Church pastor near deadly tornado: Lord reaching out hand
BEAUREGARD, Ala. — The pastor of a church that became a center for shelter, help and grieving when a tornado killed 23 people in eastern Alabama said in his first Sunday service after the storm that the Lord has reached out his hand to the community. Imperfect things like tornadoes...
Birth control pills recalled for defective packaging
A drug company is recalling some packs of birth control because the pills may be mislabeled and lead to unintended pregnancy. Florida-based Apotex Corp. is recalling four lots of Ethinyl Estradiol USP pills because they may contain defective blisters with incorrect tablet arrangements and an empty blister pocket. According to...
Trump calls Ann Coulter ‘wacky nut job’ over border wall criticism
President Donald Trump has had enough with conservative commentator Ann Coulter’s attacks about the wall along the southern border. In a series of tweets posted Saturday night, Trump called Coulter a “Wacky Nut Job … who still hasn’t figured out that, despite all odds and an entire Democrat Party of...
Turbulence injures 30 on flight from Istanbul to New York
NEW YORK — Severe turbulence tossed terrified passengers and crew around a Turkish Airlines plane cabin as it passed over Maine on Saturday, with 30 people suffering bumps, bruises, cuts and a broken leg before the flight landed safely at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, officials said. Dozens...
Melania Trump: Growing ease in first lady role, but not politics
WASHINGTON — Melania Trump came armed with surefire applause lines when she stepped up to address a largely female audience that had gathered to celebrate other women. The first lady showcased the record number of women serving in Congress. She said women’s unemployment had hit its lowest level in 65...
Town by town, local journalism is dying in plain sight
WAYNESVILLE, Mo. — Five minutes late, Darrell Todd Maurina sweeps into a meeting room and plugs in his laptop computer. He places a Wi-Fi hotspot on the table and turns on a digital recorder. The earplug in his left ear is attached to a police scanner in his pants pocket....
Modern policing: Algorithm helps NYPD spot crime patterns
NEW YORK — When a syringe-wielding drill thief tried sticking up a Home Depot near Yankee Stadium, police figured out quickly that it wasn’t a one-off. A man had also used a syringe a few weeks earlier while stealing a drill at another Home Depot 7 miles south in Manhattan....
No survivors in Ethiopian Airlines crash en route to Kenya
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — A jetliner carrying 157 people crashed shortly after takeoff from the Ethiopian capital Sunday, killing everyone aboard, authorities said. More than 30 nationalities were among the dead. It was not clear what caused the plane to go down in clear weather. The pilot sent out a...
Babe Ruth’s last surviving daughter dies in Nevada at 102
HENDERSON, Nev. — Julia Ruth Stevens, the last surviving daughter of Hall of Fame baseball slugger Babe Ruth and a decades-long champion of his legacy, has died at age 102, her family has announced. Tom Stevens said Sunday that his mother died Saturday morning at an assisted living facility in...
Satellite images suggest North Korea planned space launch even before Hanoi
TOKYO — Satellite images suggest North Korea was preparing to launch a space rocket even before the breakdown of the Hanoi summit between President Trump and Kim Jong Un, experts say. There is no way of knowing whether Pyongyang will follow through with the plans, which would undoubtedly be seen...
More blackouts hit Venezuela as opposition, government rally
CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelan opposition and government loyalists held rival demonstrations in Caracas on Saturday, as both sides prepared for what some fear could be a protracted power struggle. The rallies unfolded as power and communications outages continued to hit Venezuela, intensifying the hardship of a country paralyzed by economic...
Experts to gather at Saint Vincent College to explore hate crimes
Robin Valeri wasn’t surprised to learn that Robert Bowers, the man accused of gunning down 11 worshippers in Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue last fall, was active in online communities where hatred flowed freely. Valeri, a psychology professor at St. Bonaventure University in upstate New York, began studying cyber hate...
