Fetterman says no to Oz offer to debate, calls list of ‘concessions’ insulting
John Fetterman isn’t about to debate opponent Mehmet Oz, saying the GOP candidate’s campaign thinks “it is funny to mock” his recovery from a stroke. “I’m eager to put my record and my values up against Dr. Oz’s any day of the week,” Fetterman, Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, said in a...
Storms blamed in deaths of 3 in Michigan, Ohio, ArkansasVideo
MONROE, Mich. — Severe storms that brought damaging winds, heavy rains and flash flooding to parts of the Midwest and the South were blamed for the deaths of three people, including two children in Michigan and Arkansas as well as a woman in Ohio. Monday’s storms also knocked out electrical...
WVU fraternity suspended over reported hazing incidents
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — West Virginia University suspended a fraternity Tuesday over reported hazing incidents, the school said. The interim suspension of Pi Kappa Phi fraternity prevents it from all recruitment activities along with participating or attending social functions, WVU said in a news release. The suspension will remain in place...
More Republicans backing Josh Shapiro for Pennsylvania governor
The ranks of Republicans rejecting State Sen. Doug Mastriano, their party’s nominee for governor in Pennsylvania, grew this week as a former national security Cabinet member and a former Trump administration lawyer endorsed the Democratic nominee, state Attorney General Josh Shapiro. Michael Chertoff, who served as secretary for the U.S....
Biden defends FBI, promotes ban on assault-style weaponsVideo
WILKES-BARRE — President Joe Biden on Tuesday forcefully defended the FBI as the agency and its employees have come under withering criticism and threats of violence since executing a search warrant at former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence earlier this month. “It’s sickening to see the new attacks on the...
Tony Ornato, Secret Service agent for Trump, retires after Jan. 6 scrutinyVideo
WASHINGTON — A U.S. Secret Service agent whose name figured prominently in testimony before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection has retired from the agency. Tony Ornato retired Monday after 25 years with the Secret Service “in good standing,” a spokesman said. It wasn’t immediately clear what prompted...
Russian media: Ex-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev dead at 91
MOSCOW — Mikhail Gorbachev, who as the last leader of the Soviet Union waged a losing battle to salvage a crumbling empire but produced extraordinary reforms that led to the end of the Cold War, died Tuesday. He was 91. The Central Clinical Hospital said in a statement that Gorbachev...
Court: Pennsylvania can’t keep guns in trooper ambush case
Pennsylvania may not keep a cache of weapons seized from the parents of a gunman who killed one state trooper and permanently disabled another eight years ago, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday. The parents of Eric Frein sued after authorities refused to return 25 rifles, 10 pistols and two...
Fetterman says Biden should decriminalize marijuana ahead of Pittsburgh visit
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate John Fetterman has called on President Joe Biden to reclassify marijuana before Biden visits Pittsburgh on Monday. Fetterman, a long-time champion of recreational marijuana, also said he would like for Biden to decriminalize the drug at the federal level. “It’s long past time that we finally...
Explainer: Why were Dutch soldiers at Indiana military camp?
INDIANAPOLIS — Before three Dutch soldiers were shot, one fatally, in downtown Indianapolis, they were training in a southern Indiana military camp where international soldiers enter highly specialized urban combat simulations they might not be able to get in their own country. Simmie Poetsema, 26, was identified Monday as the...
43% of Americans say a civil war is at least somewhat likely in next 10 years
More than 2 in 5 Americans say a U.S. civil war is at least somewhat likely in the next decade, highlighting the deepening political divisions in the country heading into the midterms. A recent poll by YouGov and The Economist found that 43% believe a civil war was either “very”...
Danube drought reveals parts of hidden WWII history near Serbia, Romania
PRAHOVO, Serbia — The worst drought in Europe in decades has not only scorched farmland and hampered river traffic, it also has exposed a part of almost forgotten World War II history: The hulks of dozens of World War II German battleships have emerged from the Danube River as its...
