State officials: Bird flu found at 4th Indiana turkey farm
INDIANAPOLIS — Avian influenza has been detected in a fourth commercial poultry flock in southern Indiana, state officials said Saturday. Laboratory testing of a second commercial flock of turkeys in Greene County has come back as presumptively positive for the virus, the Indiana State Board of Animal Health said. The samples...
Dems, GOP set inflation, covid mandates as election themes
WASHINGTON — Democrats and Republicans each want to flash election-year signals that they are riding to the rescue of families struggling with rising costs and the 2-year-old coronavirus pandemic. Not surprisingly, the parties differ over how to do that. And in comments and votes in the Senate last week, each...
Hundreds of rodents found inside Family Dollar facility
WEST MEMPHIS, Ark. — More than 1,000 rodents were found inside a Family Dollar distribution facility in Arkansas, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Friday as the chain issued a voluntary recall affecting items purchased from hundreds of stores in the South. A consumer complaint prompted officials to inspect...
Rehabilitated sea turtle Sheldon released off Florida Keys
MARATHON, Fla. — Just in time for sea turtle mating season in the Florida Keys, a rehabilitated male loggerhead turtle was released Friday off Pigeon Key. Sheldon, named by his U.S. Coast Guard rescuers, was discovered earlier this month near the Old Seven Mile Bridge. The 230-pound reptile was rehabilitated...
Biden is ‘convinced’ Putin has decided to invade Ukraine
KYIV, Ukraine — U.S. President Joe Biden said Friday that he is “convinced” Russian President Vladimir Putin has decided to invade Ukraine, including an assault on the capital, as tensions spiked along the militarized border with attacks that the West called “false-flag” operations meant to establish a pretext for invasion....
Judge rejects effort by Trump to toss Jan. 6 lawsuits
A federal judge on Friday rejected efforts by former President Donald Trump to toss out conspiracy lawsuits filed by lawmakers and two Capitol police officers, saying in his ruling that the former president’s words “plausibly” may have led to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta...
White House accuses Russia of cyberattacks targeting Ukraine
The White House blamed Russia on Friday for recent cyberattacks targeting Ukraine’s defense ministry and major banks. The announcement from Anne Neuberger, the White House’s chief cyber official, was the most pointed attribution of responsibility for cyberattacks that unfolded as tensions escalate between Russia and Ukraine. The attacks this week,...
Biden signs stopgap spending bill averting shutdown
President Joe Biden on Friday signed a bipartisan bill to extend government funding for three weeks to give Congress more time to reach an overdue deal financing federal agencies through the rest of the fiscal year, the White House announced. The Senate approved the measure Thursday by a bipartisan 65-27...
National Archives: Trump took classified items to Mar-a-Lago
Classified information was found in the 15 boxes of White House records that were stored at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, the National Archives and Records Administration said Friday in a letter that confirmed the matter has been sent to the Justice Department. The letter from the agency follows...
NYC mayor pushes to remove homeless people in subway system
New York City Mayor Eric Adams is making an aggressive push to try to remove homeless people from the city’s sprawling subway system, announcing a plan to start barring people from sleeping on trains or riding the same lines all night. The new mayor, at one point likening homelessness to...
Police rule out foul play in death of Penn State student who fell down trash chute at a State College apartment
State College police ruled out foul play in the November death of the Penn State student who plunged 11 stories down a trash chute at her off-campus apartment, the department wrote in a statement Thursday. Neither the borough police department nor the Centre County Coroner’s Office gathered any evidence that...
California bill would allow citizens to enforce weapons ban
A new bill in California would allow private citizens go after gun makers in the same way Texas lets them target abortion providers. Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday backed legislation that would let private citizens enforce the state’s ban on assault weapons. It’s modeled after a Texas law that lets...
Stranded truck drivers pulled from burning Greek ferry
Rescue specialists boarded a burning ferry in Greece to free two truck drivers who had been stranded inside the vessel for more than 15 hours Friday, but hope was fading for 11 others were reported missing. The rescuers descended from a helicopter onto the ship through thick clouds of smoke...
