U.S./World category, Page 618
UN envoy: U.S. sanctions on Iran worsen humanitarian situation
TEHRAN, Iran — Sweeping U.S. sanctions imposed on Iran have badly impacted the country’s economy and worsened the humanitarian situation in the Persian Gulf nation, a United Nations special envoy said Wednesday. According to Alena Douhan, the U.N. special rapporteur on unilateral coercive measures, the sanctions have affected Iran’s main...
Ex-cop pleads guilty to manslaughter in George Floyd killing
MINNEAPOLIS — A former Minneapolis police officer pleaded guilty Wednesday to a state charge of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter in the killing of George Floyd. As part of the plea deal, Thomas Lane will have a count of aiding and abetting second-degree unintentional murder dismissed. Lane and former Officers...
Interrogation, uncertainty for surrendering Mariupol troops
KYIV, Ukraine — Nearly 1,000 last-ditch Ukrainian fighters who had held out inside Mariupol’s pulverized steel plant have surrendered, Russia said Wednesday, as the battle that turned the city into a worldwide symbol of defiance and suffering drew toward a close. Meanwhile, the first captured Russian soldier to be put...
Russian soldier pleads guilty at Ukraine war crimes trial
KYIV, Ukraine — A 21-year-old Russian soldier facing the first war crimes trial since Moscow invaded Ukraine pleaded guilty Wednesday to killing an unarmed civilian. Sgt. Vadim Shishimarin could get life in prison for shooting a a 62-year-old Ukrainian man in the head through an open car window in the...
Exiled Russian director returns to Cannes, decries war
CANNES, France — The last two times the Russian filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov had films playing at the Cannes Film Festival, he couldn’t attend. He was under a travel ban in Russia as part of a conviction for fraud in what was widely protested as unwarranted repression of the arts in...
Pakistan Taliban extend truce for more talks with government
ISLAMABAD — The Pakistani Taliban on Wednesday said they are extending a cease-fire with the government until May 30, after the two sides held an initial round of talks in neighboring Afghanistan. In a statement, Mohammad Khurasani, the spokesman for Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan said the talks were being facilitated by Afghanistan’s...
In Ukraine, limbs lost and lives devastated in an instant
KYIV, Ukraine — There is a cost to war — to the countries that wage it, to the soldiers who fight it, to the civilians who endure it. For nations, territory is gained and lost, and sometimes regained and lost again. But some losses are permanent. Lives lost can never...
Egypt: Mubarak son says family clear of corruption charges
CAIRO — The son of Egypt’s former president said Tuesday that he and family members were innocent of corruption charges made in international courts after the country’s 2011 popular uprising, after courts last month in Switzerland and the European Union ruled in the family’s favor. The announcement by Gamal Mubarak,...
‘They belong here’: Ukrainian nuns take in dozens displaced by war
HOSHIV, Ukraine — In high, tremulous voices, the Sisters of the Holy Family were chanting their midday prayers when a child’s gleeful shout echoed from a nearby corridor, punctuating the solemn incantation. The Ukrainian nuns didn’t miss a beat. At this quiet monastery in the green foothills of the Carpathian...
Man who provided drugs to Mac Miller sentenced to 17½ years
LOS ANGELES — A man who pleaded guilty to distributing narcotics that led to the death of rapper Mac Miller has been sentenced to 17½ years in prison. Stephen Andrew Walter, who is about 50, had agreed to a plea agreement last year to serve 17 years. But U.S. District...
Utah boy dies from being buried under sand dune at state park
SALT LAKE CITY — A 13-year-old Utah boy has died from his injuries a day after a sand dune he was digging in collapsed and buried him at a state park, officials said. The boy had been digging a tunnel into the dune at southern Utah’s Coral Pink Sand Dunes...
Bill Cosby lawyers cry foul as civil sex assault trial looms
SANTA MONICA, Calif. — With jury selection less than a week away, attorneys scrambled to deal with shifting evidence Tuesday in Bill Cosby’s civil trial over allegations that he sexually assaulted a teenage girl at the Playboy mansion nearly 50 years ago. Plaintiff Judy Huth said in a recent court...
