U.S./World category, Page 504
Lawyer: Gun used by child who shot teacher was secured
NORFOLK, Va. — The family of a 6-year-old boy who shot and wounded his teacher in Virginia said Thursday that the gun he used had been “secured” and that one of his parents usually accompanied him in class but did not the week the shooting occurred. The family’s statement was...
U.S. Treasury buys time for Biden, GOP on debt limit deal
WASHINGTON — The countdown toward a possible U.S. government default began Thursday with Treasury implementing accounting measures to buy time as frictions between President Joe Biden and House Republicans raise alarms about whether the United States can sidestep a potential economic crisis. The Treasury Department said in a letter to...
Lunar New Year tourism hopes fizzle as Chinese stay home
BANGKOK — A hoped-for boom in Chinese tourism in Asia over next week’s Lunar New Year holidays looks set to be more of a blip as most travelers opt to stay inside China if they go anywhere. From the beaches of Bali to Hokkaido’s powdery ski slopes, the hoards of...
Cardinal says book by Benedict XVI’s secretary unseemly
ROME — The archbishop of Vienna, a longtime friend and former student of Pope Benedict XVI, has confirmed that it was he who wrote a letter to his former teacher urging him to accept election as pontiff in 2005 if the votes went his way. Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn issued a...
Alec Baldwin to be charged with manslaughter in set shooting
SANTA FE, N.M. — Actor Alec Baldwin and a weapons specialist will be charged with involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on a New Mexico movie set, prosecutors announced Thursday, citing a “criminal disregard for safety.” Santa Fe District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies issued a statement announcing the...
Flavored cannabis marketing is criticized for targeting kidsVideo
NEW YORK — When New York’s first licensed recreational marijuana outlet opened last month, the chief of the state’s Office of Cannabis Management, Chris Alexander, proudly hoisted a tin of watermelon-flavored gummies above the crowd. Outside the Manhattan shop, he displayed another purchase — a jar containing dried flowers of...
U.S. Treasury buys time for Biden and GOP on debt limit deal
WASHINGTON — The countdown toward a possible U.S. government default began Thursday with Treasury implementing accounting measures as a stopgap, while frictions between President Joe Biden and House Republicans raise alarms about whether the U.S. can sidestep a potential economic crisis. The Treasury Department said in a letter to congressional...
Battery charge for San Francisco man who sprayed homeless woman with hoseVideo
SAN FRANCISCO — A San Francisco art gallery owner who was recorded on video spraying a homeless woman with a water hose earlier this month was arrested Wednesday and charged with misdemeanor battery, authorities said. Collier Gwin, the owner of Foster Gwin Gallery, was taken into custody on Wednesday afternoon...
Donald Trump says he never read book accusing him of rape
NEW YORK — Former President Donald Trump said he has never read any part of a book in which the columnist E. Jean Carroll accused him of raping her in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s, according to court records unsealed Wednesday. Trump was questioned under oath in...
New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, an icon to many, to step downVideo
WELLINGTON, New Zealand — New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who became a global icon of the left and exemplified a new style of leadership, said Thursday that she would leave office. Just 37 when she became leader, Ardern was praised around the world for her handling of the nation’s...
Florida congressman Steube injured in accident at home
SARASOTA, Fla. — A Florida congressman was injured in an accident at his home Wednesday afternoon, his office said. U.S. Rep. Greg Steube’s office released a short statement saying that he had been involved in an accident on his property and had sustained several injuries. The statement didn’t include details...
West Virginia’s New River Gorge National Park adds 45 acres
GLEN JEAN, W.Va. — America’s newest national park just got bigger. The New River Gorge National Park and Preserve in West Virginia has added 45 acres to the area designated as a preserve, the National Park Service said in a news release. The tract, on Beury Mountain east of the...
Indiana man charged after son in diaper points gun at people
INDIANAPOLIS — The father of diaper-clad 4-year-old boy seen last weekend pointing a loaded handgun at people outside their Indiana apartment now faces felony charges. The Marion County Prosecutor’s Office said Wednesday that the 45-year-old man was charged Tuesday with two counts of neglect of a dependent and one count...
