Chief: City employee targeted co-worker in deadly N.C. shooting
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — A deadly shooting at a city building in Winston-Salem, North Carolina was an act of “workplace violence” by one city employee who targeted a co-worker he’d disliked for a long time, police said Friday. Winston-Salem Police Chief Catrina Thompson told news reporters the gunman at a city...
Biden: No regrets for talking openly about stuttering
LOS ANGELES — Joe Biden has been fighting a stutter since childhood, and he said Friday he has no regrets about talking openly about it after one of his responses in Thursday’s presidential debate prompted a mocking tweet from former White House press secretary Sarah Sanders. “I don’t have any...
Boy kidnapped in 1964 found through ancestry sites
CHICAGO — A Michigan man recently identified as the newborn boy snatched from his mother in 1964 by someone posing as a maternity-ward nurse was found through commercial ancestry websites after the man or a child of his submitted DNA to the sites to learn more about their family tree,...
Georgia bill would make transgender youth compete as gender identified at birth
ATLANTA — A recently-elected Republican lawmaker has filed legislation that would ban teams from using public facilities if transgender children are competing in single-gender sporting events that don’t align with their gender identified at birth. State Rep. Philip Singleton, a Republican who was elected in an October special election, said...
California sheriff fires deputy who choked suspect that died
SAN FRANCISCO — A Northern California sheriff announced Friday he is firing a deputy who used a choke hold on a man, who later died, while officers were investigating a suspected carjacking. Sonoma County Sheriff Mark Essick said in a video that he found footage of the deputy’s actions “extremely...
New Mexico GOP drew heats for ‘complexion’ remark about Dems
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The Republican Party of New Mexico is facing criticism from Democrats and at least one Republican for urging supporters to change the “complexion” of the state’s congressional delegation. But state GOP officials say they were referring to changing the state from blue to red, not people of...
Twitter fights interference, deletes 5,929 Saudi accounts
NEW YORK — Twitter has identified and removed nearly 6,000 accounts that it said were part of a coordinated effort by Saudi government agencies and individuals to advance the country’s geopolitical interests. Separately, Facebook said it removed hundreds of Facebook accounts, groups and pages linked to inauthentic behavior from two...
Police surveillance planes to fly above Baltimore in 2020
BALTIMORE — The city of Baltimore will be monitored by surveillance airplanes for up to six months next year under a pilot program announced Friday that is aimed at helping law enforcement investigate violent crime and that will effectively restart a tactic secretively used three years ago. The flights, which...
Murrysville dentist greeted everyone he passed
Dr. Ross Miller truly embodied the notion of a family dental practice. “When he started as a dentist in Murrysville, he asked his sister to be the receptionist,” said his daughter, Cheryl Schoone, of Pine Township. “She quit her job and started there, and then when one of his younger...
Florida boaters killed a record number of manatees in 2019, report says
MIAMI — Despite an ongoing campaign to protect the gentle manatee — which has included a 38-years-long Save the Manatee Club effort from popular singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett — Florida boaters killed a record number of manatees in 2019. According to a preliminary mortality report by the Florida Fish and Wildlife...
MS-13 arrests deal blow to gang leadership on Long Island
NEW YORK — Authorities said Friday they have dealt an unprecedented blow to the violent MS-13 street gang, announcing charges against nearly 100 of the group’s members and associates on Long Island. Suffolk County District Attorney Timothy Sini revealed a sweeping indictment that he said “decimated” the gang’s leadership and...
Whoo’s there? Georgia family discovers owl in Christmas tree
ATLANTA — A Georgia family got a real hoot from its Christmas tree: More than a week after they bought it, they discovered a live owl nestled among its branches. Katie McBride Newman said Friday that she and her daughter spotted the bird on Dec. 12. They had bought the...