At least 4 more deaths as 2nd major storm hits north Europe
The second major storm in three days smashed through northern Europe on Friday, killing at least four people as high winds felled trees, cancelled train services and ripped sections off the roof of London’s O2 Arena. The U.K. weather service said a gust provisionally measured at 122 mph, thought to...
Pennsylvania high court eyes how to pick House districts map
Ranks of lawyers packed the courtroom of Pennsylvania’s state Supreme Court on Friday, with most of them aiming to persuade justices to pick their clients’ preferred map of new congressional districts for the state and reject a Republican-backed map recommended by a lower court judge. Oral arguments were on course...
Pennsylvania man accused of torturing employee in Iraq
A Pennsylvania man is accused of torturing an employee in Iraq after the worker raised concerns about a project to produce weapons parts in that country, federal prosecutors said. Under a superseding indictment returned Tuesday, federal authorities accused Ross Roggio, 53, of Stroudsburg, with suffocating the victim with a belt,...
A mild U.S. flu season is waning, but is it really over?
This winter’s mild flu season has faded to a trickle of cases in much of the U.S., but health officials aren’t ready to call it over. Since the beginning of the year, positive flu test results and doctor’s office visits for flu-like illness are down. But second waves of influenza...
Kim Potter sentenced to 2 years in Daunte Wright’s death
Kim Potter, the former suburban Minneapolis police officer who said she confused her handgun for her Taser when she fatally shot Daunte Wright, was sentenced Friday to two years in prison. Wright’s family denounced the sentence as too lenient and accused the judge of being taken in by a “white...
Republican lawmakers bar journalists from statehouse floors
Republican lawmakers in several states are scaling back access to government business, extending pandemic-era rules that restrict when journalists can report from the floors of state legislative chambers and, in effect, making it easier to dodge the press. As the public returns to the corridors of state capitols, new rules...
Ottawa crackdown: police arrest 100 after 3-week protest
OTTAWA, Ontario — Police arrested scores of demonstrators and towed away vehicles Friday in Canada’s besieged capital, and a stream of trucks started leaving under the pressure, raising authorities’ hopes for an end to the three-week protest against the country’s covid-19 restrictions. By evening, at least 100 people had been...
In GOP embrace of truckers, some see racist double standard
Former President Donald Trump, who repeatedly called Black Lives Matter protesters “thugs” and “anarchists,” said there’s “a lot of respect” for the overwhelmingly white truckers who blocked streets in the Canadian capital and shut down border crossings with the U.S. to oppose covid-19 restrictions. To Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, the...
Take the 5th? The choice could soon be Trump’s in N.Y. probe
NEW YORK — To plead the Fifth, or not to plead the Fifth? That is the question Donald Trump may face after a New York judge ordered the former president to testify in a long-running state civil investigation into his business practices. Trump’s lawyers are almost certain to appeal Judge...
Ukrainian rebels evacuate civilians to Russia amid crisis
Spiking tensions in eastern Ukraine on Friday aggravated Western fears of a Russian invasion and a new war in Europe, with a humanitarian convoy hit by shelling and pro-Russian rebels evacuating civilians from the conflict zone. A strong explosion hit the eastern city of Donetsk. The Kremlin declared massive nuclear...
Prince Harry lawyers say he feels unsafe bringing kids to UK
Lawyers for Prince Harry told a court hearing on Friday that the British royal is unwilling to bring his children to his homeland because it is not safe. Harry has launched a legal challenge to the U.K. government’s refusal to let him personally pay for police protection when he comes...
Ukraine-Russia crisis: What to know as tension grinds on
Amid its tensest standoff with the West since the Cold War, Russia plans to give its nuclear weapons apparatus a practice run this weekend. The multiple practice launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles and cruise missiles set for Saturday follow a warning from U.S. President Joe Biden that Russia could invade...