Ebola treatment center in Congo is attacked again; 1 dead
KINSHASA, Congo — Heavily armed assailants again attacked an Ebola treatment center in the heart of eastern Congo’s deadly outbreak on Saturday, with one police officer killed and health workers injured, authorities said, while frightened patients waited in isolation rooms for the gunfire to end. The early-morning attack in Butembo...
Trump signed Bibles. Heresy? Many religious leaders say no
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — President Donald Trump was just doing what he could to raise spirits when he signed Bibles at an Alabama church for survivors of a deadly tornado outbreak, many religious leaders say, though some are offended and others say he could have handled it differently. Hershael York, dean...
They go after suspected pedophiles while others watch online
CHAMBERSBURG, Pa. — Many days, Brandi Lehrian wakes up to five or six text messages from men wishing her a good morning — and sometimes more. She spends most of the day and night letting multiple men believe that she can make their fantasies come true: No, she’s never been...
As budget deficit balloons, few in Washington seem to care
WASHINGTON — The federal budget deficit is ballooning on President Donald Trump’s watch and few in Washington seem to care. And even if they did, the political dynamics that enabled bipartisan deficit-cutting deals decades ago has disappeared, replaced by bitter partisanship and chronic dysfunction. That’s the reality that will greet...
Pa. proposal aims to ease government efforts to reclaim records
State and local government records that have been stolen or have otherwise ended up in private hands without authorization would be much easier to reclaim under legislation that could pass the Pennsylvania House in the coming days. A bill scheduled for a vote this week would give the Pennsylvania Historical...
Michigan man receives congratulatory telegram 50 years later
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — A man who graduated from the University of Michigan in 1969 has finally received a congratulatory telegram from family friends that was sent more than 50 years ago. Robert Fink received the Western Union telegram this year. Western Union ended its telegram business in 2006. The...
Wanted: More pastures for West’s overpopulated wild horses
CHEYENNE, Wyo. — If you ever wished to gaze at a stomping, snorting, neighing panorama of Western heritage from your living-room window, now could be your chance. A classic image of the American West — wild horses stampeding across the landscape — not only has endured through the years but...
R. Kelly: ‘We’re going to straighten all this stuff out’
CHICAGO — R. Kelly walked out of a Chicago jail on Saturday after someone who officials say did not want to be publicly identified paid $161,633 that the R&B singer owed in back child support. Kelly, who was ordered taken into custody on Wednesday by a judge after Kelly said...
Jayme Closs kidnapping suspect reportedly confesses in letter from jail
A man accused of kidnapping 13-year-old Jayme Closs from her rural Wisconsin home in the fall after her parents were killed has purportedly written a letter from jail saying he regretted the crimes and committed them “mostly on impulse.” The letter supposedly from Jake Patterson, who was arrested in January...
Richmond exhibit seeks to reimagine Confederate statues
RICHMOND, Va. — They are towering figures, larger-than-life statues that honor heroes of a bygone era. The Confederate leaders memorialized on Richmond’s Monument Avenue were once revered, but have become flashpoints in a national debate about how symbols of slavery and white supremacy should be treated today. The angst over...
Motorcyclist killed after hitting dead pig in roadway
LITTLEROCK, Calif. — Authorities say a motorcycle rider has died after he hit a dead pig on a Southern California road and was thrown from his bike. KABC-TV says 57-year-old Bradley St. John was doing about 55 mph Thursday night in Littlerock when he struck the animal, which was directly...
More women work in construction that’s still a man’s world
NEW YORK — Tameeka Gwyn is used to schlepping concrete weighing as much as 60 pounds (27 kilograms) around a construction site. For Janna Rojas, it’s a cinch to carry metal pipes as heavy as 100 pounds going into new plumbing. “When you first do it, it’s quite a shock,...
CDC: Unvaccinated Oregon boy almost dies of tetanus
PORTLAND, Ore. — An unvaccinated 6-year-old Oregon boy was hospitalized for two months for tetanus and almost died of the bacterial illness after getting a deep cut while playing on a farm, according to a case study published Friday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The 2017...
