News category, Page 662

DENVER — Stranded at home amid pandemic lockdowns in spring 2020, Emma Warford stumbled down a social media rabbit hole in her quest to get in shape. Viral 28-day fitness challenges. YouTubers promising “hourglass abs.” Diet videos where slim-stomached influencers peddled calorie-tracking apps. Warford, then a 15-year-old starting volleyball player,...

ORLANDO, Fla. — Unions for service workers at Walt Disney World reached a tentative deal with the company on Thursday that would raise the starting minimum wage from $15 to $18 an hour in a pact that could set the basement for starting pay throughout central Florida’s sprawling tourism industry....

NEW YORK — For the first time, autism is being diagnosed more frequently in Black and Hispanic children than in white kids in the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday. Among all U.S. 8-year-olds, 1 in 36 had autism in 2020, the CDC estimated. That’s up...

HARRISBURG, Pa. — Anti-gun violence advocates rallied Thursday and packed into a friendly legislative hearing in Pennsylvania, where a politically divided government has fought firearms policy to a virtual standstill for decades, and rising gun violence has gripped the state’s largest city. The March For Our Lives at the state...

WASHINGTON — U.S. lawmakers grilled the CEO of TikTok over data security and harmful content Thursday, responding skeptically during a tense committee hearing to his assurances that the hugely popular video-sharing app prioritizes user safety and should not be banned. Shou Zi Chew’s rare public appearance came at a crucial...

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military must be ready for possible confrontation with China, the Pentagon’s leaders said Thursday, pushing Congress to approve the Defense Department’s proposed $842 billion budget, which would modernize the force in Asia and around the world. “This is a strategy-driven budget — and one driven by...

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s president on Thursday made his third visit in two days to areas that have felt the brunt of Russia’s war, with a trip to the southern Kherson region that was retaken from the Kremlin’s forces, and as a senior Kyiv commander hinted that a brewing Ukrainian...

A rural hospital in northern Idaho will stop delivering babies or providing other obstetrical care, citing a shifting legal climate in which recently enacted state laws could subject physicians to prosecution for providing abortions, among other reasons. Bonner General Health in Sandpoint will discontinue obstetrical services in mid-May. It also...

WASHINGTON — A Pennsylvania woman linked to a far-right extremist movement was sentenced on Thursday to three years in prison for storming the U.S. Capitol, where she invaded then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office with other rioters. Riley June Williams, 23, of Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, was charged but not convicted of helping...

Former President Donald Trump insisted Thursday that he is “100% INNOCENT” in the Stormy Daniels hush money case and attacked Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg as an “animal.” In his latest outburst, Trump accused Bragg of “carrying out the plans of the radical left lunatics” by investigating him for paying...

HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman’s office said Thursday that he is expected to return soon to the chamber, although Democratic leaders are giving no timeline five weeks after he sought inpatient treatment for clinical depression. Fetterman, 53, was weeks into his service in Washington and still recovering from the...

NEW YORK — A police officer rappelled down a Manhattan skyscraper to stop a man — who was facing financial fraud charges — from jumping out of a 31st-floor window. The daring arrest happened after federal agents went to the man’s apartment near Carnegie Hall on Wednesday morning to take...

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Embattled South Carolina Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom will resign next month after a $3.5 billion accounting error in the year-end financial report he oversaw. The state’s top accountant will leave the elected post he has held for 20 years on April 30, according to a copy of...

WOODLAWN, Md. — New details are emerging about a crash along the Baltimore beltway Wednesday that left six construction workers dead after a driver lost control of her vehicle, which went careening into a work zone, according to Maryland State Police. Lisa Adrienna Lea, 54, was identified as the driver...

MOSCOW — A top Russian security official warned Thursday about the rising threat of a nuclear war and blasted a German minister for threatening Russian President Vladimir Putin with arrest, saying that such action would amount to a declaration of war and trigger a Russian strike on Germany. Dmitry Medvedev,...

NEW YORK — Nearly 200 years after Ludwig van Beethoven’s death, researchers pulled DNA from strands of his hair, searching for clues about the health problems and hearing loss that plagued him. They weren’t able to crack the case of the German composer’s deafness or severe stomach ailments. But they...

WASHINGTON — Joe Biden likes to say he’s the most pro-union president in U.S. history. When he announces his expected reelection campaign in the coming weeks, he’ll get the chance to prove it to his own staffers. Workers on his 2024 campaign will be unionized, political allies say, making him...

NEW YORK — Attempted book bans and restrictions at school and public libraries continue to surge, setting a record in 2022, according to a new report from the American Library Association being released Thursday. More than 1,200 challenges were compiled by the association in 2022, nearly double the then-record total...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The Muslim holy month of Ramadan began at sundown on Wednesday, as the faithful prepared for a month of dawn-to-dusk fasting intended to bring them closer to God and to remind them of the suffering of those less fortunate. For the next 30 days, Muslims...

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court in a sealed order Wednesday directed a lawyer for Donald Trump to turn over to prosecutors documents in the investigation into the former president’s retention of classified records at his Florida estate. The ruling is a significant win for the Justice Department, which has...

WASHINGTON — A bipartisan consensus that Congress should act to toughen regulations on railroads emerged Wednesday as senators heard fresh testimony on the fiery hazardous train derailment last month on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border. Both Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Commerce Committee peppered Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw with questions...

SALEM, Ore. — More than 119,000 people have been injured by tear gas and other chemical irritants around the world since 2015 and some 2,000 suffered injuries from “less lethal” impact projectiles, according to a report released Wednesday. Physicians for Human Rights and the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations,...

Moderna’s CEO on Wednesday defended a plan to more than quadruple the company’s covid-19 vaccine price, but he also said the drugmaker will work to ensure patients continue paying nothing at drugstores or clinics. Stephane Bancel told the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions that the drugmaker will...

WASHINGTON — The results of the long-delayed government review of the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan will be released next month, the White House announced Wednesday, with Congress and the public set to see an assessment of what went wrong as America ended its longest war. The August 2021 pullout...

No one is objecting to a settlement agreement to resolve allegations of workplace safety violations in the 2021 shooting death of a cinematographer by Alec Baldwin on the set of a Western movie. After a 20-day vetting period with no objections, the agreement between New Mexico workplace safety regulators and...