Fall trout stocking under way by Pa. Fish and Boat Commission
The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission’s “Great White Fleet” of stocking trucks is rolling once again, moving a fall stocking of 116,000 hatchery-raised trout to more than a hundred streams and lakes across the state. The goal of fall stocking is to “replenish some of the most popular fishing spots...
Explainer: Tax cut trend reaches two-thirds of states
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — States brimming with cash are cutting taxes at a rapid pace. With the enactment Wednesday of an income tax cut in Missouri, about two-thirds of U.S. states have adopted some sort of tax relief in 2022. For taxpayers, the trend means billions of dollars back in...
Haaland: U.S. expanding Native American massacre site
DENVER — Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced an expansion Wednesday of a National Park Service historical site dedicated to the massacre by U.S. troops of more than 200 Native Americans in what is now southeastern Colorado. Haaland, the first Native American to lead a U.S. Cabinet agency, made the announcement...
‘Forever chemicals’ in deer, fish challenge hunters, tourism
PORTLAND, Maine — Wildlife agencies in the U.S. are finding elevated levels of a class of toxic chemicals in game animals such as deer — and that’s prompting health advisories in some places where hunting and fishing are ways of life and key pieces of the economy. Authorities have detected...
Prolonged drought brings famine, death and fear to Somalia
DOLLOW, Somalia — A man in a donkey cart comes wheeling through the dust, carrying two small, silent boys. The sky is overcast. It could rain. It won’t. It hasn’t for a very long time. Mohamed Ahmed Diriye is 60 years old, and he’s completing the grimmest journey of his...
Purdue University student arrested in killing of roommate
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — A Purdue University student was arrested Wednesday in the killing of his roommate in their campus dorm room, authorities said. Ji Min Sha, a 22-year-old cybersecurity major from Seoul, South Korea, was arrested on a preliminary murder charge in the killing of 20-year-old Varun Manish Chheda,...
3 years after clinical trial, ketamine provides hope for severely depressed
LOS ANGELES — Patients arriving at Dr. Philip O’Carroll’s Newport Beach office for their first ketamine treatment are in pain and often lost. They have visited other doctors, tried other solutions and are ready for what is considered a last resort. They are led to a private room with a...
Pa. liquor stores hosting 50% clearance sale
With temperatures dropping quickly as fall arrives, it’s a good time to stock up on booze and hunker down for the season, and Pennsylvania state-run liquor stores are incentivizing shoppers with a 50% clearance sale on select whiskey, wine, vodka, gin, and other spirits. The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board’s clearance...
Musk Twitter turnaround reflects legal challenges
WASHINGTON — Elon Musk’s sudden about face on a $44 billion agreement to acquire Twitter, reversing an earlier attempt to rescind that offer, came as a surprise even from the mercurial billionaire who loves to shock. It sent shares of the social media platform soaring Tuesday and stoked alarm among...
Suicide bomber strikes at a center of Taliban power, kills 4
KABUL, Afghanistan — A suicide bomber struck at a center of Taliban power Wednesday, setting off a blast at a government ministry in the Afghan capital of Kabul and killing at least four people. The explosion went off in the afternoon as workers and visitors were praying inside a mosque...
Nobel Prize for 3 chemists who made molecules ‘click’
STOCKHOLM — Three scientists were jointly awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for developing a way of “snapping molecules together” that can be used to design better medicines, including ones that target diseases such as cancer more precisely. Americans Carolyn R. Bertozzi and K. Barry Sharpless, and...
OPEC+ makes big oil cut to boost prices; pump costs may rise
FRANKFURT, Germany — The OPEC+ alliance of oil-exporting countries decided Wednesday to sharply cut production to support sagging oil prices, a move that could deal the struggling global economy another blow and raise politically sensitive pump prices for U.S. drivers just ahead of key national elections. Energy ministers cut production...
Putin signs annexation of Ukrainian regions as losses mount
KYIV, Ukraine — Russian President Vladimir Putin signed laws that claimed four regions of Ukraine as Russia’s territory while his country’s military struggled Wednesday to control the illegally annexed areas. The documents finalizing the annexation, carried out in violation of international laws, were published on a Russian government website. In...
Remains identified as those of girl, 14, missing since 1969
WILKES-BARRE — Remains found a decade ago have been identified as those of a teenager girl who went missing in northeastern Pennsylvania more than a half-century ago, state police said. State police in Wilkes-Barre said Tuesday that the remains were identified as those of 14-year-old Joan Marie Dymond of Wilkes-Barre,...
Federal judge orders Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to testify in abortion lawsuit
AUSTIN, Texas — A federal judge has ordered Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to testify in a high-profile abortion case, a week after the Republican reportedly fled his McKinney home to avoid being served with a subpoena. On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman wrote that Paxton needs to clarify...
South Korea missile accident panics public on edge over NorthVideo
SEOUL — A South Korean ballistic missile malfunctioned and crashed into the ground during a live-fire drill with the United States, panicking confused residents of a coastal city already uneasy over increasingly provocative weapons tests by rival North Korea. The sound of the blast and subsequent fire on Tuesday night...
Unresolved gray areas in Pa. mail voting law likely to spur fresh confusion, legal challenges
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 — As millions of Pennsylvanians once again go to the polls this November, some key questions on mail ballots remain...
Ex-trooper missing after sentencing in Tennessee protester’s unmasking
NASHVILLE — A former Tennessee state trooper has gone missing after he was sentenced for a misdemeanor assault conviction on a charge that he pulled the face mask off a protester during the covid-19 pandemic in August 2020. In a Facebook post Monday, Columbia Police said 54-year-old Harvey Briggs was...
Teen sought in ambush outside Philadelphia school that killed 1, hurt 4
PHILADELPHIA — Police are seeking a 16-year-old youth in last week’s ambush shooting outside a Philadelphia high school that killed a 14-year-old and wounded four other teenagers after a football scrimmage Police said Tuesday that the 16-year-old is wanted on active arrest warrants for a charge of murder and multiple...
Domestic violence focus of next Unity in the Community event in Greensburg
A Greensburg-based community group wants to help raise awareness about the pervasive problem of domestic violence. Coinciding with Domestic Violence Awareness Month, “Break the Silence” is the title of an event hosted by Unity in the Community from 4 to 7 p.m. Friday at the YWCA, 424 N. Main St.,...
Trump asks Supreme Court to intervene in classified documents dispute
WASHINGTON — Lawyers for former President Donald Trump asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to step into the legal fight over the classified documents seized during an FBI search of his Florida estate, escalating a dispute over the powers of an independent arbiter appointed to inspect the records. The...
Record high revenue of $3.3 billion recorded at Pa. casinos
In-person gambling bounced back at the 16 casinos across the state as slots and table game revenue reached a record high $3.3 billion in the last fiscal year according to the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board annual report. That tops the previous record of $3.2 billion for fiscal year 2018-19. Retail...
Kids with disabilities face off-the-books school suspensions
The phone call from her son’s school was alarming. The assistant principal told her to come to the school immediately. But when Lisa Manwell arrived at Pioneer Middle School in Plymouth, Michigan, her son wasn’t sick or injured. He was sitting calmly in the principal’s office. John, who has ADHD...
Police: 6 California killings may be work of serial killer
STOCKTON, Calif. — Ballistics tests have linked the fatal shootings of six men and the wounding of one woman in California — all potentially at the hands of a serial killer — in crimes going back more than a year, police said. Authorities last week announced that five men in...
Poll: Many pessimistic about improving standard of living
NEW YORK — More than half of Americans believe it’s unlikely younger people today will have better lives than their parents, according to a new poll from the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Most of those polled said...