Tackling a top killer of New Jersey’s bald eagles: electrocution
A female bald eagle took flight in September 2014 from the Maurice River in New Jersey’s Cumberland County, soaring westward thousands of feet over the Delaware Bay. Nicknamed Millville after her hometown, she made her way to the upper Chesapeake Bay, 50 miles away, according to GPS tracking. Two months...
New York readies to say goodbye to a staple of city life: plastic shopping bags
NEW YORK — Bag the ban, say some business leaders and New Yorkers ahead of regulations barring a staple of city life. “I can’t do without it!” Barbara White, 70, said while clutching her plastic bags Saturday outside an East Harlem grocery store. “I’m so used to this kind of...
Sanders on top: Key takeaways from the Nevada caucuses
LAS VEGAS — Sen. Bernie Sanders cruised to victory in the Nevada caucuses, heartening his supporters and stoking alarm among moderates who fear he is too liberal and would lose to President Donald Trump. Takeaways from the Nevada caucuses: SANDERS’ PRESIDENTIAL BID GETS ROCKET FUEL Sanders’ convincing win means there...
Sanders wins Nevada caucuses, takes national Democratic lead
LAS VEGAS — Bernie Sanders scored a resounding victory in Nevada’s presidential caucuses on Saturday, cementing his status as the Democrats’ national front-runner amid escalating tensions over whether he’s too liberal to defeat President Donald Trump. While Sanders scored a strong victory, a cluster of candidates fought for a distant...
Charter bus rollover kills 3, injures 18 outside San Diego
PALA MESA, Calif. — A charter bus swerved on a rain-slicked Southern California highway and rolled down an embankment Saturday, killing three people and injuring 18 others, authorities said. Several passengers were thrown from the bus, and one of the dead was trapped under the vehicle after it landed on...
By decoding the coronavirus genome, scientists seek the upper hand against COVID-19
The genetic code of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is only about 30,000 characters long, but what a story it tells. Those nucleotides conceal secrets of the virus’ past, including its origins, its passage among families and its journey to distant ports. They signal how long it has been at...
After learning of Whitey Bulger LSD tests, juror has regrets
EASTHAM, Mass. — One of the jurors who convicted notorious crime boss James “Whitey” Bulger says she regrets her decision after learning that he was an unwitting participant in a covert CIA experiment with LSD. Bulger terrorized Boston from the 1970s into the 1990s with a campaign of murder, extortion,...
Couple who vanished during California getaway found alive
INVERNESS, Calif. — An academic couple who vanished during a getaway in the woods of Northern California was found Saturday by search-and-rescue workers who spent almost a week looking for them and gave up hopes of finding them alive. The Marin County Sheriff’s office tweeted that two helicopter crews airlifted...
Case of missing children tied to doomsday beliefs, 3 deaths
HONOLULU — Family members used to describe Lori Vallow as an attentive mother who had her kids’ best interests at heart. But that was before she reportedly declared herself a god sent to prepare the world for an imminent apocalypse. Before three untimely deaths of people surrounding her. Before her...
This comedian says Border Patrol pulled him off a bus. Now he’s suing the government
SEATTLE — Libyan funny guy Mohanad Elshieky often riffs on cross-cultural quirks, such as the tendency of Americans to tell him that in this country, his name is pronounced “Mohammed.” “It’s just not how names work, they’re not based on location,” the New York-based comedian said in a Comedy Central...
White supremacists greater threat to NJ citizens than Al-Qaida and ISIS, study says
New Jersey residents are more likely to be attacked by a white supremacist than Al-Qaida. That is the grim assessment of a comprehensive New Jersey terrorism study released Friday. The state’s “Terrorism Threat Assessment” report — 42 pages long — noted that officials have raised the threat level from white...
Tobacco company must pay $12.5 million to widow of man who died of lung disease, jury finds
MIAMI — James “Jim” McHugh started smoking when he was a teenager and continued to do so for nearly five decades. He tried quitting cold turkey. He tried chewing gum. He even tried hypnosis. By the time he found a prescription medicine that could help him, he was a very...
