Pfizer to offer low-cost medicines, vaccines to poor nations
Pfizer said Wednesday that it will provide nearly two dozen products, including its top-selling covid-19 vaccine and treatment, at not-for-profit prices in some of the world’s poorest countries. The drugmaker announced the program at the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering in Davos, Switzerland, and said it was aimed at improving...
France: Climate protesters block TotalEnergies meeting
PARIS — Several hundred climate protesters disrupted a TotalEnergies shareholders meeting in Paris and blocked the venue entrance Wednesday to denounce the oil and gas giant’s stake in Russia despite Moscow’s war in Ukraine. TotalEnergies, which was renamed last year from Total, tweeted that due to activists impeding access to...
Families mourn, worry in wake of Texas elementary school shooting
UVALDE, Texas — Distraught families gathered at a local civic center and turned to social media to mourn and to make desperate pleas for help finding missing children as the death toll in a gruesome school shooting at a Texas elementary school rose to at least 19 students and two...
Russian rockets hit eastern Ukrainian town of Pokrovsk
POKROVSK, Ukraine — The Russian rocket strikes came early in the morning in the eastern Ukrainian town of Pokrovsk on Wednesday, shaking buildings, jolting people out of bed and sending chunks of concrete and jagged pieces of metal flying through the air. One of the two rockets left a crater...
Pope greets Russian patriarch, criticized for ‘naïve’ policy
ROME — Pope Francis has sent a protocol greeting to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, assuring him of prayers on his patron’s feast day and stressing the value of human life and wisdom, as the Vatican insists on maintaining cordial relations amid the war in Ukraine. The website...
Delegations from Sweden and Finland in Turkey for NATO talks
ANKARA, Turkey — Senior officials from Sweden and Finland met with Turkish counterparts in Ankara on Wednesday in an effort to overcome Turkey’s strong objections to the Nordic nations’ bids to join NATO. Sweden and Finland submitted their written applications to join NATO last week. The move represents one of...
Ukraine: Russia must withdraw to pre-war positions for talks
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s president said Wednesday that Russia must pull back to its pre-war positions as a first step before diplomatic talks, a negotiating line that Moscow is unlikely to agree to anytime soon. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he currently sees no willingness on the part of Russia to...
Brian Kemp wins Georgia GOP governor’s race in stinging rebuke of Trump
ATLANTA — Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia easily dispatched Donald Trump’s hand-picked challenger on Tuesday in a Republican primary that demonstrated the limits of the former president and his conspiracy-fueled politics in a critical swing state. Kemp will face Democrat Stacey Abrams this fall in what will be one of...
Biden says ‘we have to act’ after Texas school shootingVideo
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden delivered an emotional call for new restrictions on firearms after a gunman opened fire at a Texas elementary school on Tuesday. “When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?” Biden said at the White House shortly after returning from...
W.Va. man pleads guilty to sending threatening emails to Dr. Fauci
GREENBELT, Md. — A West Virginia man pleaded guilty Monday to sending emails that threatened Dr. Anthony Fauci and former National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins, federal prosecutors in Maryland said. Thomas Patrick Connally Jr., 56, most recently of Snowshoe, W.Va., pleaded guilty to making threats against a...
Capitol rioter draped in Confederate flag gets 33 months in prison
WASHINGTON — A Maryland man who was draped in a Confederate flag when he stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was sentenced Monday to 33 months in prison for assaulting police officers and obstructing an official proceeding during the mob’s attack. Matthew Ryan Miller, 23, sprayed a fire...
How a mail ballot ruling in Pa. could affect 2022 primary election results
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 — A federal appeals court ruled Friday that election officials in one Pennsylvania county must count legally cast mail ballots...
U.S. births rose last year but still less than before pandemic
NEW YORK — U.S. births bumped up last year, but the number of babies born was still lower than before the coronavirus pandemic. The 1% increase was a bit of a rebound from 2020, the first year of the pandemic, which witnessed the largest one-year drop in the U.S. births...
