Josh Shapiro wins Democratic primary for Pennsylvania governor
HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania Democrats have made their choice for governor official, handing the nomination to second-term state Attorney General Josh Shapiro. Shapiro was unopposed for the Democratic nomination. The incumbent, Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, is term-limited. Shapiro, 48, from the Philadelphia suburb of Abington, spent the primary campaign season raising...
Traveling this summer? CDC recommends testing for covid-19 in days before flying
If you are traveling internationally or within the United States this summer, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends you test for covid-19 in the days before flying. The agency’s recommendation for all travelers regardless of vaccination status came in an update to its covid-19 testing website on May...
2022 Pennsylvania primary election results
Polls in Pennsylvania closed at 8 p.m. Tuesday night, but the counting continues. • State Rep. Emily Kinkead, D-Brighton Heights, won Tuesday’s Democratic primary in Pennsylvania’s 20th State House District, according to unofficial results. • State Rep. Jessica Benham, D-South Side, trounced her opponent in Tuesday’s Democratic primary race in...
House Jan. 6 panel rejects Justice Department’s transcript request
WASHINGTON — The House panel investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol is rejecting a request from the Justice Department for access to the committee’s interviews, for now. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the committee’s chairman, said Tuesday that the Justice Department had made the request as part of...
Congress is taking UFOs more seriously, but many questions remainVideo
WASHINGTON — Unidentified flying objects were a punchline for years, but now Congress is taking these unexplained encounters more seriously. “For too long, the stigma associated with UAPs has gotten in the way of good intelligence analysis. Pilots avoided reporting, or were laughed at when they did,” said Rep. André...
In Buffalo, Biden mourns victims, says ‘evil will not win’Video
BUFFALO — President Joe Biden mourned with Buffalo’s grieving families on Tuesday, then exhorted the nation to reject what he angrily labeled the poison of white supremacy. He said the nation must “reject the lie” of the racist “replacement theory” espoused by the shooter who killed 10 Black people in...
Coronavirus vaccine could have saved 319,000 people, if they had taken shot, study finds
About a third of the 1 million lives lost to covid-19 could have been saved with vaccines, a new analysis shows. Researchers at the Brown School of Public Health, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Microsoft AI for Health analyzed data from the Centers...
Printing error affects mailed ballots in Pennsylvania county
An error by a company that prints ballots for several Pennsylvania counties made thousands of mail-in ballots unreadable Tuesday as voters were deciding hotly contested primaries for governor and U.S. Senate in one of the nation’s most important battleground states. Officials in Lancaster County, the state’s sixth most populous, said...
Republican Senate candidates promote ‘replacement’ theory
NEW YORK — Several mainstream Republican Senate candidates are drawing on the “great replacement” conspiracy theory once confined to the far-right fringes of U.S. politics to court voters this campaign season, promoting the baseless notion that there is a plot to diminish the influence of white people in America. In...
West Virginia city council ordered to stop reciting The Lord’s Prayer
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A West Virginia city was ordered Tuesday to stop opening its council meetings with The Lord’s Prayer. U.S. District Judge John T. Copenhaver Jr. ruled that Parkersburg City Council’s practice of opening its meetings with the New Testament prayer violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment,...
DA: DNA from fingernails helped solve 1988 cold case killing
GALT, Calif. — A suspect in a 1988 sexual assault and killing of a 79-year-old woman in a small Northern California community has been identified thanks to advanced DNA testing done on scrapings from the victim’s fingernails, authorities said Tuesday. Terry Leroy Bramble was 32 years old when he sexually...
House Dems propose $28 million to address formula shortage
WASHINGTON — House Democrats unveiled a $28 million emergency spending bill Tuesday to address the shortage of infant formula in the United States. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the Democratic chair of the House Appropriations Committee, said the bill would help the Food and Drug Administration take important steps to restore the...
