U.S./World category, Page 749
How 9/11 changed air travel: more security, less privacy
DALLAS — Ask anyone old enough to remember travel before Sept. 11, 2001, and you’re likely to get a gauzy recollection of what flying was like. There was security screening, but it wasn’t anywhere near as intrusive. There were no long checkpoint lines. Passengers and their families could walk right...
Minnesota State Patrol destroyed texts, emails after riot response
Minnesota State Patrol officers conducted a mass purge of emails and text messages immediately after their response to riots last summer, leaving holes in the paper trail as the courts and other investigators attempt to reconstruct whether law enforcement used improper force in the chaos following George Floyd’s murder. In...
Hurricane Ida shows need for big infrastructure spending, White House adviser says
The devastation caused by Hurricane Ida shows the need for President Joe Biden’s sweeping infrastructure plans, a top White House aide said on Sunday. The sweeping $3.5 trillion infrastructure package being finalized by Democratic lawmakers will make critical investments in building resilience, shoring up the nation’s power grid and battling...
Divers identify broken pipeline as source of Gulf oil spill in wake of Ida
WASHINGTON — Divers at the site of an ongoing oil spill that appeared in the Gulf of Mexico after Hurricane Ida have identified the apparent source as 1-foot diameter pipeline displaced from a trench on the ocean floor and broken open. Talos Energy, the Houston-based company currently paying for the...
South Lake Tahoe residents can return as fire threat eases
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — Tens of thousands of people forced to flee South Lake Tahoe could begin returning to their homes after evacuation orders were downgraded to warnings Sunday afternoon as crews made progress against a massive wildfire. The orders that sent 22,000 people in and around the resort...
Search resumes for 2 missing after car swept away in storm
PASSAIC, N.J. — As residents and businesses across New Jersey spent the holiday weekend trying to clean up damage from last week’s storm, rescue workers resumed the search for two friends whose car was caught up in the floodwaters. Nidhi Rana, 18, and Ayush Rana, 21, were last seen Wednesday...
48 people shot over 37 hours in Chicago
CHICAGO — At least 10 children and teenagers were among the 48 shot in Chicago over the weekend through Sunday morning, according to information provided by police. The youngest child shot was a 4-year-old boy who was in critical condition after gunfire from outside went through the window of his...
A hurricane-hardened city coping ‘the New Orleans way’
NEW ORLEANS — Shrimp and grits served for breakfast on the sidewalk at El Pavo Real. “Super Secret” seasoned pork and braised greens handed out at the door of the Live Oak Café. Spicy jambalaya dished out under a canopy erected on the empty sun-scorched streetcar tracks by a couple...
Hospitals in crisis in least vaccinated state: Mississippi
JACKSON, Miss. — As patients stream into Mississippi hospitals one after another, doctors and nurses have become all too accustomed to the rampant denial and misinformation about covid-19 in the nation’s least vaccinated state. People in denial about the severity of their own illness or the virus itself, with visitors...
7 people hurt when gunman opens fire in near University of Georgia
ATHENS, Ga. — Seven people were injured in Georgia when a man with a gun opened fired into a crowd of people, police said. The shooting happened in downtown Athens at around 2 a.m. Sunday after a large fight broke out, Athens-Clarke County police said. “Seven individuals were injured as...
Florida gunman kills 4, including mom still holding baby
A man wearing full body armor fatally shot four people, including a mother and the 3-month-old baby she was cradling, and engaged in a massive gunfight with police and deputies before he was wounded and surrendered in Lakeland, Florida, a sheriff said Sunday. An 11-year-old girl who was shot seven...
2 anchors of covid safety net ending, affecting millions
WASHINGTON — Mary Taboniar went 15 months without a paycheck, thanks to the covid pandemic. A housekeeper at the Hilton Hawaiian Village resort in Honolulu, the single mother of two saw her income completely vanish as the virus devastated the hospitality industry. For more than a year, Taboniar depended entirely...