On Mexico’s Caribbean coast, mountains of seaweed grow
TULUM, Mexico — Scraping the smelly sargassum seaweed off some beaches on Mexico’s resort-studded Caribbean coast has become not only a nightmare, but possibly a health threat, for the workers doing it — with the quantities washing ashore this year seemingly mountains not mounds. Decomposing sargassum, which is actually algae,...
Pa.’s unreliable lobbyist disclosure website is getting a user-friendly upgrade
Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan newsroom powered by The Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with PennLive/The Patriot-News, TribLIVE/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and WITF Public Media. Sign up for our free newsletters. HARRISBURG — An initiative to improve the online system that lobbyists use to disclose which organizations have hired them and how...
Heavy fighting rages in Ukraine’s Russian-occupied south
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine claimed to have destroyed bridges and ammunition depots and pounded command posts in a surge of fighting in the Russian-occupied south, fueling speculation Tuesday that its long-awaited counteroffensive to try to turn the tide of war was underway. Russia said it repelled the attack and inflicted...
Explainer: What spurred the bloody armed clashes in Baghdad?
BAGHDAD — Iraq’s long-running power struggle between rival Shiite camps devolved into bloody street violence this week — the culmination of months of simmering tensions and a political vacuum. For 24 hours, loyalists of powerful cleric Muqtada al-Sadr transformed the country’s government Green Zone into a front line, trading fire...
In new gun law, a quiet breakthrough for victims of abuse
WASHINGTON — Nikiesha Thomas was on her way to work one day when she told her sister that she was thinking about getting involved with domestic violence prevention. The idea gave Keeda Simpson pause. Her younger sister had never mentioned anything like that before, and she was bringing it up...
Diana’s death stunned the world — and changed the royals
LONDON — Above all, there was shock. That’s the word people use over and over again when they remember Princess Diana’s death in a Paris car crash 25 years ago this week. The woman the world watched grow from a shy teenage nursery school teacher into a glamorous celebrity who...
Containers are no hindrance for migrants on Arizona border
YUMA, Ariz. — Hours before Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey declared “a major step forward to secure our border” with the installation of 130 double-stacked shipping containers, hundreds of migrants found their way around them, belying his claim. They walked through tribal lands to the edge of a towering wall built...
Women race political clock, cross state lines for abortions
DAYTON, OHIO — In the dim light of a clinic ultrasound room, Monica Eberhart reclines on an exam table as a nurse moves a probe across her belly. Waves of fetal cardiac activity ripple across the screen. “The heartbeat,” the nurse says. “About 10 weeks and two days.” Eberhart exhales....
Truck hauling tomatoes crashes, spills load across California highwayVideo
VACAVILLE, Calif. — A truck hauling a load of tomatoes crashed Monday into the center divider of Northern California highway, spilling its load across several lanes of traffic that remained closed for hours, authorities said. The truck was one of three vehicles that collided on the westbound lanes of Highway...
Zombie ice from Greenland will raise sea level 10 inches
Greenland’s rapidly melting ice sheet will eventually raise global sea level by at least 10.6 inches — more than twice as much as previously forecast — according to a study published Monday. That’s because of something that could be called zombie ice. That’s doomed ice that, while still attached to...
Sen. Lindsey Graham warns of ‘riots’ if Trump is prosecutedVideo
Sen. Lindsey Graham warned there “will be riots in the streets” if former President Donald Trump is indicted. “If they tried to prosecute President Trump … there literally will be riots in the street,” the South Carolina Republican said on Fox News. “I worry about the country.” Despite mounting evidence...
Judge denies Brian Kemp’s motion to quash grand jury testimony
ATLANTA — A judge has denied Gov. Brian Kemp’s request to avoid testifying before the special purpose grand jury investigating Donald Trump and his allies’ attempts to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results. But the Monday morning ruling from Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney did say Kemp, the Republican...
Biden will give prime-time speech about democracy from Philadelphia
President Joe Biden will give a prime-time speech Thursday from outside Independence Hall, warning about threats to democracy, as he makes a swing of appearances to boost Democrats with roughly two months until the midterm election. Biden will speak about “how the core values of this nation — our standing...