South Carolina governor signs transgender sports ban bill
COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina’s governor has quietly signed into law a bill that would ban transgender students from playing girls’ or women’s sports in public schools and colleges as the state joins about a dozen others that have passed similar laws in the past two years. The bill was...
Iran inaugurates new drone production line in Tajikistan
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran said Tuesday it inaugurated a production line for manufacturing a new military drone in Tajikistan, a first for both nations. A report by the official IRNA news agency said the ceremony took place during a visit to the Central Asian nation by Gen. Mohammad Hossein Bagheri,...
Pope’s recipe to heal his painful knee? A shot of tequila
Doctors have prescribed a wheelchair, cane and physical therapy to help heal Pope Francis’ bad knee. He has other ideas. According to a viral video of the pope at the end of a recent audience, Francis quipped that what he really needs for the pain is a shot of tequila....
Government offers 8 more free covid tests to public
WASHINGTON — The government website for people to request free covid-19 at-home tests from the U.S. government is now accepting a third round of orders. The White House announced Tuesday that U.S. households can request an additional eight free at-home tests to be shipped by the U.S. Postal Service. The...
Sweden, Finland push ahead with NATO bids as Turkey objects
STOCKHOLM — Sweden and Finland on Tuesday pushed ahead with their bids to join NATO even as Turkey insisted it won’t let the previously nonaligned Nordic countries into the alliance because of their alleged support for Kurdish militants. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s strongly worded objections caught the two applicants...
Nearly 43,000 people died on U.S. roads last year, agency says
DETROIT — Nearly 43,000 people were killed on U.S. roads last year, the highest number in 16 years as Americans returned to the highways after the pandemic forced many to stay at home. The 10.5% jump over 2020 numbers was the largest percentage increase since the National Highway Traffic Safety...
Lawsuit seeks $2.4M damages from Wisconsin fake GOP electors
MADISON, Wis. — Two Wisconsin Democratic electors and a voter on Tuesday sued Republicans who attempted to cast electoral ballots for Donald Trump in 2020 despite Joe Biden’s victory in the battleground state. Their lawsuit filed in Dane County Circuit Court alleges a conspiracy by Trump and his allies to...
Buffalo suspect: Lonely, isolated — and a sign of trouble
CONKLIN, N.Y. — In the waning days of Payton Gendron’s covid-19-altered senior year at Susquehanna Valley High School, he logged on to a virtual learning program in economics class that asked: “What do you plan to do when you retire?” “Murder-suicide,” Gendron typed. Despite his protests that it was all...
Prosecutors: NYC investment adviser blamed in $5B fraud
NEW YORK — Bus drivers, subway conductors and religious and charitable organizations nationwide were among victims when fraud speeded the downfall of private investment funds once worth $11 billion, causing a loss of $5 billion for investors, authorities said Tuesday. Additional details were expected to be released at a news...
Yellen warns Europeans about working with China, urges unity
BRUSSELS — Even as Western allies grapple with how to counter Russia’s assault on Ukraine, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned Tuesday that they also must take a wary and united approach to checking China and its business practices. “We have a common interest in incentivizing China to refrain from...
FDA clears covid booster shot for healthy kids ages 5 to 11
U.S. regulators on Tuesday authorized a covid-19 booster shot for healthy 5- to 11-year-olds, hoping an extra vaccine dose will enhance their protection as infections once again creep upward. Everyone 12 and older already was supposed to get one booster dose for the best protection against the newest coronavirus variants...
Pa.’s richest person has spent at least $18 million on 2022 primary — mostly to influence 1 issue
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 — What does a conservative upstart challenging a top House Republican in York County have in common with a scion...
North Korea’s Kim faces ‘huge dilemma’ on aid as virus surges
SEOUL, South Korea — During more than a decade as North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un has made “self-reliance” his governing lynchpin, shunning international help and striving instead for domestic strategies to fix his battered economy. But as an illness suspected to be covid-19 sickens hundreds of thousands of his...