Israeli troops kill Palestinian during West Bank fighting
TEL AVIV, Israel — Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian during fighting in the occupied West Bank early Thursday. He was the third Palestinian to be killed in a little over 24 hours at a time of heightened Mideast tensions. The Israeli military said forces operating in the Dheisheh...
Trump election probe grand jury to hear from Raffensperger
ATLANTA — Georgia’s top elections official was expected to appear Thursday before a special grand jury investigating whether former President Donald Trump and others illegally tried to meddle in the 2020 election in the state. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was summoned to the Fulton County courthouse where the special...
UN says Yemen’s warring parties agree to renew truce
CAIRO — The United Nations said Thursday that Yemen’s warring parties have agreed to renew a nationwide truce for another two months. The announcement is a glimmer of hope for the country, plagued by eight years of civil war, though significant obstacles remain to lasting peace. The cease-fire between Yemen’s...
OPEC+ alliance boosts oil production as energy prices soar
LONDON — The OPEC oil cartel and allied producing countries including Russia will raise production by 648,000 barrels per day in July and August, offering modest relief for a global economy suffering from soaring energy prices and the resulting inflation. The decision Thursday steps up the pace by the alliance,...
Police searching for suspect after shooting at Luzerne County WalmartVideo
Pennsylvania state police are searching for a man believed to have fired several shots near a Walmart in Pittston Township, Luzerne County, according to multiple media reports. According to WNEP, police said a man fired shots around 4 p.m. today in a shopping plaza parking lot located along Route 315....
Former Corinthian students get federal student debt erased
WASHINGTON — Hundreds of thousands of students who attended the for-profit Corinthian Colleges chain will automatically get their federal student loans canceled, the Biden administration announced Wednesday, a move that aims to bring closure to one of the most notorious cases of fraud in American higher education. Under the new...
Gunman kills 4 in mass shooting at Tulsa medical building
TULSA, Okla. — A gunman carrying a rifle and a handgun killed four people at a Tulsa medical building on a hospital campus, police said, the latest in a series of deadly mass shootings across the country in recent weeks. Wednesday’s shooting on the campus of Saint Francis Health System...
Ex-Philadelphia detective guilty of work-linked sex assault
PHILADELPHIA — A veteran Philadelphia homicide detective was convicted of sexually assaulting or exploiting three male witnesses in a case that has led prosecutors to review dozens of homicide convictions. Former detective Philip Nordo, 56, was taken into custody after the jury verdict Wednesday. A 2019 grand jury report accused...
2 candidates for Michigan governor lose key ballot ruling
DETROIT — The Michigan Court of Appeals kept two Republican candidates off the Aug. 2 primary ballot Wednesday, declaring that election officials suspecting signature fraud had no obligation to examine campaign petitions line by line. The court first ruled against Perry Johnson, a wealthy businessman considered to be a leading...
Buffalo supermarket gunman indicted on terror, hate charge
BUFFALO, N.Y. — The white 18-year-old man accused of fatally shooting 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket was charged Wednesday by a grand jury with domestic terrorism motivated by hate and 10 counts of first-degree murder. Payton Gendron, who has been in custody since the May 14 shooting, is...
Biden cites strain on families from infant formula shortageVideo
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Wednesday acknowledged the strain on families from nationwide shortages of infant formula as he met with manufacturers while his administration tries to address the situation by importing foreign supplies and using the Defense Production Act to speed domestic production. The White House said a...
Bison gores Ohio woman in Yellowstone National Park
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. — A bison gored a 25-year-old woman in Yellowstone National Park. The bison was walking near a boardwalk at Black Sand Basin, just north of Old Faithful, when the woman approached it on Monday, according to a park statement. She got within 10 feet before the...
Mourners say goodbye to Uvalde teacher and her husband
UVALDE, Texas — Mourners gathered Wednesday at a Catholic church to say goodbye to Robb Elementary School teacher Irma Garcia — who died in the shooting at the Uvalde, Texas, grade school — and her husband, Joe — who died two days later from a heart attack. Nineteen children and...
