U.S./World category, Page 688

MOSCOW — Russia’s emergency situations minister has died during drills, the ministry said Wednesday. Yevgeny Zinichev, 55, “tragically died in the line of duty during inter-agency exercises to protect the Arctic zone from emergency situations, while saving a person’s life,” the ministry said in a statement carried by Russian news...

PARIS — In a custom-built secure complex embedded within a 13th-century courthouse, France on Wednesday began the trial of 20 men accused in the Islamic State group’s 2015 attacks in Paris that left 130 people dead and hundreds injured. The defendants were taken one by one into a glass-enclosed box...

NAIROBI, Kenya — Local officials in Ethiopia allege that Tigray forces have killed more than 120 civilians in recent days following battlefield losses, in what would be one of the deadliest massacres of the country’s 10-month war. Sewunet Wubalem, administrator for the Dabat woreda, or district, in the Amhara region...

Rudolph Giuliani was a hero before he was a punchline. Lisa Beamer was a wife and mother before she became a symbol of Sept. 11 — and though her celebrity passed, her widowhood cannot. In the aftermath of the planes falling from the sky, America and the world were introduced...

NEW ORLEANS — Hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses in Louisiana, most of them outside New Orleans, still didn’t have power Tuesday and more than half of the gas stations in two major cities were without fuel nine days after Hurricane Ida slammed into the state, splintering homes and...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA’s newest Mars rover has completed its first sample grab, tucking away the tube of rock for return to Earth. The Perseverance rover team confirmed last week’s successful drilling and collection, after reviewing photos of the core sample. NASA wanted to be certain the sample was...

WASHINGTON — Jill Biden is going back to her whiteboard. After months of teaching writing and English to community college students in boxes on a computer screen, the first lady resumes teaching in person Tuesday from a classroom at Northern Virginia Community College, where she has worked since 2009. She...

NEW YORK — It seems like yesterday: The smell of death, the gray ash that looked like snow, the falling bodies that sounded like bombs as they smashed into the pavement. For the NYPD cops who responded to ground zero, sifted through the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island or...

ROME — Vatican officials declined on Tuesday to say if women would be able to vote on concrete proposals about the future of the Catholic Church at the end of a two-year process of consultation of ordinary faithful that Pope Francis kicks off next month. For years, women activists and...

NEW YORK — “Turn on your television.” Those words were repeated in millions of homes on Sept. 11, 2001. Friends and relatives took to the telephone: Something awful was happening. You have to see. Before social media and with online news in its infancy, the story of the day when...

WASHINGTON — As the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks approaches, Americans increasingly balk at intrusive government surveillance in the name of national security, and only about a third believe that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were worth fighting, according to a new poll. More Americans...

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — The lifting of a mandatory evacuation order for South Lake Tahoe’s 22,000 residents is a confident milestone in the fight against the Caldor Fire, but it remains only 48% contained and still threatens areas south of the resort town. Firefighters are confronting aggressive winds and...

NEW YORK — A car passed, the driver’s window rolled down and the man spat an epithet at two little girls wearing their hijabs: “Terrorist!” It was 2001, mere weeks after the twin towers at the World Trade Center fell, and 10-year-old Shahana Hanif and her younger sister were walking...

RICHMOND, Va. — A towering statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Va., is set to come down on Wednesday, more than 130 years after it was built as a tribute to a Civil War hero who is now widely seen as a symbol of racial injustice, state...

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department said Monday that it will not tolerate violence against anyone who is trying to obtain an abortion in Texas as federal officials explore options to challenge a new state law that bans most abortions. Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department would “protect those...

ATHENS, Ga. — The suspect in a Georgia shooting that injured seven people as large crowds celebrated a football victory has been apprehended, police announced Monday. Pharoah Devonell Williams, 21, turned himself in at the Wilkes County Jail as police searched for him, Athens Clarke-County police said. He is being...

March 11, 2021. It was supposed to be a turning point in the coronavirus pandemic for Erin Tokley, a longtime Philadelphia police officer, Baptist minister and 47-year-old father of three. It was supposed to be the day of his vaccine appointment. Instead it was the date of his funeral. Tokley...

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A former Marine sharpshooter who told authorities he was high on methamphetamines when he invaded a home in Florida and fatally shot a mother, her 3-month-old baby and two others was ordered held without bond during his first court appearance on Monday. Bryan Riley, 33, also...

WASHINGTON — The collapse of the Afghan government, a surge of covid-19 cases caused by the delta variant, devastating weather events, a disappointing jobs report. What next? After a torrent of crises, President Joe Biden is hoping to turn the page on an unrelenting summer and refocus his presidency this...

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban said on Monday they have taken control of Panjshir province north of Kabul, the last holdout of anti-Taliban forces in the country and the only province the Taliban had not seized during their blitz across Afghanistan last month. Thousands of Taliban fighters overran eight districts...