China lands on Mars in latest advance for its space program
BEIJING — China has landed a spacecraft on Mars for the first time in the latest advance for its space program. The official Xinhua News Agency said Saturday that the lander had touched down, citing the China National Space Administration. Plans call for a rover to stay in the lander...
House to vote soon on bills to protect Capitol after Jan. 6
WASHINGTON — The House is expected to vote next week on two bills aimed at preventing more attacks on the U.S. Capitol, with one seeking to establish a 9/11-style commission to study what went wrong on Jan. 6 and the other allocating $1.9 billion to address the security problems revealed...
Walmart, Sam’s Club to begin offering youth vaccinations
Following recommendation by the Federal Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control, Walmart and Sam’s Club pharmacy locations will be extending its vaccine supply to children ages 12 to 15, company officials announced Friday. “This is great news, not just for the newly eligible cohort, but for the entire...
Mississippi justices toss voter-backed marijuana initiative
JACKSON, Miss. — Mississippi will remain in the minority of states without a medical marijuana program after the state Supreme Court on Friday overturned an initiative that voters approved last fall — a decision that also limits other citizen-led efforts to put issues on the statewide ballot. At the heart...
N.C. judge accused of nearly hitting protester with SUV
FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — A woman on Friday formally accused a North Carolina appeals court judge of nearly striking Black Lives Matter protesters in downtown Fayetteville last month with an SUV. A criminal court summons orders Court of Appeals Judge John Tyson to appear in a courtroom next month to answer...
Biden cancels Trump’s planned ‘Garden of American Heroes’
President Joe Biden on Friday put the kibosh on his predecessor’s planned “National Garden of American Heroes” and revoked former President Donald Trump’s executive orders aimed at social media companies’ moderation policies and branding American foreign aid. In an executive order of his own, Biden abolished the Trump-formed task force...
Israeli military accused of using media to trick Hamas
JERUSALEM — Just after midnight Friday, the Israeli military put out an ominous statement to the media: “IDF air and ground troops are currently attacking in the Gaza Strip.” The terse statement set off frenzied speculation that Israel had launched a ground invasion of Gaza — a much-feared scenario that...
Cuba rolls out mass vaccines while awaiting study results
The jab didn’t even hurt, and Mabel Aguilera figures it may finally let her see granddaughters on the other side of Cuba who she hasn’t glimpsed during many months of pandemic restrictions. “Sometimes I thought I wouldn’t be able to stand not seeing my granddaughters,” said the 75-year-old woman, who...
Parkland sheriff gets job reviewing red light tickets
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A former South Florida sheriff who was removed from office by the governor because of his agency’s response to the Parkland school shooting that left 17 people dead has found a new job reviewing the footage of red light cameras. Former Broward Sheriff Scott Israel was...
‘Foot soldiers’ of Birmingham to BLM: ‘Keep on keeping on’
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Charles Avery had barely started marching when police arrested him, forced him into a police vehicle and took him to jail for participating in landmark civil rights protests that helped change the nation in 1963. He spent days in custody and then lived decades haunted by a...
Diplomats, donors concerned about sex abuse reports at WHO
LONDON — British, European and American diplomats and donors have voiced serious concerns about how the World Health Organization handled sex abuse allegations involving its own staff during an outbreak of Ebola in Congo, as reported this week by The Associated Press. On Tuesday, the AP published an investigation documenting...
Idaho man killed by falling ice in Alaska national park
A climber was killed and another was seriously injured when they were hit by a falling block of glacier ice in Alaska’s Denali National Park and Preserve, an official said Friday. The two were hit by the hanging serac after it dislodged from a peak off the West Fork of...
Gaetz associate agrees to cooperate in federal investigation
A Florida politician who emerged as a central figure in the federal investigation into Rep. Matt Gaetz has agreed to cooperate with federal investigators and admits paying an underage girl to have sex with him and other men, according to court documents filed Friday. Joel Greenberg is expected to plead...
