Scammers seize on U.S. election, but it’s not votes they want
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The email from a political action committee seemed harmless: If you support Joe Biden, it urged, click here to make sure you’re registered to vote. But Harvard University graduate student Maya James did not click. Instead, she Googled the name of the soliciting PAC. It didn’t exist...
Pence rallies Trump supporters in Reading: ‘Road to victory runs right through Pennsylvania’
READING — Vice President Mike Pence returned to the critical battleground state of Pennsylvania on Saturday, declaring President Donald Trump a champion of the “forgotten men and women of America” and blasting Joe Biden as a “Trojan Horse for the radical left.” “The road to victory runs right through Pennsylvania,”...
Organizers exhort women to vote for change at U.S. rallies
Thousands of mostly young women in masks rallied Saturday in the nation’s capital and other U.S. cities, exhorting voters to oppose President Donald Trump and his fellow Republican candidates in the Nov. 3 elections. The latest of rallies that began with a massive women’s march the day after Trump’s January...
Trump leans into fear tactics in bid to win Midwest states
MUSKEGON, Michigan — President Donald Trump leaned into fear tactics Saturday as he accused the left of trying to “erase American history, purge American values and destroy the American way of life” in a late reelection pitch to voters in Michigan. “The Democrat Party you once knew doesn’t exist,” Trump...
Pennsylvania reports 2nd-highest covid-19 case count
Pennsylvania on Saturday reported 1,857 new coronavirus cases — a staggering 291-case jump from yesterday’s 1,566 — and the second-highest single-day total the state has ever reported. The all-time high for the Keystone State has stood since April 9, when 1,989 cases were reported. The state Department of Health reported...
SF Zoo cites child for finding lemur, police arrest suspect
SAN FRANCISCO — Police said Friday they arrested a man suspected of stealing a ring-tailed lemur from the San Francisco Zoo, where officials rewarded a 5-year-old boy who helped recapture the endangered primate with a lifetime membership. The theft of of Maki, an arthritic 21-year-old lemur, made the news Wednesday...
Trump changes course, approves California relief for 6 fires
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — President Donald Trump’s administration abruptly reversed course and approved California’s application for disaster relief funds to clean up damage from six recent deadly and destructive blazes that have scorched the state, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday. “Just got off the phone with President Trump who has approved...
White House rejects Putin response to U.S. arms control offer
WASHINGTON — The U.S. and Russia on Friday rejected each other’s proposals for potentially salvaging the last remaining legal constraint on their strategic nuclear forces. President Vladimir Putin called for an unconditional extension of the soon-to-expire New START treaty, and the White House called that a “non-starter.” Adding an edginess...
GOP, Dems hope Supreme Court fight bolsters Senate prospects
WASHINGTON — For Republicans, the nomination fight over Amy Coney Barrett is a chance to seal conservative control of the Supreme Court for decades. For some GOP senators, it’s also a lifeline they hope will preserve their political careers and their party’s control of the chamber in November’s elections. The...
FBI probing if Russia involved in Hunter Biden email story
WASHINGTON — The FBI is investigating whether emails that were published by the New York Post related to Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, are connected to a possible Russian influence operation to spread disinformation, according to a person familiar with the matter. The newspaper said in its story Wednesday that it...
Awash in red ink: U.S. posts record $3.1T 2020 budget deficit
WASHINGTON — The federal budget deficit hit an all-time high of $3.1 trillion in the 2020 budget year, more than double the previous record, as the coronavirus pandemic shrank revenues and sent spending soaring. The Trump administration reported Friday that the deficit for the budget year that ended on Sept....
Trump on defense, courting voters in 2 must-win states
FORT MYERS, Fla. — Backed into a corner and facing financial strains, President Donald Trump fought to defend his sagging reelection bid Friday in a state Republicans haven’t lost in nearly three decades. With Election Day looming, Democrat Joe Biden pushed to keep voters focused on health care in the...