Report: Idaho murder suspect Bryan Kohberger messaged victim on Instagram weeks before slaying
In the weeks before four students were found dead inside a residence near the University of Idaho, suspect Bryan Kohberger messaged one of the victims on Instagram — and then kept reaching out after she did not respond, according to a new report. Kohberger, a criminology graduate student at Washington...
Explainer: Biden inaction, mixed signals on death penalty
In Boston, the Justice Department is pressing judges to uphold Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s death sentence. In New York, it’s asking jurors to impose the death penalty on a man who killed eight people in an attack on a bicycle path. President Joe Biden campaigned on a pledge to work...
Prosecutor: Brian Walshe looked up how to dispose of body
The husband of a Massachusetts woman who has been missing since New Year’s Day went online to look up ways to dismember and dispose of a body, and items belonging to the woman with her DNA were found at a trash processing facility, a prosecutor said at his arraignment Wednesday...
Mother, 1-year-old son killed in Alaska polar bear attack
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A polar bear chased several residents around a tiny, isolated Alaska Native whaling village, killing a mother and her 1-year-old son in an extremely rare attack before another community member shot and killed the bear, authorities said. The fatal mauling, the first in more than 30 years...
W.Va. announces $83 million opioid settlement with Walgreens
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — West Virginia has settled for $83 million with Walgreens for the pharmacy store chain’s role in perpetuating the opioid crisis in the U.S. state with the most per capita overdose deaths, Attorney General Patrick Morrisey announced Wednesday. That brings the total West Virginia dollars brought in from...
Feds to investigate nursing home abuse of antipsychotics
WASHINGTON — The federal government says it will begin a targeted crackdown on nursing homes’ abuse of antipsychotic drugs and misdiagnoses of schizophrenia in patients. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is launching investigations this month into select nursing homes, aimed at verifying whether patients have been properly diagnosed...
Court to hear appeal of ex-officer in murder of George Floyd
ST. PAUL, Minn. — An attorney for Derek Chauvin is planning to ask an appeals court Wednesday to throw out the former Minneapolis police officer’s convictions in the murder of George Floyd, arguing that numerous legal and procedural errors deprived him of a fair trial. Floyd died May 25, 2020,...
Ukraine helicopter crash kills interior minister, others
BROVARY, Ukraine — A helicopter carrying Ukraine’s interior minister and other government officials crashed Wednesday in a residential area near the capital of Kyiv, killing him and about a dozen other people, including a child on the ground, authorities said. Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi, who oversaw the country’s police and...
U.S. divided over Roe’s repeal as abortion foes gird for march
Anti-abortion activists will have multiple reasons to celebrate — and some reasons for unease — when they gather Friday in Washington for the annual March for Life. The march, which includes a rally drawing abortion opponents from across the nation, has been held annually since January 1974 — a year...
U.K. nurses stage new walkout as strike wave intensifies
LONDON — Thousands of nurses in Britain walked out Wednesday in a new protest over pay, with no end in sight to a wave of strikes that has piled pressure on the U.K.’s overburdened public health system. Two 12-hour strikes on Wednesday and Thursday affect about a quarter of hospitals...
U.S., Chinese officials discuss climate, economy, relationship
ZURICH — U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen met Wednesday with her Chinese counterpart and pledged an effort to manage differences and “prevent competition from becoming anything ever near conflict” as the two nations try to thaw relations. Yellen’s first face-to-face meeting with Vice Premier Liu He in Zurich is the...
Wholesale inflation in U.S. slowed further in December to 6.2%
WASHINGTON — Wholesale prices in the U.S. rose 6.2% in December from a year earlier, a sixth straight monthly slowdown and a hopeful sign that inflation pressures will continue to cool. The latest year-over-year figure was down from 7.3% in November and from a recent peak of 11.7% in March....
