Judge postpones trial for 3 ex-cops charged in Floyd’s death
MINNEAPOLIS — The trial of three former Minneapolis police officers charged with aiding and abetting in the death of George Floyd will be pushed back to March 2022, a judge ruled Thursday. Thomas Lane, J. Kueng and Tou Thao were scheduled to face trial Aug. 23 on charges they aided...
Police: Ohio man charged with murder in death of infant son
WILLOUGHBY, Ohio — A grand jury has indicted an Ohio man on murder and other charges in the death of his 3-week-old son last year, according to police officials. Police in Willoughby outside Cleveland issued a statement Wednesday that said 30-year-old William Beasley had been arrested and was being held...
Biden team aware of political perils from pipeline shutdown
The Biden administration swung aggressively into action after a primary gasoline pipeline fell prey to a cyberattack — understanding that the situation posed a possible series of political and economic risks. The pipeline shutdown was an all-hands-on-deck situation for a young presidency that has also had to deal with a...
Mental health problems likely to outlast pandemic
Mental health problems are likely to outlast the covid-19 pandemic that helped spawn them, university researchers said. “There is a huge wave of mental health struggles here, and it’s likely to be sustained,” Sheri Madigan of the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada said. Madigan was one of three university researchers...
NYC mayoral race heats up with 6 weeks to go before primary
NEW YORK — With less than six weeks to go, the Democratic primary that may decide the next mayor of New York City has reached a new stage of unpredictability. Former presidential candidate Andrew Yang is clinging to front-runner status while City Comptroller Scott Stringer fights off a sexual misconduct...
U.S. agents encounter more single adults crossing border
LA JOYA, Texas — Parents emerge from the brush into a baseball field, carrying exhausted children. Border Patrol agents dictate orders: Families with young children in one line and unaccompanied children in another. The smallest of three lines is for single adults. The scene Tuesday night in La Joya, a...
Nurses, health care workers hold vigil to honor covid-19 victims and call for change
Nurses and health professionals from across the Poconos gathered together to remember those lives lost to the pandemic, and to call for action to prevent the loss of even more patients in the future on Tuesday afternoon. As part of Nurses Week 2021, a vigil for patient safety honoring the...
U.S. cities see surge in deadly street racing amid pandemic
Jaye Sanford, a 52-year-old mother of two, was driving home in suburban Atlanta on Nov. 21 when a man in a Dodge Challenger muscle car who was allegedly street racing crashed into her head-on, killing her. Sanford was remembered by friends as kind and thoughtful, but now she will also...
Israel threatens Gaza ground invasion despite truce effortsVideo
JERUSALEM — Israel on Thursday said it was massing troops along the Gaza frontier and calling up 9,000 reservists ahead of a possible ground invasion of the Hamas-ruled territory, as the two bitter enemies plunged closer to all-out war. Egyptian mediators rushed to Israel for cease-fire efforts but showed no...
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine: Coronavirus health orders to end June 2Video
COLUMBUS — Republican Gov. Mike DeWine says Ohio’s mask mandate and most other coronavirus-related state orders will end on June 2, allowing three weeks for more people to get vaccinated before then. He said Wednesday that applies to all of the state’s covid-19 orders — such as distancing in restaurants...
Drivers scrambling for fuel as hacked pipeline restartsVideo
CLEMMONS, N.C. — Drivers waited in long lines Wednesday at gas stations in the Southeast after a hack of the nation’s largest fuel pipeline led to distribution problems and panic-buying, draining supplies at thousands of gas stations. Although there was no gasoline shortage, there was a problem getting the fuel...
Vermont House passes resolution on racism health emergency
MONTPELIER, Vt. — The Vermont House of Representatives passed a resolution Wednesday declaring that racism is a public health emergency. The House voted 135-8 in favor of the non-binding resolution, which still must be passed by the Senate to be adopted. The resolution says that systemic racism affecting public health...
Police: 2-year-old shoots, wounds parents inside Maine home
WEST BATH, Maine — A 2-year-old boy in Maine shot and wounded his parents Wednesday after discovering a handgun on a nightstand, police said. The 22-year-old mother suffered a leg wound, the 25-year-old father suffered a minor head wound, and the boy was injured by the recoil of the weapon,...