Here’s how the government wants to disaster-proof your home
MIAMI — On this first day of the Atlantic hurricane season, federal officials are launching a new initiative to modernize building codes so that communities can be more resilient to hurricanes, flooding, wildfires, and other extreme weather events that are intensifying due to climate change. Deanne Criswell, the administrator for...
Gas price-shocked Pennsylvanians looking for relief, but Harrisburg unlikely to provide it any time soon
While a spokesperson for AAA says near-record gasoline prices could rise higher — the Pennsylvania average was $4.76 a gallon on Tuesday — relief seems unlikely to come from Harrisburg any time soon. Initiatives to help consumers from both Gov. Wolf’s office and the state Legislature have failed to gain...
New covid cases drop 15% in Pennsylvania’s latest report; deaths nearly double
In its weekly update on covid-19 Wednesday, the Pennsylvania Department of Health reported 24,862 new cases in the past week. The latest batch of cases are 15% fewer than last week’s report of 29,227. Pennsylvania is now averaging 3,552 new cases per day. Despite the lower number new cases, the...
Explainer: Effects of EU Russia oil ban, Moscow’s response
THE HAGUE, Netherlands — The European Union has agreed to slash Russian oil imports in a tough escalation of the bloc’s campaign of sanctions to punish Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine. It’s a landmark decision that will hit Russian coffers in the long term, but could also hurt consumers...
Africans see inequity in monkeypox response elsewhere
OSUN, Nigeria — As health authorities in Europe and elsewhere roll out vaccines and drugs to stamp out the biggest monkeypox outbreak beyond Africa, some doctors acknowledge an ugly reality: The resources to slow the disease’s spread have long been available, just not to the Africans who have dealt with...
Guns overtake cars as leading cause of death for U.S. kids
For decades, the biggest threat kids faced growing up came from the automobiles they happily hopped into every day for a trip to school, the store or soccer practice. Now, it’s gunfire. As the country mourns its latest school shooting victims in Uvalde, Texas, it also has reached a grim...
Uvalde school police chief says he’s still cooperatingVideo
UVALDE, Texas — The school district police chief who served as on-site commander during last week’s deadly shooting in Uvalde, Texas, said Wednesday that he’s talking daily with investigators, contradicting claims from state law enforcement that he has stopped cooperating. In a brief interview, Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police...
Western nations vow to send more, better arms to Ukraine
KYIV, Ukraine — Western nations promised more and more advanced arms to Ukraine, in an effort to tip the balance in Kyiv’s favor as it fends off a grinding Russian advance in the east. Germany said Wednesday it will supply Ukraine with modern anti-aircraft missiles and radar systems, and the...
John Hinckley to get full freedom 41 years after shooting President Reagan
WASHINGTON — John Hinckley Jr., who shot President Ronald Reagan in 1981, is “no longer a danger to himself or others” and will be freed from court oversight this month as planned, a federal judge said Wednesday, capping Hinckley’s four-decade journey through the legal and mental health systems. U.S. District...
After Uvalde, holiday weekend sees shootings nationwide
Even as the nation reeled over the massacre of 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, multiple mass shootings happened elsewhere over the Memorial Day weekend in areas both rural and urban. Single-death incidents still accounted for most gun fatalities. Gunfire erupted in the predawn...
Gift ban, other good-government changes stall in Pa. despite promises from leadership
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 — Rabbi Michael Pollack stood at a podium in the Capitol, just steps away from where the legislature meets, to...
Explainer: A look at Bill Cosby’s sexual assault civil trial
LOS ANGELES — Eleven months after he was freed from prison when a Pennsylvania appeals court threw out his criminal conviction, Bill Cosby, 85, will again be the defendant in a trial over sexual assault allegations. This time, it will be in a civil case in California relating to events...
