To fill teacher jobs, community colleges offer new degrees
In her second-grade classroom outside Seattle, Fatima Nuñez Ardon often tells her students stories about everyday people realizing their dreams. One day, for example, she talked about Salvadoran American NASA astronaut Francisco Rubio and his journey to the International Space Station. Another day, she told them her own life story...
37 dead, mostly preschoolers, in Thai day care rampage
BANGKOK — A former policeman burst into a day care center in northeastern Thailand on Thursday, killing dozens of children and teachers and then firing on more people as he fled in the deadliest rampage in the nation’s history. The assailant, who authorities said was fired from the force earlier...
Russian missiles slam into Ukrainian city near nuclear plant
KYIV, Ukraine — Russia launched missiles that hit apartment buildings in the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, a local official said Thursday, killing three people and wounding at least 12 in a region that houses Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant and which Moscow illegally annexed. The two strikes, the first...
Analysis: Iran protests persist, becoming threat for Tehran
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Protests in Iran over the death of a 22-year-old woman detained by the country’s morality police have stretched into a third week, even after authorities disrupted the internet, deployed riot troops and attacked perceived enemies abroad. That playbook of repression has worked before, but the...
Fetterman records show light schedule as Pa. lieutenant governor
HARRISBURG — In his campaign for a crucial U.S. Senate seat, Democrat John Fetterman takes credit for reinventing Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor’s office, transforming it from a political pit stop into a “bully pulpit” from which he’s advanced progressive causes. Records from Fetterman’s four years in office, however, offer a different...
Report: Mother of Herschel Walker’s child says he paid for her abortion
ATLANTA — A woman who said Herschel Walker paid for her 2009 abortion is the mother of one of his children, according to a new report Wednesday, undercutting the Georgia Republican Senate candidate’s claims that he didn’t know who she was. The Daily Beast, which first reported Monday on the...
Kidnapped California family, including baby, found deadVideo
SAN FRANCISCO — A baby girl, her parents and uncle who were kidnapped at gunpoint from their central California business two days ago were found dead Wednesday, the sheriff of Merced County said. “Our worst fears have been confirmed,” Sheriff Vern Warnke told reporters Wednesday night. A farmworker found the...
‘Scrubs’ producer Eric Weinberg charged with sex assaults
LOS ANGELES — Eric Weinberg, an executive producer and writer for the hit TV show “Scrubs” and many others, has been charged with sexually assaulting five women that he lured to photo shoots and there could be many more victims, Los Angeles County prosecutors announced Wednesday. Weinberg, 62, was arrested...
Joe Biden, Ron DeSantis join together in Ian recovery effortVideo
FORT MYERS, Florida — President Joe Biden surveyed the devastation of hurricane-ravaged Florida on Wednesday, promising to marshal the power of the federal government to help rebuild as he comforted local residents alongside Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, a potential 2024 foe. Biden praised DeSantis’ handling of the storm recovery as...
Largest North American catfish to be brought back to Pennsylvania rivers
With blue catfish — the largest catfish species in North America — beginning to show up in the Ohio River in southwestern Pennsylvania after an absence of about a century, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission this week launches restoration efforts for the fish in rivers in the state. The...
Appeals court rules against program that protects ‘Dreamers’
A federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled against a decade-old program that protects hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants who came to the country as children, paving the way for more court action on the long-disputed policy. A three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th...
Russian launches to space from U.S., 1st time in 20 years
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — For the first time in 20 years, a Russian cosmonaut rocketed from the U.S. on Wednesday, launching to the International Space Station alongside NASA and Japanese astronauts despite tensions over the war in Ukraine. “We’re so glad to do it together,” said Anna Kikina, Russia’s lone...
Fall trout stocking under way by Pa. Fish and Boat Commission
The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission’s “Great White Fleet” of stocking trucks is rolling once again, moving a fall stocking of 116,000 hatchery-raised trout to more than a hundred streams and lakes across the state. The goal of fall stocking is to “replenish some of the most popular fishing spots...
