U.S./World category, Page 610
New California gun control law mimics Texas abortion measure
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California punched back Friday against two recent landmark U.S. Supreme Court decisions as Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a controversial, first-in-the-nation gun control law patterned after a Texas anti-abortion law and urged other states to follow suit. He acted one month after conservative justices overturned the constitutional right...
Officers describe horror they saw after Parkland shooting
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Law enforcement officers who charged into Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School minutes after Nikolas Cruz fatally shot 17 in one of its buildings described for jurors Friday the horrific scene they encountered. Two Coral Springs police officers and a Broward County sheriff’s deputy told of...
East Africa bloc says 50 million face acute food insecurity
KAMPALA, Uganda — More than 50 million people across the East African region are expected to face acute food insecurity this year, a regional bloc said Friday, warning that some 300,000 in Somalia and South Sudan are projected to be under full-blown famine conditions. The assessment by Intergovernmental Authority on...
Airstrikes kill more Ukrainians despite grain export deal
KYIV, Ukraine — Emergency workers recovered three bodies from a school hit by a Russian strike in eastern Ukraine, officials said Friday, one of a string of attacks on the nation. The casualties in the city of Kramatorsk followed a barrage Thursday on a densely populated area of Ukraine’s second-largest...
Steve Bannon convicted of contempt charges in Jan. 6 case
WASHINGTON — Steve Bannon, a longtime ally of former President Donald Trump, was convicted on Friday of contempt charges for defying a congressional subpoena from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Bannon, 68, was convicted after a four-day trial in federal court on two...
Jan. 6 probes: What’s next for Congress, criminal cases
WASHINGTON — This isn’t the end of the Capitol riot story. The House committee investigating the deadly events of a fateful, chilly January day — now a year and a half in the past — has wrapped up its hot summer series of televised hearings, each featuring revelatory details about...
Wall Street opens higher; Twitter, Snap in focus on results
NEW YORK — Stocks are opening slightly higher on Wall Street Friday ahead of data that’s expected to show the manufacturing industry slowed again last month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 0.4% just after the opening bell while the S&P 500 is barely positive and the Nasdaq is...
Jan. 6 hearing dominates top TV networks — except one
NEW YORK — America’s top television networks on Thursday turned prime time over to a gripping account of former President Donald Trump’s actions during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol — with one prominent exception. The top-rated news network, Fox News Channel, stuck with its own lineup...
Lee Zeldin, GOP nominee for NY governor, assaulted at rally
NEW YORK — U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin, the Republican candidate for New York governor, was assaulted by a man who apparently tried to stab him at an upstate event Thursday but the congressman escaped serious injury. “I’m OK,” Zeldin said in a statement. “Fortunately, I was able to grab his...
FBI: No sign of Jimmy Hoffa under New Jersey bridge
DETROIT — The FBI found no evidence of missing Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa during a search of land under a New Jersey bridge, a spokeswoman said Thursday. The Pulaski Skyway now becomes another dead end in the decadeslong mystery that has stretched from a Michigan horse farm to the East...
DHS watchdog takes over inquiry into lost secret service texts from Capitol riotVideo
The Homeland Security Department’s watchdog has opened an investigation into the loss of Secret Service text messages from the days surrounding the attack on the U.S. Capitol last year. The Inspector General of Homeland Security is conducting the probe and has instructed the Secret Service to stop its own internal...
Jan. 6: Trump spurned aides’ pleas to call off Capitol mobVideo
WASHINGTON — Despite desperate pleas from aides, allies, Republican congressional leaders and even his family, Donald Trump refused to call off the Jan. 6 mob attack on the Capitol, instead “pouring gasoline on the fire” by aggressively tweeting his false claims of a stolen election and telling the crowd of...
Steve Bannon’s defense seeks acquittal then rests case
WASHINGTON — Trump ally Steve Bannon declined to testify and his lawyers did not call any witnesses in his contempt of Congress trial on Thursday, instead arguing the judge should just acquit him, saying prosecutors hadn’t proven their case. The decision to forego calling any witnesses in Bannon’s defense cleared...
New York reports 1st U.S. polio case in nearly a decade
New York health officials on Thursday reported a polio case, the first in the U.S. in nearly a decade. Officials said the Rockland County resident is an unvaccinated adult, but they did not detail the person’s condition. It appears the person had a vaccine-derived strain of the virus, perhaps from...
Biden tests positive for covid-19, has ‘mild symptoms’Video
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden tested positive for covid-19 on Thursday and is experiencing “very mild symptoms,” the White House said, as new variants of the highly contagious virus are challenging the nation’s efforts to get back to normal after two and a half years of pandemic disruptions. White House...
Russia pounds major Ukrainian city after expanding war aims
KHARKIV, Ukraine — Russian shelling pounded a densely populated area in Ukraine’s second-largest city Thursday, killing at least three people and injuring at least 23 others with a barrage that struck a mosque, a medical facility and a shopping area, according to officials and witnesses. Police in the northeast city...
Pressure on Senate GOP after same-sex marriage passes House
WASHINGTON — The Senate unexpectedly launched a new push Wednesday to protect same-sex marriage in federal law after a surprising number of Republicans helped pass landmark legislation in the House. Some GOP senators are already signaling support. The legislation started as an election-season political effort to confront the new Supreme...
AP-NORC poll: Majority want Congress to keep abortion legal
WASHINGTON — A majority of Americans say Congress should pass a law guaranteeing access to legal abortion nationwide, according to a new poll that finds over half say they feel at least somewhat “sad” or “angry” about the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. The high court’s decision...
House Dems move to protect contraception from Supreme Court
WASHINGTON — The right to use contraceptives would be inscribed into law under a measure Democrats are pushing through the House, their latest campaign-season response to worries that a conservative Supreme Court that’s erased federal abortion rights could go further. The House planned to vote Thursday on the legislation and...
Vatican says they’re gifts; Indigenous groups want them back
VATICAN CITY — The Vatican Museums are home to some of the most magnificent artworks in the world, from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel to ancient Egyptian antiquities and a pavilion full of papal chariots. But one of the museum’s least-visited collections is becoming its most contested before Pope Francis’ trip to...
White House insiders to talk about Trump’s actions on Jan. 6
WASHINGTON — Matthew Pottinger was a journalist in China, concerned about the country’s drift toward authoritarianism, when he decided — at age 31 — to enlist in the U.S. Marines after the invasion of Iraq. “Our form of government is not inevitable,” Pottinger recalled thinking during an interview two years...
You can own a dinosaur skeleton — and other prehistoric stuff — for the right priceVideo
Despite every child gazing in wonder and/or terror at the world-famous Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, they will never be able to buy it and put it in their house. But for the right price, they might be able to afford his cousin. An exhibition-ready,...
Secret Service tells House committee it’s still seeking lost Jan. 6 textsVideo
WASHINGTON — The Secret Service has failed so far to provide Congress with any substantial new agency text messages from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021, but assures the House committee investigating last year’s Capitol attack it will continue searching for the lost material. Secret Service Communications Chief Anthony Guglielmi...
Biden announces modest climate actions; pledges more to comeVideo
SOMERSET, Mass. — President Joe Biden on Wednesday announced modest new steps to combat climate change and promised more robust action to come, saying, “This is an emergency and I will look at it that way.” The president stopped short, though, of declaring a formal climate emergency, which Democrats and...
NASA aiming for late August test flight of giant moon rocket
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — On the 53rd anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, NASA announced Wednesday it’s shooting for a late August launch of its giant, new moon rocket. NASA will attempt the more than month-long lunar test flight with three mannequins, but no astronauts, as early as Aug....
