The social media giant has rolled out a new prayer request feature, a tool embraced by some religious leaders as a cutting-edge way to engage the faithful online. Others are eyeing it warily as they weigh its usefulness against...
Markie Post, TV veteran actor of ‘Night Court,’ dies at 70
Markie Post, who played the public defender in the 1980s sitcom “Night Court” and was a regular presence on television for four decades, has died. She was 70. Post’s manager, Ellen Lubin Sanitsky, said Post died Saturday in Los Angeles after a years-long battle with cancer. Post was a longtime...
Pandemic set off deadly rise in speeding that hasn’t stopped
Motorists put the pedal to the metal during the pandemic and police are worried as roads get busy with the final stretch of summer travel. The latest data shows the number of highway deaths in 2020 was the greatest in more than a decade even though cars and trucks drove...
Texas Democrats continue holdout, don’t show for new session
Texas Democrats still refused to return to the state Capitol on Saturday as Gov. Greg Abbott began a third attempt at passing new election laws, prolonging a monthslong standoff that ramped up in July when dozens of Democratic state lawmakers left the state and hunkered down in Washington, D.C. “A...
Hezbollah leader vows retaliation for future Israeli attacks
The leader of the militant Hezbollah group said Saturday his group will retaliate against any future Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon, a day after his supporters fired a barrage of rockets toward Israel. Hassan Nasrallah said it would be wrong to assume Hezbollah would be constrained by internal divisions in Lebanon,...
Wildfires rampage in Greek forests, cut large island in half
Three large wildfires churned across Greece on Saturday, with one threatening whole towns and cutting Evia, the country’s second-largest island, in half. Others engulfed forested mountainsides and skirted ancient sites, leaving behind a trail of destruction that one official described as “a biblical catastrophe.” A flotilla of ten ships —...
Kool & the Gang co-founder Dennis Thomas dead at age 70
Dennis “Dee Tee” Thomas, a founding member of the long-running soul-funk band Kool & the Gang known for such hits as “Celebration” and “Get Down On It,” has died. He was 70. He died peacefully in his sleep Saturday in New Jersey, where he was a resident of Montclair, according...
Theft charges brought down a state lawmaker. But Pa.’s taxpayer-funded system for perks was already ripe for abuse.
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 — Theft charges against a Philadelphia-area Democrat highlight Pennsylvania’s lax rules for reimbursing lawmakers with taxpayer and donor money, two...
Pa. patients swear by cannabis as tool to fight opioid addiction. The research still isn’t there.
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. BERNVILLE — The back pain started when Luke Shultz was a teenager, and it got worse. When he was in his...
Senate’s key vote advances Biden’s $1T infrastructure bill
The Senate moved closer to passing a $1 trillion infrastructure package Saturday after lawmakers from both parties came together and voted to clear a key procedural hurdle. More votes will be needed before Senate passage of one of President Joe Biden’s top priorities. The measure would provide a massive injection...
Colorado mudslides wreak havoc on major transportation route
As ominous storm clouds gathered in western Colorado over a large area blackened by a recent wildfire, torrential rain fell and the charred land stripped of vegetation gave way, sending a rush of mud and boulders tumbling down steep canyon walls and onto a major highway. The July 29 mudslides...
U.S. now averaging 100,000 new covid-19 infections a day
The U.S. is now averaging 100,000 new covid-19 infections a day, returning to a milestone last seen during the winter surge in another bleak reminder of how quickly the delta variant has spread through the country. Health officials fear that cases, hospitalizations and deaths will continue to soar if more...
Want to pretend to live on Mars? For a whole year? Apply now
Want to find your inner Matt Damon and spend a year pretending you are isolated on Mars? NASA has a job for you. To prepare for eventually sending astronauts to Mars, NASA began taking applications Friday for four people to live for a year in Mars Dune Alpha. That’s a...
Pause on student loan payments extended through January
The Biden administration on Friday issued what it says will be the final extension to a student loan moratorium that has allowed millions of Americans to put off debt payments during the pandemic. Under the action, payments on federal student loans will remain paused through Jan. 31, 2022. Interest rates...
9/11 families challenge Biden to release classified reports or avoid 20th anniversary ceremonies
Nearly two decades after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a group of survivors who lost loved ones and first responders afflicted with lingering illnesses are asking President Biden to avoid ceremonies marking the 20th anniversary of the attacks next month. About 1,800 who lost loved ones as well as first responders...
