Chevron ordered to halt oil spill into California canyon
SAN FRANCISCO — California regulators say Chevron has not done enough to stop a massive oil spill that dumped about 800,000 gallons of crude oil and water into a Kern County canyon, and they want the company to take further action to halt the flow. The seep out of the...
Man charged after 21-hour standoff atop old blast furnace
BETHLEHEM — A man who climbed atop the rusting blast furnace at a former eastern Pennsylvania steel mill, prompting evacuation of an arts and entertainment venue now at the site, is now facing a felony charge of risking a catastrophe. Jonathan David Wallace, 25, of Mertztown was also charged Sunday...
Decorated soldier dies in combat operations in Afghanistan
FORT BRAGG, N.C. — A decorated Special Forces company sergeant major has died during combat in Afghanistan, U.S. military officials said Sunday. James G. “Ryan” Sartor, 40, was killed Saturday during combat operations in Faryab Province, according to Lt. Col. Loren Bymer, spokesman for the U.S. Army Special Operations Command....
Ohio spends $4M to clean up 396,000 bags of roadside litter
CINCINNATI — Ah, the open road. Sunshine. The wind in your hair. Miles and miles of — garbage. Every year, the Ohio Department of Transportation picks up heaps and heaps of trash from the side of the road. In 2018, it was more than 396,000 trash bags full. And that’s...
Churches jump into action with threat of immigration sweeps
CHICAGO — Religious leaders across the country used their pulpits Sunday to quell concerns in immigrant communities and spring into action as nationwide immigration enforcement sweeps loomed. A Chicago priest talked during his homily about the compassion of a border activist accused of harboring illegal immigrants, while another city church...
Man dies after being infected with flesh-eating bacteria in Florida
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A Tennessee man died this week after being infected with a flesh-eating bacteria during a trip to a Florida beach. According to news reports, the man became ill shortly after returning from vacation in Destin Beach where he was visiting family for the 4th of July. Cheryl...
A healthy lifestyle may offset genetic risk for Alzheimer’s
LOS ANGELES — A healthy lifestyle can cut your risk of developing Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia even if you have genes that raise your risk for these mind-destroying diseases, a large study has found. People with high genetic risk and poor health habits were about three times more...
Trump defends border detention camps
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is defending the conditions of the border detention facilities visited by Vice President Mike Pence on Friday. Trump tweeted Sunday, saying the children’s rooms were “well run and clean” while the men’s facilities were “clean but crowded.” The president’s account flies in the face of...
Leave the U.S., Trump tells liberal Democratic congresswomenVideo
WASHINGTON — Starkly injecting race into his criticism of liberal Democrats, President Trump said Sunday that four congresswomen of color should go back to the “broken and crime infested” countries they came from, ignoring the fact that all of the women are American citizens and three were born in the...
Toxic lake in Russia’s Siberia becomes selfie sensation
MOSCOW — Residents of a city in Siberia don’t need to fly off to tropical locales for picturesque selfies taken by pristine turquoise waters. Thousands of Novosibirsk residents — ranging from scantily clad women to newlyweds — have been busy instagramming near a bright blue lake nicknamed the “Siberian Maldives.”...
Thousands left in the dark during NYC power outage
NEW YORK — On the anniversary of a 1977 blackout that left most of New York City without power, a massive power outage on a hot Saturday night in Manhattan preemptively brought the curtain down on Broadway shows and packed streets with people wielding cellphones as flashlights amid a cacophony...
Barry’s flood threat lingers as storm slowly sweeps inland
NEW ORLEANS — Tropical Depression Barry dumped rain as it slowly swept inland through Gulf Coast states Sunday, sparing New Orleans from a direct hit but stoking fears elsewhere of flooding, tornadoes, and prolonged power outages. Though the system was downgraded to a tropical depression Sunday afternoon and its wind...