Marchers support Assange ahead of London extradition hearing
LONDON — Hundreds of supporters of Julian Assange marched through London on Saturday to pressure the U.K. government into refusing to extradite the WikiLeaks founder to the United States to face spying charges. Famous Britons, including Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, Pretenders singer Chrissie Hynde and fashion designer Vivienne Westwood joined...
Autopsy photos shown in trial of Mississippi man charged with killing 8
MAGNOLIA, Miss. — A deputy sheriff responding to a domestic dispute was killed by a shot to the left side of his head, a forensic pathologist testified Friday in the death-penalty trial of a man charged with killing the deputy and seven other people in Mississippi. The defendant, Willie Cory...
Virus spreads in South Korean city as thousands are screened
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea on Saturday reported an eight-fold jump in viral infections in four days to 433, most of them linked to a church and a hospital in and around the nation’s fourth-largest city, where health workers scrambled to screen thousands of worshippers. The country also reported...
DEA agent accused of conspiring with Colombian drug cartel
MIAMI — A once-standout U.S. federal narcotics agent known for spending lavishly on luxury cars and Tiffany jewelry has been arrested on charges of conspiring to launder money with the same Colombian drug cartel he was supposed to be fighting. Jose Irizarry and his wife were arrested Friday at their...
Latrobe Lions Club cancels dementia presentation
Editor’s note: Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the Latrobe Lions Club has announced that a presentation on dementia it was co-sponsoring with the Latrobe Area Historical Society has been cancelled. Alzheimer’s disease, the most common cause of dementia among older adults, is the sixth leading cause of death in the...
Casey, Toomey toe party lines as presidential election looms in Pennsylvania — a critical swing stateVideo
Pennsylvania’s U.S. senators Bob Casey, a Democrat from Scranton, and Pat Toomey, the Lehigh Valley Republican, were among the more muted voices throughout acrimonious impeachment proceedings against President Trump. But with no political races of their own this year, their voices are growing as they line up along party positions...
McConnell-linked group funds ads helping North Carolina Democrat
RALEIGH, N.C. — A political committee linked to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is funding ads and other campaign materials designed to meddle in North Carolina’s Democratic Senate primary, the group acknowledged on Friday. Campaign finance documents filed late Thursday show the Faith and Power PAC receiving all of its...
Man guilty of killing 2 who tried to stop his slurs on train
PORTLAND, Ore. — A man accused of fatally stabbing two people who prosecutors say tried to stop his racist tirade against two young black women on a Portland, Oregon, commuter train was convicted of murder Friday after an emotional trial that featured testimony from both women and the sole survivor...
AP Exclusive: DEA agent accused of conspiring with cartel
MIAMI — A once-standout U.S. federal narcotics agent known for spending lavishly on luxury cars and Tiffany jewelry has been arrested on charges of conspiring to launder money with the same Colombian drug cartel he was supposed to be fighting. Jose Irizarry and his wife were arrested Friday at their...
Kobe Bryant’s pilot had been disciplined by FAA over weather-related flight violation
LOS ANGELES — The pilot of the helicopter that crashed into a Calabasas hillside last month, killing NBA star Kobe Bryant and eight others, violated federal flight rules in 2015 when he flew into busy airspace near Los Angeles International Airport despite being ordered not to by air traffic control,...
Penn State says it has settled all claims with the family of Joe Paterno
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Following eight years of rocky relations in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal, Pennsylvania State University has made peace with the family of Joe Paterno. The head of Penn State’s board of trustees announced Friday that the school had resolved all outstanding...
Greyhound to stop allowing immigration checks on buses
SEATTLE — Greyhound, the nation’s largest bus company, said Friday it will stop allowing Border Patrol agents without a warrant to board its buses to conduct routine immigration checks. The company’s announcement came one week after The Associated Press reported on a leaked Border Patrol memo confirming that agents can’t...
Roman Forum find could be shrine to Rome’s founder, Romulus
ROME — Italian archaeologists unveiled to the media Friday an exciting new find from the Roman Forum, which they say could be the lost shrine dedicated some 2,600 years ago to Romulus, Rome’s legendary founder and first king. Visually, the discovery first announced Tuesday is not very remarkable: Peering down...