Navy, Army probes find no racism intent in hand gestures
WASHINGTON — Hand gestures flashed by West Point cadets and Naval Academy midshipmen during the televised Army-Navy football game were not racist signals, military investigations have concluded. A Navy probe of the event found that the students were participating in a “sophomoric game” on Saturday and had no racist intent....
Black medical students hope slave plantation photo inspires kids
NEW ORLEANS — In the background of a powerful photo of 15 black medical students from Tulane University is a slave cabin. In the foreground stand the students, wearing the white lab coats that tell observers they’re members of a highly trained and prestigious profession. “We are our ancestors’ wildest...
New DNA testing in 1981 murder leads Florida police to coach
LAKELAND, Fla. — Detectives solved the 1981 murder of a Florida woman by using advanced DNA testing to discover the suspect was the football coach of one of her sons, police said. The Lakeland Police Department said Joseph Clinton Mills, 58, has been arrested on charges he raped and killed...
‘Vast majority’ of vaping illnesses blamed on vitamin E
Health officials now blame vitamin E acetate for the “vast majority” of cases in the U.S. outbreak of vaping illnesses and have changed their advice to doctors about monitoring patients more closely after they go home from the hospital. Vaping illnesses can get worse, even deadly, after patients leave the...
What if you knew a cookie would take 20 minutes to run off?
NEW YORK — Would you put down that bag of chips if you saw it had 170 calories? What if the label said it would take 16 minutes of running to burn off those calories? Health experts for years have pushed for clearer food labeling to empower people to make...
United pulls 737 Max until June, adding to Boeing woes
NEW YORK — United Airlines says the Boeing 737 Max has been pulled from its flight schedule until June, the latest in a string of troubling news plaguing the airplane manufacturer. The developments follow Boeing’s announcement Monday that it would halt Max production in January. It did not say when...
Boeing capsule goes off course, won’t dock at space station
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Boeing’s new Starliner capsule went off course after launch Friday and won’t dock with the International Space Station during its first test flight. It was supposed to be a crucial dress rehearsal for next year’s inaugural launch with astronauts. The blastoff from Cape Canaveral, Florida, went...
Buttigieg-Warren clash on campaign trail spills into debate
LOS ANGELES — The long-festering feud between Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg erupted Thursday night in a high-stakes debate that tested the strength of the Democratic Party’s shrinking pool of presidential contenders just six weeks before primary voting begins. Buttigieg, the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has emerged as...
Key takeaways from Democratic presidential debate in L.A.
LOS ANGELES — Democratic presidential candidates offered two very different debates during their final forum of 2019. In the first half, they spent much of their time making the case for their electability in a contest with President Donald Trump. The second half was filled with friction over money in...
CNN’s feed of Democratic debate goes dark in China when candidates mention human rightsVideo
The live feed on CNN of the Democratic presidential debate went black on Thursday in Beijing when the candidates veered into the discussion of China’s human rights abuses. Former vice president Joe Biden criticized China over its mass detention in Xinjiang for Uighurs, a Muslim minority in the country. “We...
Baby dies seconds after hospital birth when medics fail to catch him
A baby boy’s lifespan only lasted seconds after being born and falling headfirst to the floor when medical personnel failed to catch him. According to The Sun, a United Kingdom-based tabloid, the boy, named Valentino, was born Thursday afternoon in northeast Argentina. The 26-year-old mother was reportedly told to push,...
Truck slams through baggage carousel at Florida airportVideo
BRADENTON, Fla. — A man slammed his pickup truck through a baggage carousel area and into a car rental counter at Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport early Thursday, narrowly missing two employees. Police spotted 40-year-old Juan Monsivis driving recklessly and tried to pull him over, but weren’t successful. Monsivis smashed through a...
Evangelical magazine Christianity Today: Trump must go; Trump blasts back
NEW YORK — A major evangelical Christian magazine founded by the late Rev. Billy Graham on Thursday published an editorial calling for President Donald Trump’s removal from office. The editorial in Christianity Today — coming one day after the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives made Trump the third president in American...