Taliban resume some flights, press assault on final holdout
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers resumed some domestic passenger flights to and from Kabul on Sunday, as the religious militia’s fighters stepped up an assault on the last remaining pocket of resistance being led by fighters opposed to their rule. The anti-Taliban fighters in Panjshir province, north of the...
Army colonel on Guinean TV says government dissolved, borders shut
CONAKRY, Guinea — A Guinean army colonel seized control of state television Sunday and declared that President Alpha Conde’s government had been dissolved in the West African nation, an announcement that came after hours of heavy gunfire near the presidential palace. The dramatic developments Sunday bore all the hallmarks of...
Origin story of the Texas law that could upend Roe v. Wade
The road to a Texas law that bans most abortions in the state, sidestepping for now the Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, began in a town called Waskom, population 1,600. The Supreme Court’s decision this past week not to interfere with the state’s strict abortion law, provoked...
Do we need humans for that job? Automation booms after covid
Ask for a roast beef sandwich at an Arby’s drive-thru east of Los Angeles and you may be talking to Tori — an artificially intelligent voice assistant that will take your order and send it to the line cooks. “It doesn’t call sick,” says Amir Siddiqi, whose family installed the...
Biden to mark 20th anniversary of 9/11 at 3 memorial sites
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden will visit all three 9/11 memorial sites to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and pay his respects to the nearly 3,000 people killed that day. Biden will visit ground zero in New York City, the Pentagon and the memorial outside Shanksville,...
Navy declares 5 missing sailors dead after helicopter crash
SAN DIEGO — The U.S. Navy declared five missing sailors dead nearly a week after a helicopter crashed in the Pacific Ocean, shifting the search for them to a recovery operation on Saturday. The move followed more than 72 hours of coordinated rescue efforts and nearly three dozen search and...
Northeast deals with muck, waterlogged homes in Ida cleanup
CRANFORD, N.J. — Flood-stricken families and business owners across the Northeast were hauling waterlogged belongings to the curb Saturday and scraping away noxious mud as cleanup from the deadly remnants of Hurricane Ida moves into high gear. The White House said President Joe Biden will survey storm damage in New...
Biden tells storm-ravaged Louisiana: ‘I know you’re hurting’
LAPLACE, La. — Giant trees knocked sideways. Homes boarded up with plywood. Off-kilter street signs. Less than a week after Hurricane Ida battered the Gulf Coast, President Joe Biden walked the streets of a hardhit Louisiana neighborhood and told local residents, “I know you’re hurting, I know you’re hurting.” Such...
Russians rally against government pressure on independent media
MOSCOW — Several dozen Russians gathered in the center of Moscow on Saturday to protest Russian authorities’ recent crackdown on independent media. The small rally was organized by several opposition candidates in Russia’s Sept. 19 parliamentary election and officially billed as a meeting between candidates and voters in order to...
Police: Driver, 45, critical, 4 Akron officers injured in crash
AKRON, Ohio — A driver was critically injured and four Akron officers were hurt when a car crashed into two police cruisers that had responded to a disabled vehicle over the weekend, authorities said. Akron police said the officers were in the process of towing the disabled vehicle when the...
Collision between train, minibus leaves 6 dead in Turkey
ISTANBUL — A collision between a freight train and a minibus in northwest Turkey killed six people and injured seven others Saturday, the Turkish news agency Demiroren reported. The crash at a railroad crossing in Ergene, Tekirdag province, involved a minibus carrying textile factory workers returning from a night shift...
Surviving 9/11 was ‘just the first piece of the journey’
NEW YORK — Trapped deep in the wreckage of the World Trade Center, Will Jimeno lived through the unthinkable. Twenty years later, he’s still living with it. A brace and a quarter-sized divot on his left leg reflect the injuries that ended his police career, a lifetime dream. He has...
Judge shields Texas clinics from anti-abortion group’s suits
AUSTIN, Texas — A state judge has shielded, for now, Texas abortion clinics from lawsuits by an anti-abortion group under a new state abortion law in a narrow ruling handed down Friday. The temporary restraining order Friday by state District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble in Austin in response to the...