Gas crunch from cyberattack intensifies in nation’s capital
Gas shortages at the pumps have spread from the South, all but emptying stations in Washington, D.C., following a ransomware cyberattack that forced a shutdown of the nation’s largest gasoline pipeline. Though the pipeline operator paid a ransom, restoring service was taking time. As Georgia-based Colonial Pipeline reported making “substantial...
NFL families seek to end ‘race-norming’ in $1B settlement
Thousands of retired Black professional football players, their families and supporters are demanding an end to the controversial use of “race-norming” to determine which players are eligible for payouts in the NFL’s $1 billion settlement of brain injury claims, a system experts say is discriminatory. Ken Jenkins, 60, and his...
Woman says $26M California lottery ticket destroyed in wash
The winner of a $26 million California Lottery prize may have literally washed the chance of a fortune down the drain. The winning SuperLotto Plus ticket for the Nov. 14 drawing was sold at an Arco AM/PM convenience store in the Los Angeles suburb of Norwalk. Thursday was the last...
Columbus reaches $10M settlement for family of Andre Hill
Ohio’s capital city will pay a $10 million settlement for the family of Andre Hill, a Black man who was fatally shot by a white Columbus police officer in December as he emerged from a garage holding a cellphone, the Columbus city attorney announced Friday. It’s the largest such settlement...
Free offices with a view: 4 lighthouses, courtesy of feds
Dreading your eventual return to the office? The federal government is making available — for free — some waterfront workspaces with killer views that are sure to entice. But there’s a catch. The General Services Administration says the U.S. Coast Guard has decided it no longer needs four of the...
The unwitting are the target of covid-19 falsehoods online
Dr. Michelle Rockwell lost a pregnancy in December and shared her heartache with her 30,000 Instagram followers. Weeks later, she received the covid-19 vaccine and posted about that, too. By February, Rockwell was getting past the grief and finally starting to experience moments of joy. But then, to her horror,...
Mississippi River traffic reopened under damaged bridge
River traffic has reopened on the Mississippi River near Memphis, Tennessee, three days after it was closed when a crack was discovered in the Interstate 40 bridge that connects Tennessee and Arkansas, the U.S. Coast Guard said Friday. Arkansas authorities, meanwhile, said a video taken by an inspector two years...
Covid cases continue to drop across Pennsylvania as more get vaccinated
Reported cases of covid-19 and related deaths and hospitalizations continued their downward trend in Pennsylvania as the number of vaccinated residents marched upward. Pennsylvania on Friday added 1,643 cases of covid-19, pulling the seven-day case average down to 1,892, the 14th consecutive drop for the average, according to data from...
Senate bill would let residents donate to breast cancer research when renewing driver’s licensesVideo
When state Senate Majority Leader Kim Ward revealed this week that she’d been diagnosed with stage-one breast cancer late last year, she hoped she could use her position to help women both prevent and battle the disease. Her colleagues helped take a step in that direction, unanimously passing a bill...
House panel has agreement on bipartisan Jan. 6 commission
WASHINGTON — The top Democratic and Republican members of the House Homeland Security Committee have reached an agreement on legislation to form a bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The measure had stalled amid partisan differences. Under the terms of the agreement announced Friday,...
Woman hit with 10-pound pack of meat, spit at during fight at Walmart: police
A confrontation in an Ohio Walmart led to one woman being struck in the face by a 10-pound pack of meat earlier this week, according to police. The incident started Tuesday when the two women crossed paths in the potato chip aisle, according to South Euclid police. It’s unclear what...
Pennsylvania voters to decide racial equity amendment
HARRISBURG — Protests over George Floyd’s killing at the hands of Minneapolis police were raging across the country last June when a Democratic lawmaker took to the floor of the Pennsylvania Senate to argue for greater protections against racial discrimination. Next week, nearly a year after Floyd’s death, voters will...
