With success of Artemis I, when will NASA fly Artemis II?
ORLANDO, Fla. — With Orion safe back on Earth, the last and most important tests of the Artemis I mission have been completed, but there are still miles to travel and months of data sifting to go before NASA will target an Artemis II launch date. While the latest announced...
Netanyahu inches closer to power with new parliament speaker
JERUSALEM — Israel’s parliament on Tuesday elected a new speaker closely allied to the country’s likely next prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, setting the stage for a flurry of contentious new legislation to appease the former leader’s expected coalition partners. Lawmaker Yariv Levin’s election as speaker comes as Netanyahu continues negotiations...
Feds report big jump in people coming to Florida from Cuba
MIAMI — Border Patrol agents in the Florida Keys are responding to almost nonstop migrant landings this week that continued through Tuesday morning. On Monday, the federal agency reported that arrivals in South Florida are up five times what they were this time last year. “Agents are responding to multiple...
FTX’s Bankman-Fried charged by U.S. for scheme to defraud
NEW YORK — U.S. prosecutors charged Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder and former CEO of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, with a host of financial crimes and campaign finance violations on Tuesday, alleging he played a central role in the rapid collapse of FTX and hid its problems from the public and investors....
China students return home amid fears of covid-19 spread
BEIJING — Some Chinese universities say they will allow students to finish the semester from home in hopes of reducing the potential for a bigger covid-19 outbreak during the January Lunar New Year travel rush. It wasn’t clear how many schools were participating, but universities in Shanghai and nearby cities...
Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander readied for 2023 touchdown
A lunar lander built by Astrobiotic in Pittsburgh has passed a battery of critical tests, moving one step closer to touching down on the moon early next year. The Peregrine lunar lander, which stands a bit more than 6 feet tall and is about 8 feet in diameter, is expected...
China urges citizens to leave Afghanistan after Kabul attack
ISLAMABAD — China on Tuesday advised its citizens in Afghanistan to leave the country “as soon as possible,” following a coordinated attack by Islamic State militants the previous day on a Chinese-owned hotel in the heart of Kabul. The Chinese advisory appeared to be a setback for Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers...
Cornered in Ukraine, Putin ditches annual news conference
President Vladimir Putin has ditched his annual marathon news conference following a series of battlefield setbacks in Ukraine — a tacit acknowledgment that the Russian leader’s war has gone badly wrong. Putin typically uses the year-end ritual to polish his image, answering a wide range of questions on domestic and...
Biden signs gay marriage bill at White House ceremony
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden signed gay marriage legislation into law Tuesday before a crowd of thousands, a ceremony that reflected growing acceptance of same-sex unions. “This law and the love it defends strike a blow against hate in all its forms,” Biden said on the South Lawn of the...
Massive U.S. storm brings tornado warnings, blizzard threatVideo
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — A massive storm blowing across the country spawned tornadoes that wrecked homes and injured a handful of people in parts of Oklahoma and Texas, including the Dallas-Fort Worth area, as much of the central United States from the Rocky Mountains to the Midwest braced Tuesday for...
Donors meet in Paris to get Ukraine through winter, bombing
PARIS — Dozens of countries and international organizations threw their weight and hundreds of millions of dollars behind a fresh and urgent push Tuesday to keep Ukraine powered, fed, warm and moving this winter, responding defiantly to sustained Russian aerial bombardments that have plunged millions into the cold and dark...
Libyan accused in Lockerbie bombing appears in U.S. courtVideo
WASHINGTON — More than three decades after a bomb brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing everyone aboard, a former Libyan intelligence official accused of making the explosive appeared Monday in federal court, charged with an act of international terrorism. The extradition of Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud...
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene claims she was only joking about ‘winning’ Jan. 6 attack on Capitol and carrying gunsVideo
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said Monday she was only joking when she boasted that extremists would have been armed and would have “won” the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol if she had led the attempted insurrection. The far right-wing firebrand said critics should “learn how sarcasm works” after she...
