U.S./World category, Page 763
Biden’s Justice Dept. to defend Trump in defamation lawsuit
NEW YORK — Donald Trump cannot be held personally liable for “crude and disrespectful” remarks he made about a woman who accused him of rape because he made the comments while he was president, U.S. Justice Department lawyers told an appeals court late Monday. Responding to misconduct allegations is part...
Senate report details sweeping failures around Jan. 6 attack
WASHINGTON — A Senate investigation of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol has uncovered broad government, military and law enforcement missteps surrounding the violent attack, including a breakdown within multiple intelligence agencies and a lack of training and preparation for Capitol Police officers who were quickly overwhelmed by...
China’s wandering elephants becoming international stars
BEIJING — Already famous at home, China’s wandering elephants are now becoming international stars. Major global media are chronicling the herd’s more than yearlong, 300-mile trek from their home in a wildlife reserve in mountainous southwest Yunnan province to the outskirts of the provincial capital of Kunming. Twitter and YouTube...
Swaths of internet go down after cloud outage
LONDON — Multiple websites went offline briefly across the globe Tuesday after an apparent outage at the cloud service company Fastly, revealing how critical a handful of companies running the internet’s plumbing have become. Dozens of sites including the New York Times, CNN, some Amazon sites, Twitch, Reddit, the Guardian,...
Ex-college athlete sentenced for burning Minneapolis police station
MINNEAPOLIS — A U.S. District Court judge sentenced the last of the four men who have pleaded guilty to burning a Minneapolis police station last summer to two years and five months in federal prison and to help pay $12 million in restitution for the damage. In court Monday morning,...
Capitol riot suspect blames ‘pack of lies,’ seeks release
DES MOINES, Iowa — A Des Moines, Iowa, man pictured prominently with a QAnon shirt ahead of a crowd of insurgents inside the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack asked a judge on Monday to release him from jail, saying “he feels deceived, recognizing that he bought into a...
Oil pipeline foes protest Enbridge’s Line 3 in Minnesota
SOLWAY, Minn. — Hundreds of protesters vowing do whatever it takes to stop a Canadian-based company’s push to replace an aging pipeline blockaded a pump station in northern Minnesota on Monday, and some chained themselves to construction equipment. Environmental and tribal groups say Enbridge Energy’s plan to rebuild Line 3,...
Drought-stricken Nevada enacts ban on ‘non-functional’ grass
CARSON CITY, Nev. — In Sin City, one thing that will soon become unforgivable is useless grass. A new Nevada law will outlaw about 40% of the grass in the Las Vegas area in an effort to conserve water amid a drought that’s drying up the region’s primary water source:...
Automakers face a threat to electric vehicle sales: Slow charging times
DETROIT — If the auto industry is to succeed in its bet that electric vehicles will soon dominate the roads, it will need to overcome a big reason why many people are still avoiding them: Fear of running out of juice between Point A and Point B. Automakers have sought...
Supreme Court won’t review men-only draft registration law
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court said Monday that for now it’ll be up to Congress, not the court, to decide whether to change the requirement that only men must register for the draft. It’s one of the few areas of federal law where men and women are still treated differently....
U.S. has recovered ransom payment made after Colonial Pipeline hack
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has recovered the majority of a multimillion-dollar ransom payment to hackers after a cyberattack that caused the operator of the nation’s largest fuel pipeline to halt its operations last month, officials said Monday. The operation to recover the cryptocurrency from the Russia-based hacker group is...
Carbon dioxide levels hit 50% higher than preindustrial time
The annual peak of global heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the air has reached another dangerous milestone: 50% higher than when the industrial age began. And the average rate of increase is faster than ever, scientists reported Monday. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the average carbon dioxide level for...
Louisiana lawmakers vote to end jail time for marijuana use
BATON ROUGE, La. — In a demonstration of the changing opinions about marijuana use, Louisiana lawmakers have agreed that people caught with small amounts of pot for recreational use should not go to jail, voting Monday to send the bill lessening the penalties to the governor’s desk. The Senate’s 20-17...