Extremist attack on Somali hotel leaves 26 dead
MOGADISHU, Somalia — Islamic terrorists blew up the gate of a Somali hotel with a car bomb and took over the building for more than 14 hours, leaving 26 people dead before Somali forces who besieged the hotel overnight killed the attackers. The victims included a prominent Canadian-Somali journalist ....
New election systems use vulnerable software
WASHINGTON — Pennsylvania’s message was clear: The state was taking a big step to keep its elections from being hacked in 2020. In April 2018, its top election official told counties they had to update their systems. So far, nearly 60% have taken action, with $14.15 million of mostly federal...
NYC power outage knocks out subways, businesses, elevators
NEW YORK — Authorities were scrambling to restore electricity to Manhattan following a power outage that knocked out Times Square’s towering electronic screens and darkened marquees in the theater district and left businesses without electricity, elevators stuck and subway cars stalled. A transformer fire Saturday evening at West 64th Street...
Greensburg man remembered for love of newspapers, passion for life
When Dante Polla was a teenager, he would talk with the neighbors about what was happening in the community, write it up, print it out and hand out his own newspaper. His passion for newspapers followed him throughout his life, no matter what career he was in, and eventually led...
Fort Armstrong Rodeo 2019
A look at the Fort Armstrong Rodeo at Crooked Creek Horse Park in Ford City. The event took place Friday....
Weakened Barry rolls into Louisiana, drenches Gulf Coast
NEW ORLEANS — Barry rolled into the Louisiana coast Saturday, flooding highways, forcing people to scramble to rooftops and dumping heavy rain that officials had feared could test the levees and pumps that were bolstered after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005. After briefly becoming a Category 1 hurricane,...
As storm moved in, 1 couple moved up their wedding ceremony
NEW ORLEANS — As New Orleans hunkered down ahead of Tropical Storm Barry Friday, news photographers from across the city could be found together in a church, witnessing the wedding of one of their own. Associated Press photographer Gerald Herbert and Lucy Sikes weren’t supposed to get married Friday night....
Apollo 11 at 50: Celebrating first steps on another world
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A half-century ago, in the middle of a mean year of war, famine, violence in the streets and the widening of the generation gap, men from planet Earth stepped onto another world for the first time, uniting people around the globe in a way not seen...
Barr: Justice Dept. is ‘all in’ on criminal justice overhaul
EDGEFIELD, S.C. — Leroy Nolan has spent the last 26 years behind bars at a federal prison for a drug conviction. In the prison factory, he works making T-shirts, backpacks and other products that are later sold to government agencies, nonprofits and others. But what has become a decades-long routine...
Rare sea turtles smash nesting records in Georgia, Carolinas
SAVANNAH, Ga. — Rare sea turtles are smashing nesting records this summer on beaches in the Southeast, with scientists crediting the egg-laying boom to conservation measures that began more than 30 years ago. Giant loggerhead sea turtles weighing up to 300 pounds crawl ashore to dig nests in the sand...
Man climbs atop Bethlehem blast furnace, prompting concert evacuation
Authorities say a man climbed to the top of a blast furnace in Bethlehem, Pa. and refused to come down, prompting evacuation of a nearby arts and entertainment venue. Venue operator ArtsQuest tweeted Saturday that the “emergency situation” that began Friday night at the SteelStacks campus was still going on,...
Jeffrey Epstein’s New Mexico ranch linked to investigation
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — At the center of Jeffrey Epstein’s secluded New Mexico ranch sits a sprawling residence the financier built decades ago — complete with plans for a 4,000-square-foot courtyard, a living room roughly the size of the average American home and a nearby private airplane runway. Known as the...
Earthquakes shake up Yucca Mountain nuke dump talk in Nevada
LAS VEGAS — Recent California earthquakes that rattled Las Vegas have shaken up arguments on both sides of a stalled federal plan to entomb nuclear waste beneath a long-studied site in southern Nevada. Wyoming Republican Sen. John Barrasso said this week his legislation to jump-start the process to open the...