Top Southern Baptists plan to release secret list of abusers
Top administrative leaders for the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in America, said Tuesday that they will release a secret list of hundreds of pastors and other church-affiliated personnel accused of sexual abuse. An attorney for the SBC’s Executive Committee announced the decision during a virtual meeting called...
NOAA predicts busy Atlantic hurricane season
Federal meteorologists are forecasting a record-shattering seventh straight unusually busy Atlantic hurricane season. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted Tuesday that the summer in the Atlantic will produce 14 to 21 named storms, six to 10 becoming hurricanes and three to six turbo-charging into major hurricanes with winds greater...
Gunman kills 19 children, 2 adults in Texas school rampageVideo
UVALDE, Texas — An 18-year-old gunman who killed 19 children and two teachers at a Texas elementary school barricaded himself inside a classroom, “shooting anyone that was in his way,” an official said Wednesday, describing the latest a gruesome, yearslong series of mass killings at churches, schools and stores. Police...
Mistrial declared when witness tests positive for covid during recess
PORTLAND, Maine — A mistrial has been declared in the case of a Maine man charged with threatening to kill Jewish people because one of the witnesses tested positive for covid-19. Federal authorities charged Brian Dennison, 25, of Buxton, with one count of transmitting a threat through interstate communication because...
5 Turkish soldiers killed in clashes against PKK in Iraq
ANKARA, Turkey — Five Turkish soldiers were killed Tuesday in clashes with Kurdish militants in northern Iraq, Turkey’s defense ministry said. Two other soldiers were wounded in the fighting. The clashes took place during Turkey’s latest cross-border offensive against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which maintains bases in northern...
Wexford man charged after bringing gun to Pittsburgh airport
Transportation Security Administration officials at Pittsburgh International Airport confiscated a loaded handgun from a Wexford man on Monday morning. The .380 caliber handgun, which was loaded was six bullets, was the seventh gun detected this year at the airport’s security checkpoints. Allegheny County police cited the man on a weapons...
Taliban say deal signed with UAE firm to manage airports
ISLAMABAD — The Taliban announced a deal Tuesday allowing an Emirati company to manage three airports in Afghanistan after the fall of the country’s U.S.-backed government. However, the United Arab Emirates did not immediately acknowledge the deal. Under the deal, the Abu Dhabi-based firm GAAC Solutions would manage the airports...
Suspect under arrest in deadly New York City subway shooting
NEW YORK — A man wanted in an apparently unprovoked fatal shooting aboard a New York City subway train was under arrest Tuesday, hours after authorities posted his name and photo on social media and implored the public to help find him. Andrew Abdullah, 25, was expected to face charges...
Student stabbed at Pa. high school, prompting lockdown
COATESVILLE — A student at a high school near Philadelphia was taken to a hospital after a stabbing that prompted a lockdown at the school, authorities said. Police were called to Coatesville Area Senior High School just before 7:30 a.m. Tuesday after a student was reported with a slash-type wound...
Greene’s divisive politics face test in Republican primary
With millions raised to defend her seat in Congress and five fellow Republicans running to take it, GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene faced her first reelection vote Tuesday in a GOP primary race that tests how her conservative Georgia constituents judge her turbulent freshman term. Greene, 47, became a celebrity...
Courts stymie abortion bans in Iowa, other GOP-led states
DES MOINES, Iowa — With a staunch anti-abortion Republican governor and large GOP legislative majorities, Iowa would seem poised to ban abortion if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade. There’s just one catch: a 2018 Iowa Supreme Court ruling that established the right to abortion under the state...
11 killed in shooting attacks on 2 bars in Mexico
MEXICO CITY — Eleven people, eight of them women, were killed in simultaneous shooting attacks on two bars in north-central Mexico, authorities said Tuesday. Handwritten signs left at the scenes of the killings suggested the attacks were part of a rivalry between two drug cartels that have been battling for...
