U.S./World category, Page 825

The 12 Days of Christmas will cost you less than half of what it did in 2019. But you’re getting less gifts because of covid-19. “The true cost of Christmas decreased in 2020, as this year’s index accounts for cancellations of many live performances,” PNC said on their rundown of...

BEIJING — A Chinese lunar probe lifted off from the moon Thursday night with a cargo of lunar samples on the first stage of its return to Earth, state media reported. Chang’e 5, the third Chinese spacecraft to land on the moon and the first to take off from it...

LOS EBANOS, Texas — The U.S. government has been trying to take Pamela Rivas’ land for a border wall since before Joe Biden was vice president. From a brushy bluff, Rivas can look across the Rio Grande to Mexico on the other side. She spent her childhood fishing on the...

LONDON — Four people have died following an explosion at a waste water treatment plant near the southwest England city of Bristol, police said Thursday. Chief Inspector Mark Runacres of Avon and Somerset Police said that a fifth person was injured during the explosion at Avonmouth but that his condition...

AMSTERDAM — Vandals daubed white paint over the faces of Black historical figures on a mural outside a Black cultural archive in Amsterdam in what one of the archive’s founders called a racist attack Thursday. The vandals also stuck stickers on the mural saying in Dutch “soot-smudge Pete is genocide,”...

BEIJING — China on Thursday accused critics in the U.S. government of “an escalation of political suppression” against Beijing following a report of new visa restrictions on members of China’s ruling Communist Party and their immediate family members. Foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said China would “make representations” to the...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A mysterious object temporarily orbiting Earth is a 54-year-old rocket, not an asteroid after all, astronomers confirmed Wednesday. Observations by a telescope in Hawaii clinched its identity, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The object was classified as an asteroid after its discovery...

SAN DIEGO — A court-appointed committee has yet to find the parents of 628 children separated at the border early in the Trump administration, according to a court filing Wednesday that also said the government last week provided additional phone numbers to aid the long-running search. Parents of 333 children...

NEW YORK — Rockin’ around the Christmas tree looks different for visitors at Rockefeller Center this year, starting with the tree lighting ceremony on Wednesday. What’s normally a chaotic, crowded tourist hotspot during the holiday season was instead a mask-mandated, time-limited, socially distanced locale because of the coronavirus pandemic. The...

MIAMI — Jeffrey Epstein’s onetime romantic partner and alleged sex trafficking accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell is expected to renew her request to be released on bail, which was originally denied after she was arrested in July. Maxwell has been housed since then at the Metropolitan Detention Center in the New York...

City officials in San Francisco have banned all tobacco smoking inside apartments, citing concerns about secondhand smoke. But lighting up a joint inside? That’s still allowed. The Board of Supervisors voted 10-1 Tuesday to approve the ordinance making San Francisco the largest city in the country to ban tobacco smoking...

WALTHAM, Mass. — The attacks come after dark, without warning, usually from behind. The victims, all men, are hit so hard on the head with some sort of blunt object that they are often knocked to the ground and require medical attention. The apparently random string of at least 10...

The U.N. Commission on Narcotic Drugs voted Wednesday to remove cannabis and cannabis resin from a category of the world’s most dangerous drugs, which could impact the global medical marijuana industry. The Vienna-based U.N. agency said in a statement that it had voted 27-25, with one abstention, to remove cannabis...

An owner of a New York City bar that was providing indoor service in defiance of coronavirus restrictions was arrested after a sting in which plainclothes officers went inside and ordered food and beverages, the city sheriff’s office said. Protesters shouted as deputies arrested Danny Presti, the co-owner of Mac’s...

ISLAMABAD — A top Pakistani court on Wednesday declared the country’s ailing former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who lives in exile in London, a fugitive from justice after he failed to return home to face additional corruption charges. The move by the Islamabad High Court comes months after Sharif was...

The days of pets flying with their owners in airplane cabins for free are coming to an end. The Transportation Department issued a final rule Wednesday covering animals on airlines. It decided that only dogs can fly as service animals, and companions that passengers use for emotional support don’t count....

LANCASTER, Ky. — A Kentucky man has pleaded guilty to killing a woman whose remains were found six months after she disappeared, according to court records. David Sparks, 25, entered the plea Monday in Garrard County Circuit Court, news outlets reported, citing court records. He was indicted last year on...

NEW YORK — National lawmakers are expected on Wednesday to introduce a joint resolution aimed at striking language from the U.S. Constitution that enshrines a form of slavery in America’s foundational documents. The resolution, spearheaded and supported by Democratic members of the House and Senate, would amend the 13th Amendment’s...

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is closing out his relationship with Congress with one more power jab, threatening to veto a hugely popular defense bill unless lawmakers clamp down on big tech companies he claims were biased against him during the election. Trump is demanding that Congress repeal so-called Section...

WASHINGTON — President-elect Joe Biden’s Cabinet picks are quickly running into the political reality of a narrowly controlled Senate that will leave the new Democratic administration dependent on rival Republicans to get anything done. Under leader Mitch McConnell, the Republican senators will hold great sway in confirming Biden’s nominees regardless...

RIO DE JANEIRO — Heavily armed bank robbers invaded the Brazilian city of Cameta just one day after criminals struck another mid-sized city on the opposite side of the country, taking residents hostage as they looted a bank. Para state’s public security secretariat said in a statement that more than...

FORT MITCHELL, Ala. — An Alabama soldier was charged with reckless murder after allegedly forcing his girlfriend’s unruly 5-year-old son to get out of a car at night along a road where the boy was hit and killed by another vehicle, authorities said. Army Sgt. Bryan Starr, 35, surrendered to...

A Georgia elections official has had it with threats against himself and fellow elections workers in that battleground state that was awarded to Joe Biden during last month’s presidential election. Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s Voting Systems Implementation Manager, who is Republican, said emphatically in a Tuesday press conference that it has...