Explainer: Why fusion could be a clean-energy breakthrough
The Department of Energy is planning an announcement Tuesday about a “major scientific breakthrough” at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, one of several sites worldwide where researchers have been trying to develop the possibility of harnessing energy from nuclear fusion. It’s a technology that has the potential to one day...
PLCB’s high-end liquor lotteries now off limits to its employees and families
Competition for the limited-release of high-end Pappy Van Winkle products offered by the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board last month in a lottery didn’t include any bourbon enthusiasts who work for the agency. Neither did it include any of those 6,800 employees’ spouses, agency board members, their children regardless of where...
DOJ subpoenas Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office as Trump investigation continues
ATLANTA — The U.S. Department of Justice has subpoenaed the Georgia secretary of state’s office and at least one metro Atlanta county as it continues to investigate former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. A copy of the Dec. 9 subpoena obtained by The Washington Post...
Despite midterm losses, Pa. Republicans appear unlikely to abandon combative agenda
Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan newsroom powered by The Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with PennLive/The Patriot-News, TribLIVE/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and WITF Public Media. Sign up for our free newsletters. HARRISBURG — Republicans inside and outside Pennsylvania government say that despite a disastrous midterm election, they don’t see signs that the...
Millions in central U.S. brace for snow, rain and floodsVideo
DALLAS — A massive storm blowing across the country spawned tornadoes in parts of Oklahoma and Texas, including the Dallas-Fort Worth area, as much of the central United States from the Rocky Mountains to the Midwest braced Tuesday for blizzard-like conditions. An area stretching from Montana into western Nebraska and...
Crews remove box covering Columbus statue in Philadelphia
PHILADELPHIA — Crews have removed the plywood box that had been placed over a Philadelphia statue of Christopher Columbus that saw tense standoffs in 2020 between supporters of the monument and opponents who viewed it as a symbol of white supremacy. The box was removed Sunday night, as a small...
Pennsylvania lifts ban on gas production in polluted village
One of Pennsylvania’s largest drillers will be allowed to extract natural gas from underneath a rural Pennsylvania community where it has been banned for a dozen years because of accusations it polluted the water supply, according to a settlement with state regulators. The Department of Environmental Protection quietly lifted its...
Richmond removes its last city-owned Confederate monument
RICHMOND, Va. — The city of Richmond — the capital of the Confederacy for most of the Civil War — removed its last city-owned Confederate statue on Monday, more than two years after it began to purge itself of what many saw as painful symbols of racial oppression. It took...
Supreme Court won’t block California flavored tobacco ban
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday refused a request from tobacco companies to stop California from enforcing a ban on flavored tobacco products that was overwhelmingly approved by voters in November. R.J. Reynolds and other tobacco companies sought the high court’s intervention to keep the ban from taking effect...
Pennsylvanians reminded to review FCC broadband map before Jan. 13Video
Pennsylvania Broadband Development Authority (Authority) Executive Director Brandon Carson today reminded Pennsylvanians of the important role they have in ensuring their information is correct in the new Federal Communications Commission (FCC) broadband access map. “I urge every Pennsylvanian to review the map to help us close the digital divide,” said...
Fettermans to appear in Pennsylvania-shot Netflix film starring Christian Bale
John and Gisele Fetterman already have become political celebrities after the high-profile victory in this year’s Pennsylvania Senate race. Their profiles are poised to rise even higher as both will appear in a new Netflix film that premieres later this month. In a tweet, John Fetterman shared a photo of...
Student loan forgiveness ‘highly unlikely’ as Supreme Court reviews case, says expert
The federal Supreme Court rejected President Biden’s immediate request to revive his student debt relief plan on Dec. 1. The court will review oral arguments in February 2023 and then determine whether the leading lawsuit against the program has merit. As the case reaches the highest U.S. court of law,...
