U.S./World category, Page 690
Fuel in tap water alarms Pearl Harbor military families
HONOLULU — Cheri Burness’ dog was the first to signal something was wrong with their tap water. He stopped drinking it two weeks ago. Then Burness started feeling stomach cramps. Her 12-year-old daughter was nauseous. “It was just getting worse every day,” said Burness, whose husband is in the Navy....
Unvaccinated Nevada state workers to pay insurance surcharge
CARSON CITY, Nev. — Nevada will be the first state to charge state workers enrolled in public employee health insurance plans a surcharge if they aren’t vaccinated. The state Public Employees’ Benefit Program Board voted on Thursday to charge unvaccinated workers up to $55 per month to offset the costs...
Sheriff: Georgia teen killed as brother sells homemade gun
ATLANTA — A 14-year-old Georgia girl was killed when her younger brother was trying to sell a homemade gun, and he fired a shot at people who took the weapon without paying, a sheriff said. The shot struck Kyra Scott, and she died as her mother was trying to take...
Lawyers allied with Trump ordered to pay $175K in sanctions
LANSING, Mich. — Nine lawyers allied with former President Donald Trump were ordered Thursday to pay Detroit and Michigan a total of $175,000 in sanctions for abusing the court system with a sham lawsuit challenging the 2020 election results. The money, which must be paid within 30 days, will cover...
Feds: Former Penn State track coach tricked women into sending him nude photos
BOSTON — A former college track and field coach accused of setting up sham social media and email accounts in an attempt to trick women into sending him nude or semi-nude photos of themselves has been indicted on 15 counts, federal prosecutors said Thursday. Steve Waithe, 28, of Chicago, was...
Murder charge for Ohio deputy in Casey Goodson Jr. shootingVideo
COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Ohio sheriff’s deputy who fatally shot Casey Goodson Jr. in the back five times was charged Thursday with murder in an encounter that led to protests and about which many questions remain, in part because it was not recorded on body or dash camera footage. An...
New data suggests 1 in 44 U.S. children affected by autism
New autism numbers released Thursday suggest more U.S. children are being diagnosed with the developmental condition and at younger ages. In an analysis of 2018 data from nearly a dozen states, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that among 8-year-olds, 1 in 44 had been diagnosed...
With Roe in question, justices dig into private debate
WASHINGTON — Historic Supreme Court arguments over abortion behind them, the justices soon will begin the work of crafting a decision that could dramatically limit abortion rights in the United States. They will meet in private before the week ends and take an initial vote on whether to uphold Mississippi’s...
Omicron coronavirus variant found in multiple states
NEW YORK — The omicron variant of covid-19, which had been undetected in the United States before the middle of this week, had been discovered in at least five states by the end of Thursday, showing yet again how mutations of the virus can circumnavigate the globe with speed and...
Omicron and delta spell return of unpopular restrictions
PARIS — Greeks who are over age 60 and refuse coronavirus vaccinations could be hit with monthly fines of more than one-quarter of their pensions — a get-tough policy that the country’s politicians say will cost votes but save lives. In Israel, potential carriers of the new omicron variant could...
Jan. 6 panel votes to hold former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark in contemptVideo
WASHINGTON — The House panel investigating the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection voted Wednesday to pursue contempt charges against Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who refused to answer the committee’s questions — but the panel agreed to let him come back for another try. The committee voted 9-0...
Beaver County man gets 1 month behind bars in Capitol riot case
A Beaver County man will spend a month behind bars for participating in the storming of the Capitol in January, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. Russell Peterson of Rochester — who bragged about his role in the insurrection on social media — also must pay a $500 fine, U.S. District...
Man who threatened Congress by phone sentenced to 33 months
CONCORD, N.H. — A New Hampshire man who pleaded guilty to making threatening phone calls to members of Congress if they didn’t support former President Donald Trump has been sentenced to over two years in prison. Ryder Winegar, 34, of Amherst, was accused of leaving phone messages on Dec. 16,...
Science report: U.S. should make less plastic to save oceans
America needs to rethink and reduce the way it generates plastics because so much of the material is littering the oceans and other waters, the National Academy of Sciences says in a new report. The United States, the world’s top plastics waste producer, generates more than 46 million tons a...
Sheriff: Hunter accidentally kills his 11-year-old daughter in Texas
HALLSVILLE, Texas — A hunter accidentally shot and killed his 11-year-old daughter while they were hunting near their East Texas hometown, investigators said this week. In a statement, the Harrison County Sheriff’s Office in Marshall, Texas, said it received multiple reports shortly after 5 p.m. Saturday of a hunting accident...
Facebook: Fake scientist used to spread anti-U.S. propaganda
A disinformation network with ties to China used hundreds of fake social media accounts — including one belonging to a fictitious Swiss biologist — to spread an unfounded claim that the U.S. pressured scientists to blame China for the coronavirus, Facebook said Wednesday. The company based in Menlo Park, Calif.,...
U.S. reports 1st case of omicron variant in returning traveler
SAN FRANCISCO — The U.S. recorded its first confirmed case of the omicron variant Wednesday — in a vaccinated traveler who returned to California after a trip to South Africa — as scientists around the world race to establish whether the new, mutant version of the coronavirus is more dangerous...
New dinosaur species from Chile had a unique slashing tail
Fossils found in Chile are from a strange-looking dog-sized dinosaur species that had a unique slashing tail weapon, scientists reported Wednesday. Some dinosaurs had spiked tails they could use as stabbing weapons and others had tails with clubs. The new species, described in a study in the journal Nature, has...
Volcanic lava threatens church, more homes on La Palma
LOS LLANOS DE ARIDANE, Canary Islands — A fresh river of lava from the volcano on Spain’s La Palma island threatened Wednesday to engulf a parish church that has so far survived the eruption that shows no signs of relenting after 10 weeks. The nearest lava flow to the Los...
Putin demands NATO guarantees not to expand eastward
President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Moscow would seek Western guarantees precluding any further NATO expansion and deployment of its weapons near his country’s borders, a stern demand that comes amid fears of a Russian invasion of Ukraine. Ukrainian and Western officials have worried about a Russian troop buildup near...
Justices signal they’ll OK new abortion limits, may toss Roe
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Wednesday signaled it would uphold Mississippi’s 15-week ban on abortion and may go much further to overturn the nationwide right to abortion that has existed for nearly 50 years. The fate of the court’s historic 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion...
Conservatives eagerly await Supreme Court abortion arguments
It’s the moment conservatives have been waiting for. Oral arguments at the Supreme Court on Wednesday represent the best opportunity leaders on the right have had in decades to gut the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which codified a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion before a fetus can...
Brazil and Japan report 1st cases of the omicron variant
Brazil and Japan joined the rapidly widening circle of countries to report cases of the omicron variant Tuesday, while new findings indicate the mutant coronavirus was already in Europe close to a week before South Africa sounded the alarm. The Netherlands’ RIVM health institute disclosed that patient samples dating from...
Arizona officer fired after shooting of shoplifting suspect
TUCSON, Ariz. — A Tucson police officer has been fired after he was accused of shooting a shoplifting suspect in a wheelchair nine times, killing him, after the man brandished a knife, authorities said Tuesday. Police announced at a news conference that Officer Ryan Remington was being terminated for excessive...
Wife of drug kingpin ‘El Chapo’ gets 3 years on U.S. chargesVideo
The wife of Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was sentenced Tuesday to three years in prison after pleading guilty to helping her husband run his multibillion-dollar criminal empire. Emma Coronel Aispuro also helped her husband plan a dramatic escape through a tunnel dug underneath a prison in Mexico...