Harris says leaders need to restore hope in Guatemala
GUATEMALA CITY — Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday emphasized the need to restore hope for residents of struggling Central American nations to help address the increase in migration from the region as she faced the first major test of her diplomatic skills on a three-day foreign trip. Her comments...
Vote on new Israeli government to be held in coming week
JERUSALEM — Israel’s parliament speaker said Monday that a vote to approve a new government that would end Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 12-year rule will be held in the coming week, without setting a precise date. The announcement by Yariv Levin, a close Netanyahu ally, leaves time for the prime...
Supreme Court rules against immigrants with temporary status
WASHINGTON — A unanimous Supreme Court ruled Monday that thousands of people living in the U.S. for humanitarian reasons are ineligible to apply to become permanent residents. Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the court that federal immigration law prohibits people who entered the country illegally and now have Temporary Protected...
‘Get used to me’: Postmaster Louis DeJoy evokes Trump style in Biden era
WASHINGTON — Louis DeJoy is uninterested in the niceties of Washington. The wealthy longtime businessman with an outer borough New York accent prides himself as a problem solver ready to disrupt an unwieldy bureaucracy. And he’s facing potential legal troubles. In other words, the postmaster general may be the closest...
Fisher-Price recalls baby soothers after 4 infant deaths
EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — Fisher-Price says it is recalling a model of its baby soothers after the deaths of four infants who were placed on their backs unrestrained in the devices and later found on their stomachs. In a joint statement with the Consumer Product Safety Commission, Fisher-Price said Friday...
Mexico president appears to hold key majority in elections
MEXICO CITY — President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s party and its allies appeared poised to maintain their majority in Mexico’s lower chamber of the congress, according to initial results. Electoral authorities released “quick count” results based on voting samples that allow estimates of the voting trends to determine the rough...
Jeff Bezos plans to go to space aboard Blue Origin flight in July
Jeff Bezos will be aboard for Blue Origin’s first human space flight next month. In an Instagram post early Monday, Bezos said he, his brother, and the winner of an ongoing auction, will be aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft during its scheduled launch on July 20. July 20 is...
Minneapolis sees more protests after man killed by deputies
MINNEAPOLIS — Protesters took to the streets for a fourth consecutive night in Minneapolis over the shooting death of a Black man by members of a U.S. Marshals task force. Crowds marched Sunday evening in response to Thursday’s fatal shooting of 32-year-old Winston Boogie Smith Jr. in Minneapolis’ Uptown neighborhood....
Train barrels into another in Pakistan, killing at least 45
MULTAN, Pakistan — An express train barreled into another that had derailed in Pakistan before dawn Monday, killing at least 45 people, authorities said. More than 100 were injured, and rescuers and villagers worked throughout the day to search crumpled cars for survivors and the dead. Cries for help pierced...
Cyberattacks on U.S. targets are ‘here to stay,’ says commerce secretary
Regular cyberattacks, targeting everything from businesses to basic infrastructure, are the new normal, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said Sunday. U.S. businesses and lawmakers are struggling and have a long way to go to bolster cyberdefenses after the May attack on the country’s biggest gas pipeline, she said on ABC’s “This...
Last of Soviet soldiers who liberated Auschwitz dies at 98
BERLIN — David Dushman, the last surviving Soviet soldier involved in the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, has died. He was 98. The Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria said Sunday that Dushman had died at a Munich hospital on Saturday. “Every witness to history who...
Militia plotted ‘war’ against California cops, taking up arms if Trump invoked Insurrection Act, feds say
OAKLAND, Calif. — In the weeks before a gunman allegedly killed two officers in separate shootings last year in California, prosecutors say he and other members of an extremist militia known as the Grizzly Scouts held firearms trainings, scouted protests, and laid out terms of “war” against police. In recent...
