No end in sight for Ukraine war as Putin hails Victory Day
ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine — Russian President Vladimir Putin used a major patriotic holiday Monday to again justify his war in Ukraine but did not declare even a limited victory or signal where the conflict was headed, as his forces continued to pummel targets across the country with few signs of significant...
White House says internet providers to discount fee for poor
WILMINGTON, Del. — The Biden administration announced on Monday that 20 internet companies have agreed to provide discounted service to low-income Americans, a program that could effectively make tens of millions of households eligible for free service through an already existing federal subsidy. The $1 trillion infrastructure package passed by...
Call Pence or Trump? It’s decision time for Jan. 6 panel
WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection has interviewed nearly 1,000 people. But the nine-member panel has yet to talk to the two most prominent players in that day’s events — former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence. As the investigation winds down and...
Penn State Nittany Lion Shrine closed as police investigate commencement weekend vandalism
The Nittany Lion Shrine was closed Sunday as Penn State police investigated several incidents of vandalism during commencement weekend. Someone broke an ear and splashed red paint on the Lion Shrine, the university said. The area is fenced off and unavailable for commencement photos. Paint was also used to vandalize...
Fire at Wisconsin anti-abortion office investigated as arson
MADISON, Wis. — Vandals struck an anti-abortion group office, where a fire broke out and a Molotov cocktail was found, authorities said Sunday. Madison police spokeswoman Stephanie Fryer told the Wisconsin State Journal that the fire reported shortly after 6 a.m. Sunday at the Wisconsin Family Action office in Madison...
Havana hotel death toll at 30 as dogs search for survivorsVideo
HAVANA — Search crews with dogs on Sunday hunted through the ruins of a luxury hotel in Cuba’s capital for survivors of a devastating explosion while officials raised the number of known dead to 30. The Hotel Saratoga, a five-star 96-room hotel in Old Havana, was preparing to reopen after...
Abortion opinion court leak is catnip for those who love a juicy D.C. whodunit
WASHINGTON — Washington loves a whodunit. And the latest one comes with the stunning plot twist of a leak from the famously buttoned-up Supreme Court. The publication this past week of a draft opinion that said Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision establishing a constitutional right to abortion in...
Pandemic pushes public defender system to the brink
PORTLAND, Ore. — A post-pandemic glut of delayed cases has exposed shocking constitutional landmines impacting defendants and crime victims alike in Oregon, a state with a national reputation for progressive social justice. An acute shortage of public defenders means at any given time at least several hundred low-income criminal defendants...
Pennsylvania’s biggest primaries could get called on election night. But don’t get used to it
PHILADELPHIA — We probably won’t need to stay up all night this Election Day. The May 17 Pennsylvania primary elections shouldn’t create anything like the dayslong anxiety of November 2020, when the counting of mail ballots dragged on. There’s a very good chance we’ll know the Democratic and Republican nominees...
3 Americans found dead at resort in Bahamas; fourth is hospitalized
Three Americans were discovered dead at a Bahamas resort and a fourth has been hospitalized, sparking a mystery for which officials, so far, have few answers. The bodies of two men and a woman were found on Friday at the Sandals Emerald Bay resort on Exuma, Bahamas Acting Prime Minister...
Workers grapple with new stresses as they return to office
NEW YORK — Last summer, Julio Carmona started the process of weaning himself off a fully remote work schedule by showing up to the office once a week. The new hybrid schedule at his job at a state agency in Stratford, Connecticut, still enabled him to spend time cooking dinner...
After leak, religious rift over legal abortion on display
America’s faithful are bracing — some with cautionary joy and others with looming dread — for the Supreme Court to potentially overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and end the nationwide right to legal abortion. A reversal of the 49-year-old ruling has never felt more possible since a...
Oh, rats! As New Yorkers emerge from pandemic, so do rodents
NEW YORK — They crawled to the surface as the coronavirus pandemic roiled New York City, scurrying out of subterranean nests into the open air, feasting on a smorgasbord of scraps in streets, parks and mounds of curbside garbage. As diners shunned the indoors for outdoor dining, so did the...
More than 60 feared dead in bombing of Ukrainian school
ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine — More than 60 people were feared dead Sunday after a Russian bomb flattened a school being used as a shelter, Ukrainian officials said, while Moscow’s forces kept up their attack on defenders inside Mariupol’s steel plant in an apparent race to capture the city ahead of Russia’s...
N.C. officers kill man setting cars ablaze near police station
RALEIGH, N.C. — Officers shot and killed a man Saturday afternoon who was throwing Molotov cocktails and setting cars on fire near a police station in Raleigh, authorities said. The confrontation began after an officer observed a man lighting vehicles on fire in a parking lot near a district station...
How Pennsylvania’s abortion fight could play out across the country
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf has vetoed anti-abortion bills passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature three times, and the Democrat promised to defend abortion rights as long as he is in office. That window is fast closing. Wolf steps down in January, and the fight to replace him is one of the...
Sinn Fein hails ‘new era’ as it wins Northern Ireland vote
The Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein, which seeks unification with Ireland, hailed a “new era” Saturday for Northern Ireland as it captured the largest number of seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly for the first time in a historic win. With almost all votes counted from Thursday’s local U.K. election,...
Amazon tribes turn the tables on intruders with social media
It was dusk on April 14 when Francisco Kuruaya heard a boat approaching along the river near his village in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest. He assumed it was the regular delivery boat bringing gasoline for generators and outboard motors to remote settlements like his. Instead, what Kuruaya found was a barge...
Goodwill find in Texas turns out to be ancient Roman bust
A marble bust that a Texas woman bought for about $35 from a Goodwill store is temporarily on display at a San Antonio museum after experts determined it was a centuries-old sculpture missing from Germany since World War II. The bust, which art collector Laura Young found at Goodwill in...
Afghanistan’s Taliban order women to cover up head to toe
Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers on Saturday ordered all Afghan women to wear head-to-toe clothing in public — a sharp, hard-line pivot that confirmed the worst fears of rights activists and was bound to further complicate Taliban dealings with an already distrustful international community. The decree says that women should leave the...
Ukraine braces for attacks, evacuates more from steel mill
Russian forces fired cruise missiles at the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa on Saturday and bombarded a steel mill in Mariupol housing Ukrainian civilians and fighters, hoping to complete their conquest of the port city in time for Victory Day celebrations. Ukraine announced that all women, children and elderly had...
CDC probing 109 liver illnesses in kids, including 5 deaths
NEW YORK — U.S. health officials are looking into more than 100 possible cases of a mysterious and severe liver disease in children, including five deaths. About two dozen states reported suspected cases after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention put out a call for doctors to be on...
Sheriff: Car linked to Alabama escapee, jail worker found
FRANKLIN, Tenn. — Authorities in Tennessee say they have located an abandoned vehicle used by a man wanted in Alabama for murder and the jail official who disappeared with him. Williamson County Sheriff said via Twitter on Friday that a vehicle used by escaped Alabama inmate Casey White and former...
Desperate search for survivors in Cuba hotel blast; 26 dead
Relatives of the missing in Cuba’s capital desperately searched Saturday for victims of an explosion at one of Havana’s most luxurious hotels that killed at least 26 people. They checked the morgue, hospitals and if unsuccessful, they returned to the partially collapsed Hotel Saratoga, where rescuers used dogs to hunt...
Tesla covers travel costs for workers seeking abortions
Tesla is covering travel costs for employees seeking out-of-state abortions, joining the ranks of major companies who’ve introduced a similar policy to benefit workers affected by new restrictions in the past few months. The company said in its 2021 ” Impact Report ” released Friday that it expanded its Safety...