News category, Page 958

NEW YORK — Omicron has raced ahead of other variants and is now the dominant version of the coronavirus in the United States, accounting for 73% of new infections last week, federal health officials said Monday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention numbers showed nearly a six-fold increase in...

A 4-year-old child shot his 4-year-old twin Sunday, prompting charges against the kids’ father after police said he left two guns unsecured inside their Harrisburg home. The wounded boy required life-saving surgery after being shot in the left arm and chest, according to court records. His condition is life-threatening. Police...

A man who joined a mob in one of the most violent attacks on police during the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol was sentenced on Monday to nearly four years in prison. Devlyn Thompson, 28, wrote an apology letter to the officer whom he assaulted during a melee...

WASHINGTON — Warning that extremism in the ranks is increasing, Pentagon officials are issuing detailed new rules prohibiting service members from actively engaging in extremist activities. The new guidelines come nearly a year after some current and former service members participated in the riot at the U.S. Capitol, triggering a...

There’s still a lot we don’t know about the omicron coronavirus variant, including whether it causes more severe covid-19 or the degree to which it evades vaccines’ defenses in real-world settings. But early data collected in London reveals the answer to a question we’re all asking: Does omicron cause different...

The Hubble Space Telescope’s successor is a time-traveling wonder capable of peering back to within a hair’s breadth of the dawn of the universe. And it’s finally on the brink of flight. It will be the biggest and most powerful astronomical observatory ever to leave the planet, elaborate in its...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A judge on Monday temporarily blocked public charter schools from being implemented in West Virginia. Kanawha County Circuit Judge Jennifer Bailey granted a preliminary injunction sought by parents in a lawsuit filed against Gov. Jim Justice and leaders of the House of Delegates and state Senate, news...

NEW YORK — Emarilis Velazquez is paying higher prices on everything from food to clothing. Her monthly grocery bill has ballooned from $650 to almost $850 in recent months. To save money, she looks for less expensive cuts of meat and has switched to a cheaper detergent. She also clips...

Moderna said Monday that a booster dose of its covid-19 vaccine should offer protection against the rapidly spreading omicron variant. Moderna said lab tests showed the half-dose booster shot increased by 37 times the level of so-called neutralizing antibodies able to fight omicron. And a full-dose booster was even stronger,...

ROME — Pope Francis has denounced domestic violence against woman as “nearly satanic” and said parents should never slap their children. Francis made the comments in a televised encounter with an abused woman who recently fled her home with her four children. Their meeting was broadcast late Sunday on the...

WASHINGTON — Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Cory Booker of New Jersey say they have tested positive for covid-19, as the country deals with another surge in cases and the emergence of the omicron variant. In separate statements Sunday, the Democrats said they had been fully vaccinated with two...

MOSCOW — A Japanese billionaire, his producer and a Russian cosmonaut safely returned to Earth on Monday after spending 12 days on the International Space Station. Fashion tycoon Yusaku Maezawa, his producer Yozo Hirano and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin made a soft landing in a Russian Soyuz capsule in the...

MIAMI — Forty-eight passengers and crew members tested positive for covid-19 on Royal Caribbean’s Symphony of the Seas ship, which docked Saturday at PortMiami, the cruise company said. Miami-based Royal Caribbean said in a statement Sunday that each person who tested positive immediately went into quarantine. Six people who had...

HARRISBURG — An adult was taken into custody after a 4-year-old child was critically wounded in a shooting in Pennsylvania’s capital over the weekend, police said. Harrisburg police said patrol units were called to a home in the city at about 10:15 a.m. Sunday and found the child with a...

BOSTON — Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Cory Booker of New Jersey say they have tested positive for covid-19, as the country deals with another surge in cases and the emergence of the omicron variant. In separate statements Sunday, the Democrats said they had been fully vaccinated with two...

SEATTLE — Washington state Sen. Doug Ericksen, a staunch conservative, has died at age 52. Ericksen’s death Friday came weeks after he said he had tested positive for the coronavirus while in El Salvador, though his cause of death wasn’t immediately released. The state Senate Republican Caucus confirmed his passing...

VIENNA — Germany should implement stricter measures this week to slow the spread of the omicron variant, the German government’s new expert council said Sunday, a day after the government announced it would impose travel restrictions on people coming from Britain. The council — comprised of Germany’s top virologists and...

WILMINGTON, Del. — The covid-19 omicron variant is “just raging around the world,” the White House’s top medical adviser said Sunday, and President Joe Biden is planning to give “a stark warning of what the winter will look like” for unvaccinated Americans. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease...

ATLANTA — Johnny Isakson, an affable Georgia Republican politician who rose from the ranks of the state Legislature to become a U.S. senator known as an effective, behind-the-scenes consensus builder, died Sunday. He was 76. Isakson’s son John Isakson told The Associated Press his father died in his sleep before...

WASHINGTON — Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin said Sunday he cannot back his party’s signature $2 trillion social and environment bill, dealing a potentially fatal blow to President Joe Biden’s leading domestic initiative heading into an election year when Democrats’ narrow hold on Congress was already in peril. Manchin told “Fox...

ROCKY MOUNT, N.C. — A fire ripped through a distribution center in North Carolina for the QVC home-shopping television network early Saturday, causing extensive damage to the facility, officials said. More than 300 employees were working at the facility near Rocky Mount when the fire was reported shortly after 2...

The U.S. government has overcounted the number of Americans who are at least partly vaccinated against the coronavirus, state officials warn, meaning millions more people are unprotected as the pandemic’s winter surge gathers steam. Last weekend, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revised a bellwether metric — the share...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — All of the people reported missing in Kentucky after tornadoes swept through the state last weekend have been accounted for, Gov. Andy Beshear said Saturday. Beshear hailed the report by state emergency management officials and said he hoped it meant that no additional people in Kentucky would...