Explainer: With bankruptcy tossed, what’s next for the NRA?
NEW YORK — Now that a judge has rejected the National Rifle Association’s bankruptcy bid, blocking its plan to reincorporate in Texas, the gun rights group is back to fighting New York regulators in a lawsuit that threatens to put it out of business. Harlin Hale, a federal bankruptcy judge...
Times Square shooting suspect arrested in FloridaVideo
NEW YORK — A man suspected of shooting three people in New York’s Times Square, including a 4-year-old girl, was arrested Wednesday in Florida, police said. Farrakhan Muhammad was taken into custody in a McDonald’s parking lot near Jacksonville, the official said, four days after the shooting Saturday that rattled...
Republicans purge Liz Cheney for ‘unity,’ but Trump bent on retribution
WASHINGTON — Republican leaders insisted that purging Trump critic Rep. Liz Cheney from their ranks was necessary to unify the party ahead of next year’s midterm elections. But former President Donald Trump, who celebrated Cheney’s ouster by calling her a “bitter, horrible human being,” has made clear he has no...
Report: Drop in Xinjiang birthrate largest in recent history
BEIJING — Xinjiang in far western China had the sharpest known decline in birthrates between 2017 and 2019 of any territory in recent history, according to a new analysis by an Australian think tank. The report from the Australian Strategy Policy Institute, obtained exclusively ahead of publication by The Associated...
U.S. advisers endorse Pfizer covid shot for kids 12 and upVideo
U.S. health advisers endorsed use of Pfizer’s covid-19 vaccine in kids as young as 12 on Wednesday, just as expected new guidelines say it’s OK for people of any age to get the shot at the same time as other needed vaccinations. The sprint to vaccinate millions of middle and...
Congressional hearing on Jan. 6 violence at Capitol devolves into partisan divisionsVideo
WASHINGTON — Republicans sought to rewrite the history of the Jan. 6 insurrection during a rancorous congressional hearing Wednesday, painting the Trump supporters who attacked the building as mostly peaceful patriots and downplaying repeatedly the violence of the day. Democrats, meanwhile, clashed with Donald Trump’s former Pentagon chief about the...
Schools ditch student mask requirements in growing numbersVideo
As a lengthy, bitter fight over mask requirements for students neared its conclusion, the chairperson of a Florida school board announced that she would agree to lift a mandate that had been in place since September even though she preferred leaving it in place until the end of the academic...
Police: California Tesla driver riding in backseat arrested
OAKLAND, Calif. — A motorist was arrested after an officer observed him in the backseat of a Tesla traveling on a San Francisco Bay Area freeway, the California Highway Patrol said. Param Sharma, 25, was arrested for alleged reckless driving and disobeying a peace officer, the highway patrol said in...
Taming the covid virus: U.S. deaths hit lowest level in 10 months
Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. have tumbled to an average of around 600 per day — the lowest level in 10 months — with the number of lives lost dropping to single digits in well over half the states and hitting zero on some days. Confirmed infections, meanwhile, have fallen...
Some Pa. lawmakers tout expense transparency, but their websites tell a different story
Over the next year, The Caucus and Spotlight PA will examine and make public specific areas of spending by the legislature as part of their ongoing efforts to follow the money and track taxpayer dollars. Be the first to know by signing up for Spotlight PA’s free newsletters. Spotlight PA...
2 charged in North Carolina after gas station line fight amid panic-buying
KNIGHTDALE, N.C. — Two people are charged with assault after a fight in a line at a North Carolina gas station as a fuel pipeline shutdown sparks panic-buying, authorities said. Knightdale police officers were called to a Marathon gas station in the town on Tuesday afternoon for a report of...
Biden, Republican leaders build no bridges in White House infrastructure meeting
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s first meeting with all four top congressional leaders ended with the usual platitudes on Wednesday — it was “productive,” “good,” “very strong,” and suggested “a place we can find bipartisanship.” By today’s toxic standards in Washington, that’s something of an accomplishment. But it hardly means...