Girlfriend: Dallas shooting suspect feared Asian Americans
DALLAS — The girlfriend of a man arrested Tuesday in a shooting that wounded three women of Asian descent in a hair salon in Dallas’ Koreatown told police that he has delusions that Asian Americans are trying to harm him, an arrest warrant affidavit states. Jeremy Smith faces three charges...
House Jan. 6 panel rejects Justice Department’s transcript request
WASHINGTON — The House panel investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol is rejecting a request from the Justice Department for access to the committee’s interviews, for now. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the committee’s chairman, said Tuesday that the Justice Department had made the request as part of...
Congress is taking UFOs more seriously, but many questions remainVideo
WASHINGTON — Unidentified flying objects were a punchline for years, but now Congress is taking these unexplained encounters more seriously. “For too long, the stigma associated with UAPs has gotten in the way of good intelligence analysis. Pilots avoided reporting, or were laughed at when they did,” said Rep. André...
In Buffalo, Biden mourns victims, says ‘evil will not win’Video
BUFFALO — President Joe Biden mourned with Buffalo’s grieving families on Tuesday, then exhorted the nation to reject what he angrily labeled the poison of white supremacy. He said the nation must “reject the lie” of the racist “replacement theory” espoused by the shooter who killed 10 Black people in...
Coronavirus vaccine could have saved 319,000 people, if they had taken shot, study finds
About a third of the 1 million lives lost to covid-19 could have been saved with vaccines, a new analysis shows. Researchers at the Brown School of Public Health, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Microsoft AI for Health analyzed data from the Centers...
West Virginia city council ordered to stop reciting The Lord’s Prayer
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A West Virginia city was ordered Tuesday to stop opening its council meetings with The Lord’s Prayer. U.S. District Judge John T. Copenhaver Jr. ruled that Parkersburg City Council’s practice of opening its meetings with the New Testament prayer violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment,...
DA: DNA from fingernails helped solve 1988 cold case killing
GALT, Calif. — A suspect in a 1988 sexual assault and killing of a 79-year-old woman in a small Northern California community has been identified thanks to advanced DNA testing done on scrapings from the victim’s fingernails, authorities said Tuesday. Terry Leroy Bramble was 32 years old when he sexually...
House Dems propose $28 million to address formula shortage
WASHINGTON — House Democrats unveiled a $28 million emergency spending bill Tuesday to address the shortage of infant formula in the United States. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the Democratic chair of the House Appropriations Committee, said the bill would help the Food and Drug Administration take important steps to restore the...
Iran inaugurates new drone production line in Tajikistan
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran said Tuesday it inaugurated a production line for manufacturing a new military drone in Tajikistan, a first for both nations. A report by the official IRNA news agency said the ceremony took place during a visit to the Central Asian nation by Gen. Mohammad Hossein Bagheri,...
Pope’s recipe to heal his painful knee? A shot of tequila
Doctors have prescribed a wheelchair, cane and physical therapy to help heal Pope Francis’ bad knee. He has other ideas. According to a viral video of the pope at the end of a recent audience, Francis quipped that what he really needs for the pain is a shot of tequila....
Sweden, Finland push ahead with NATO bids as Turkey objects
STOCKHOLM — Sweden and Finland on Tuesday pushed ahead with their bids to join NATO even as Turkey insisted it won’t let the previously nonaligned Nordic countries into the alliance because of their alleged support for Kurdish militants. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s strongly worded objections caught the two applicants...
Nearly 43,000 people died on U.S. roads last year, agency says
DETROIT — Nearly 43,000 people were killed on U.S. roads last year, the highest number in 16 years as Americans returned to the highways after the pandemic forced many to stay at home. The 10.5% jump over 2020 numbers was the largest percentage increase since the National Highway Traffic Safety...
Lawsuit seeks $2.4M damages from Wisconsin fake GOP electors
MADISON, Wis. — Two Wisconsin Democratic electors and a voter on Tuesday sued Republicans who attempted to cast electoral ballots for Donald Trump in 2020 despite Joe Biden’s victory in the battleground state. Their lawsuit filed in Dane County Circuit Court alleges a conspiracy by Trump and his allies to...
