Judge sets hearing on former Penn State president Graham Spanier’s pending jail sentence
HARRISBURG — Graham Spanier’s lawyers are expected to be in a Pennsylvania courtroom next month as a judge considers whether the former Penn State president should have to report to jail to start serving his sentence related to the Jerry Sandusky child molestation scandal. Dauphin County President Judge John F....
Hundreds show up in Nebraska for fight over name JoshVideo
LINCOLN, Neb. — A fight over the name of Josh drew a crowd from around the country to a Nebraska park Saturday for a heated pool-noodle brawl. It all started a year ago when pandemic boredom set in and Josh Swain, a 22-year-old college student from Tucson, Ariz., messaged others...
Irwin OKs plans for development at Penn-Irwin Motel site
The former Penn-Irwin Motel property along Route 30 in Irwin is a step closer to a transformation after officials approved plans for the site, although much of the hillside will be removed before construction can begin. Irwin Borough approved development plans submitted by Colony Development Co. of North Huntingdon for...
Mother, son killed by bulls in Germany
BERLIN — Police say an 81-year-old woman and her 56-year-old son are believed to have been killed by bulls at their farm in western Germany. Southern Hesse police said officers were alerted Monday morning that two bulls were on the loose in the town of Lorsch, about 30 miles south...
Trump ally Doug Collins won’t run for Senate or Georgia governor
ATLANTA — Georgia Republican Doug Collins, a favorite of former President Donald Trump, says he doesn’t plan to run for governor or U.S. Senate in 2022. The former congressman’s announcement Monday makes it less likely there will be a top-drawer primary challenger to Gov. Brian Kemp, a frequent target of...
Germany debates privileges for those who’ve been vaccinated
BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel and the governors of Germany’s 16 states on Monday discussed whether people who have been fully vaccinated against covid-19 should be exempt from certain restrictions put in place to curb the spread of the virus. The issue of special privileges for vaccinated people has been...
Syria rights group urges world to reject presidential vote
BEIRUT — A leading Syrian rights group Monday called on the international community to reject next month’s presidential elections because they will take place under the rule of President Bashar Assad, who is implicated in war crimes. Paris-based Syrian Network for Human Rights, describing the elections as a sham, said...
Supreme Court to take up right to carry gun for self-defense
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear an appeal to expand gun rights in the United States in a New York case over the right to carry a firearm in public for self-defense. The case marks the court’s first foray into gun rights since Justice Amy Coney...
EU finalizing plans to allow U.S. tourists back this summer
BRUSSELS — The European Union is finalizing plans to allow tourists from the United States to travel to the 27-nation bloc this summer, officials said Monday. More than a year after the EU restricted travel to the region to a bare minimum in a bid to contain the pandemic, the...
Pa. student’s Snapchat profanity leads to high court speech case
WASHINGTON — Fourteen-year-old Brandi Levy was having that kind of day where she just wanted to scream. So she did, in a profanity-laced posting on Snapchat that has, improbably, ended up before the Supreme Court in the most significant case on student speech in more than 50 years. At issue...
Russian authorities suspend operation of Navalny’s offices
MOSCOW — Russian authorities on Monday ordered the offices of imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny to suspend all of their activities pending a court ruling on whether to ban them as an extremist group. The injunction by the Moscow prosecutor’s office was posted on social media by Navalny’s allies. The...
Biden expanding summer food program for 34 million schoolchildren
The Biden administration is expanding a program to feed as many as 34 million schoolchildren during the summer months, using funds from the coronavirus relief package approved in March. The Agriculture Department is announcing Monday that it will continue through the summer a payments program that replaced school meals because...
France reopens schools as virus patients numbers peak
PARIS — Nursery and primary schools reopened on Monday across France after a three-week closure in the first step out of the country’s partial lockdown, despite numbers of covid-19 patients in intensive care units reaching their highest level since last spring. Authorities argue that daily numbers of new infections have...
Michigan became hotspot as variants rose and vigilance waned
ROYAL OAK, Mich. — Eric Gala passed up an opportunity to get a coronavirus vaccine when shots became available in Michigan, and he admits not taking the virus seriously enough. Then he got sick with what he thought was the flu. He thought he would sweat it out and then...
Airline bans Alaska state senator for violating mask rules
JUNEAU — Alaska Airlines has banned an Alaska state senator for refusing to follow mask requirements. “We have notified Senator Lora Reinbold that she is not permitted to fly with us for her continued refusal to comply with employee instruction regarding the current mask policy,” spokesman Tim Thompson told the...
EU reportedly set to allow vaccinated U.S. tourists to visit this summer
The European Union plans to open its doors this summer to U.S. tourists who’ve been fully vaccinated against covid-19, The New York Times reported, citing the head of the bloc’s executive body. The change, which would come under certain conditions, would end the bloc’s more than one-year ban of nonessential...
Florida family may spend life in prison after ‘church’ sold bleach as covid-19 cure
MIAMI — A federal grand jury brought charges against members of a Bradenton family nearly a year after they were arrested for selling bleach that they claimed to be a cure for the covid-19 virus. Mark Grenon and his three sons — Jonathan, Jordan and Joseph — face several charges...
Prototype of 1st U.S. dollar coins auctioned for $840,000
A piece of copper that was struck by the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia in 1794 and was a prototype for the fledgling nation’s money was auctioned off for $840,000, considerably more than expected, an official said. Heritage auctions spokesman Eric Bradley said the “No Stars Flowing Hair Dollar” opened at...
Indonesia says 53 crew of lost sub are dead, wreckage foundVideo
BANYUWANGI, Indonesia — Indonesia’s military on Sunday officially said all 53 crew members from a submarine that sank and broke apart last week are dead, and that search teams had located the vessel’s wreckage on the ocean floor. The grim announcement comes a day after Indonesia said the submarine was...
Police seek attacker who kicked Chinese American man in headVideo
NEW YORK — A 61-year-old Chinese American man was attacked by a man who kicked him repeatedly in the head in East Harlem, police said. The man was collecting cans when he was attacked from behind, knocked to the ground and kicked in the head shortly after 8 p.m. Friday....
The end of U.S. mass vaccination is coming sooner than laterVideo
After three months of vaccination across the United States, a majority of American adults have gotten shots, and the effort will soon shift from mass inoculation to mop-up. As of Saturday, 138.6 million people in the U.S. have received at least one covid-19 vaccine shot. About 1.3 million more are...
Dallas-area man suspected of killing mother, sisterVideo
ALLEN, Texas — A Dallas-area man has been arrested while awaiting an airline flight out of state and charged with capital murder in the deaths of his mother and sister, police said Sunday. Isil Borat, 51, and daughter Burcu Hezar, 17, were found knifed to death in their Allen, Texas,...
Coronavirus ‘swallowing’ people in India; crematoriums overwhelmedVideo
NEW DELHI — With life-saving oxygen in short supply, family members in India are left on their own to ferry coronavirus patients from hospital to hospital in search of treatment as the country is engulfed in a devastating new surge of infections. Too often their efforts end in mourning. The...
Last week of April honors ‘father of Pennsylvania forestry,’ Joseph T. Rothrock
Joseph T. Rothrock dedicated much of his life to educating Pennsylvanians about the importance of the forests and natural areas that were once much more abundant in the Keystone State. Born in 1839 in Mifflin County, Rothrock began his career as a botanist and surgeon before starting the “Michaux Forestry...
Why it’s dangerous that workers in Pa. prisons, covid-19 hot spots, aren’t getting vaccinated
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 — A delayed upgrade to the state Department of Corrections’ dashboard on covid-19 rates in prisons has revealed that only...
