U.S./World category, Page 662

BALTIMORE — Pope Francis’ top envoy to the United States cautioned the country’s bishops on Tuesday that the church needs to listen before it teaches as they deliberated at their fall meeting on a sensitive document about Holy Communion that emerged amid debates over Catholic politicians’ support for abortion. “It...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — North Carolina’s requirement that transgender people undergo sex reassignment surgery as part of establishing their identity is discriminatory and does not align with a majority of states and medical organizations, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court. Three law firms joined to file the lawsuit...

MISSION, Kan. — A 21-year-old Kansas lawmaker pushed, hit and spit on his 18-year-old brother in a fight that erupted because the brother was going to get baptized, according to court documents released Tuesday in a pending domestic battery case. An Overland Park police sergeant wrote in the probable cause...

Crowds will once again fill New York’s Times Square this New Year’s Eve, with proof of covid-19 vaccination required for revelers who want to watch the ball drop in person, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Tuesday. “Yes, we are proud to announce that Times Square, wonderful celebration in Times Square,...

BRUNSWICK, Ga. — Ahmaud Arbery’s autopsy photos were shown to jurors Tuesday at the murder trial of three white men who chased the Black man down before he was fatally shot last year in their neighborhood. Dr. Edmund Donoghue, a medical examiner for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, testified that...

IOWA CITY, Iowa — A former manager for an influential Iowa-based pork dealer has died in a crash, days after federal prosecutors charged him in a scheme to swindle hog farmers through fraudulent buying practices. Steven Demaray, 70, the former regional buying manager for Lynch Livestock, was driving a truck...

KENOSHA, Wis. — The jury has begun deliberating at the murder trial of Kyle Rittenhouse after listening to two weeks of dueling portrayals of Rittenhouse. Prosecutors say he was a “wannabe soldier” who instigated the bloodshed; the defense says he acted in self-defense after coming under attack. The 18-year-old Rittenhouse...

WARSAW, Poland — Polish border forces said they were attacked with stones by migrants Tuesday at the border with Belarus and responded by using water cannons against them. Police said the migrants were given gas grenades and other weapons by Belarusian forces, who directed the entire violent operation with a...

HOUMA, La. — Authorities in southern Louisiana are searching for a woman who bit off part of an officer’s ear. Houma police were trying to break up a fight between several women in a bar’s parking lot just after midnight on Friday when one of them started biting the ear...

Infowars host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was found liable Monday for damages in lawsuits brought by parents of children killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting over Jones’ claims that the massacre was a hoax. Judge Barbara Bellis took the rare step of defaulting Jones in the defamation...

DETROIT — Influenza is sweeping the University of Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus, with 528 cases diagnosed at the University Health Service since Oct. 6. The outbreak is so sudden and large — 313 cases were identified the week of Nov. 8 alone and 37% of flu tests that week were...

AURORA, Colo. — Six teenagers were shot in a drive-by shooting Monday in a park near a high school in suburban Denver, but all were expected to survive, police said. The victims, who range in age from 14 to 18, are all students at Aurora Central High School, Aurora police...

It’s a hidden crisis that has existed for years inside one of the most well-funded institutions on the planet and has only worsened during the coronavirus pandemic. As many as 160,000 active-duty military members are having trouble feeding their families. That estimate by Feeding America, which coordinates the work of...

SEATTLE — After rejecting a half-billion-dollar settlement, Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson on Monday took the state’s case against the nation’s three biggest drug distributors to trial, saying they must be held accountable for their role in the nation’s opioid epidemic. The Democrat delivered part of the opening statement in...

Space junk threatened the seven astronauts aboard the International Space Station on Monday and forced them to seek shelter in their docked capsules. The U.S. Space Command said it was tracking a field of orbiting debris, the apparent result of some type of satellite break-up. The astronauts retreated into their...

LONDON — British authorities raised the country’s threat level to its second-highest rung on Monday, after police said a blast in a taxi outside a Liverpool hospital that killed one man and injured another was caused by a homemade bomb. Investigators said they were treating the explosion in Liverpool as...

International students are returning to U.S. colleges in stronger numbers this year, but the rebound has yet to make up for last year’s historic declines as covid-19 continues to disrupt academic exchange, according to a new survey. Nationwide, American colleges and universities saw a 4% annual increase in international students...

BERLIN — Austria took what its leader called the “dramatic” step Monday of implementing a nationwide lockdown for unvaccinated people who haven’t recently had covid-19, perhaps the most drastic of a string of measures being taken by European governments to get a massive regional resurgence of the virus under control....

The U.S. Census Bureau on Tuesday is announcing where the new population center of the U.S. is located, an event that take places every 10 years after the once-a-decade census shows where people are living. The center of the U.S. population distribution has been located in Missouri since 1980, and...

WASHINGTON — The $1 trillion infrastructure bill that President Joe Biden signs into law represents a historic achievement at a time of deeply fractured politics. But the compromises needed to bridge the political divide suggest that the spending might not be as transformative as Biden has promised for the U.S....