First lady Melania Trump lashes out at reports about friend who tell-all
DORAL, Fla. — Melania Trump lashed out Friday at “self-serving adults” for focusing on her falling out with a friend and adviser, writing that the attention paid to “salacious claims” about the broken relationship comes at the expense of her work on behalf of children. Mrs. Trump also sharply criticized...
Judge finds cases against 5 in Gov. Whitmer plot can move forward
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Prosecutors provided enough evidence to move toward trial for five Michigan men accused of plotting to kidnap the state’s governor, a federal judge ruled Friday in Grand Rapids. A two-day preliminary hearing this week featured testimony by one of the FBI agents who ran the investigation,...
Thousands arrive in Hawaii on 1st day pre-travel testing
About 8,000 people landed in Hawaii on the first day of a pre-travel testing program that allowed travelers to come to the islands without quarantining for two weeks if they could produce a negative coronavirus test. Angela Margos was among the first passengers in San Francisco to get on a...
France: Teacher decapitated, suspect shot dead by police
A history teacher who opened a discussion with students on caricatures of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad was beheaded in a French street on Friday and police have shot dead the suspected killer, authorities said. The French anti-terrorism prosecutor opened an investigation for murder with a suspected terrorist motive, the prosecutor’s office...
News that Wabtec will anchor Pittsburgh area development comes as company lays off 150 in Erie
The same ideas that propelled companies like the Westinghouse Air Brake Company to flourish during the Gilded Age are being used more than a century later by the company’s successor, Wabtec Corp., in its latest venture near Pittsburgh International Airport. In the 1880s, Westinghouse pioneered the railway airbrake and its...
FBI searches headquarters of labor union in Philadelphia
Federal agents have searched two sites connected to a Philadelphia-based union, apparently as part of an ongoing investigation of an indicted powerful labor boss. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the FBI served search warrants Friday at the headquarters of Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and its...
Pennsylvania breaking records in voter registration by mail and in person
More than 2.7 million Pennsylvanians are approved to vote by mail in the upcoming election, and about a quarter have mailed in their ballots, state officials said Friday. “We are right on track to end up right around 3 million, which was our estimate after the primary (election),” Secretary of...
5 takeaways from the dueling presidential town hallsVideo
Voters got to see a presidential debate after all Thursday night. But it wasn’t between President Trump and his Democratic challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden. It was between Trump and NBC News’ Savannah Guthrie, who moderated one of the dueling town hall meetings held simultaneously in place of a...
Biden out-raises Trump $383M to $248M in September
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump was out-raised by Democrat Joe Biden in September and is being outgunned financially by his rival with just weeks to go until Election Day. Trump’s campaign, along with the Republican National Committee and associated groups, raised $247.8 million in September, well short of the $383...
Deadline looms to defuse Pennsylvania’s budget time bomb
HARRISBURG — Months after passing a partial budget that avoided some hard decisions, Pennsylvania’s Legislature and governor face a deadline at the end of November to finish the job and plug a multibillion-dollar deficit. The partially funded budget that Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf signed in May was incomplete by design....
Virus at ‘turning point’ in Europe, hitting at-risk groups
MILAN — Doctors are warning that Europe is at a turning point as the coronavirus surges back across the continent, including among vulnerable people, and governments try to impose restrictions without locking whole economies down. With newly confirmed cases reaching records, the Czech Republic has shut schools and is building...
U.K. says EU trade talks ‘over’ after EU says they’ll continue
LONDON — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Friday that the U.K. must prepare for a no-deal break with the European Union unless there is a “fundamental” change of position from the bloc, as the two sides swapped blame for failing to strike a deal with just weeks until the...
WHO: Study finds 4 drugs have little to no effect on covid
GENEVA — The U.N. health agency says the world’s largest randomized trial of covid-19 treatments found “conclusive evidence” that remdesivir, a drug used to treat U.S. President Donald Trump when he fell ill, has little or no effect on severe cases. The World Health Organization announced Friday the long-awaited results...