Explainer: Tax cut trend reaches two-thirds of states
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — States brimming with cash are cutting taxes at a rapid pace. With the enactment Wednesday of an income tax cut in Missouri, about two-thirds of U.S. states have adopted some sort of tax relief in 2022. For taxpayers, the trend means billions of dollars back in...
Haaland: U.S. expanding Native American massacre site
DENVER — Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced an expansion Wednesday of a National Park Service historical site dedicated to the massacre by U.S. troops of more than 200 Native Americans in what is now southeastern Colorado. Haaland, the first Native American to lead a U.S. Cabinet agency, made the announcement...
‘Forever chemicals’ in deer, fish challenge hunters, tourism
PORTLAND, Maine — Wildlife agencies in the U.S. are finding elevated levels of a class of toxic chemicals in game animals such as deer — and that’s prompting health advisories in some places where hunting and fishing are ways of life and key pieces of the economy. Authorities have detected...
Prolonged drought brings famine, death and fear to Somalia
DOLLOW, Somalia — A man in a donkey cart comes wheeling through the dust, carrying two small, silent boys. The sky is overcast. It could rain. It won’t. It hasn’t for a very long time. Mohamed Ahmed Diriye is 60 years old, and he’s completing the grimmest journey of his...
Purdue University student arrested in killing of roommate
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — A Purdue University student was arrested Wednesday in the killing of his roommate in their campus dorm room, authorities said. Ji Min Sha, a 22-year-old cybersecurity major from Seoul, South Korea, was arrested on a preliminary murder charge in the killing of 20-year-old Varun Manish Chheda,...
3 years after clinical trial, ketamine provides hope for severely depressed
LOS ANGELES — Patients arriving at Dr. Philip O’Carroll’s Newport Beach office for their first ketamine treatment are in pain and often lost. They have visited other doctors, tried other solutions and are ready for what is considered a last resort. They are led to a private room with a...
Pa. liquor stores hosting 50% clearance sale
With temperatures dropping quickly as fall arrives, it’s a good time to stock up on booze and hunker down for the season, and Pennsylvania state-run liquor stores are incentivizing shoppers with a 50% clearance sale on select whiskey, wine, vodka, gin, and other spirits. The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board’s clearance...
Musk Twitter turnaround reflects legal challenges
WASHINGTON — Elon Musk’s sudden about face on a $44 billion agreement to acquire Twitter, reversing an earlier attempt to rescind that offer, came as a surprise even from the mercurial billionaire who loves to shock. It sent shares of the social media platform soaring Tuesday and stoked alarm among...
Suicide bomber strikes at a center of Taliban power, kills 4
KABUL, Afghanistan — A suicide bomber struck at a center of Taliban power Wednesday, setting off a blast at a government ministry in the Afghan capital of Kabul and killing at least four people. The explosion went off in the afternoon as workers and visitors were praying inside a mosque...
Nobel Prize for 3 chemists who made molecules ‘click’
STOCKHOLM — Three scientists were jointly awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for developing a way of “snapping molecules together” that can be used to design better medicines, including ones that target diseases such as cancer more precisely. Americans Carolyn R. Bertozzi and K. Barry Sharpless, and...
OPEC+ makes big oil cut to boost prices; pump costs may rise
FRANKFURT, Germany — The OPEC+ alliance of oil-exporting countries decided Wednesday to sharply cut production to support sagging oil prices, a move that could deal the struggling global economy another blow and raise politically sensitive pump prices for U.S. drivers just ahead of key national elections. Energy ministers cut production...
Putin signs annexation of Ukrainian regions as losses mount
KYIV, Ukraine — Russian President Vladimir Putin signed laws that claimed four regions of Ukraine as Russia’s territory while his country’s military struggled Wednesday to control the illegally annexed areas. The documents finalizing the annexation, carried out in violation of international laws, were published on a Russian government website. In...
