U.S./World category, Page 883
NASA: Mystery object is 54-year-old rocket, not asteroid
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A mysterious object temporarily orbiting Earth is a 54-year-old rocket, not an asteroid after all, astronomers confirmed Wednesday. Observations by a telescope in Hawaii clinched its identity, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The object was classified as an asteroid after its discovery...
Search persists for parents of 628 kids separated at border
SAN DIEGO — A court-appointed committee has yet to find the parents of 628 children separated at the border early in the Trump administration, according to a court filing Wednesday that also said the government last week provided additional phone numbers to aid the long-running search. Parents of 333 children...
Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree turns on, with coronavirus rules
NEW YORK — Rockin’ around the Christmas tree looks different for visitors at Rockefeller Center this year, starting with the tree lighting ceremony on Wednesday. What’s normally a chaotic, crowded tourist hotspot during the holiday season was instead a mask-mandated, time-limited, socially distanced locale because of the coronavirus pandemic. The...
Police: Officer in West Virginia shooting unlikely to surviveVideo
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A West Virginia police officer who was shot by a suspect is unlikely to survive, a police chief said Wednesday. Charleston officer Cassie Johnson was shot Tuesday while responding to a parking complaint. She was sworn in as a police officer in January 2019. Charleston Police Officer...
After covid-19 scare, Ghislaine Maxwell expected to ask again for release on bail
MIAMI — Jeffrey Epstein’s onetime romantic partner and alleged sex trafficking accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell is expected to renew her request to be released on bail, which was originally denied after she was arrested in July. Maxwell has been housed since then at the Metropolitan Detention Center in the New York...
San Francisco bans smoking inside apartments; pot smoking OK
City officials in San Francisco have banned all tobacco smoking inside apartments, citing concerns about secondhand smoke. But lighting up a joint inside? That’s still allowed. The Board of Supervisors voted 10-1 Tuesday to approve the ordinance making San Francisco the largest city in the country to ban tobacco smoking...
‘My God, we’re scared’: Serial attacks put Boston suburb on edge
WALTHAM, Mass. — The attacks come after dark, without warning, usually from behind. The victims, all men, are hit so hard on the head with some sort of blunt object that they are often knocked to the ground and require medical attention. The apparently random string of at least 10...
UN agency removes cannabis from strictest drug category
The U.N. Commission on Narcotic Drugs voted Wednesday to remove cannabis and cannabis resin from a category of the world’s most dangerous drugs, which could impact the global medical marijuana industry. The Vienna-based U.N. agency said in a statement that it had voted 27-25, with one abstention, to remove cannabis...
NYC bar owner who defied coronavirus restrictions arrested
An owner of a New York City bar that was providing indoor service in defiance of coronavirus restrictions was arrested after a sting in which plainclothes officers went inside and ordered food and beverages, the city sheriff’s office said. Protesters shouted as deputies arrested Danny Presti, the co-owner of Mac’s...
Pakistani court declares ex-PM Sharif fugitive from justice
ISLAMABAD — A top Pakistani court on Wednesday declared the country’s ailing former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who lives in exile in London, a fugitive from justice after he failed to return home to face additional corruption charges. The move by the Islamabad High Court comes months after Sharif was...
Transportation Department tightens definition of service animals allowed on planes
The days of pets flying with their owners in airplane cabins for free are coming to an end. The Transportation Department issued a final rule Wednesday covering animals on airlines. It decided that only dogs can fly as service animals, and companions that passengers use for emotional support don’t count....
Man pleads guilty to killing woman after remains found
LANCASTER, Ky. — A Kentucky man has pleaded guilty to killing a woman whose remains were found six months after she disappeared, according to court records. David Sparks, 25, entered the plea Monday in Garrard County Circuit Court, news outlets reported, citing court records. He was indicted last year on...
U.S. lawmakers unveil anti-slavery constitutional amendment
NEW YORK — National lawmakers are expected on Wednesday to introduce a joint resolution aimed at striking language from the U.S. Constitution that enshrines a form of slavery in America’s foundational documents. The resolution, spearheaded and supported by Democratic members of the House and Senate, would amend the 13th Amendment’s...
Lawmakers bristle after Trump threatens defense bill veto
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is closing out his relationship with Congress with one more power jab, threatening to veto a hugely popular defense bill unless lawmakers clamp down on big tech companies he claims were biased against him during the election. Trump is demanding that Congress repeal so-called Section...
GOP objects to Biden nominees, a sign of what’s to come
WASHINGTON — President-elect Joe Biden’s Cabinet picks are quickly running into the political reality of a narrowly controlled Senate that will leave the new Democratic administration dependent on rival Republicans to get anything done. Under leader Mitch McConnell, the Republican senators will hold great sway in confirming Biden’s nominees regardless...
Brazilian bank robbers seize another city, sow chaos, death
RIO DE JANEIRO — Heavily armed bank robbers invaded the Brazilian city of Cameta just one day after criminals struck another mid-sized city on the opposite side of the country, taking residents hostage as they looted a bank. Para state’s public security secretariat said in a statement that more than...
Alabama soldier arrested after girlfriend’s son forced out of car, killed by vehicle
FORT MITCHELL, Ala. — An Alabama soldier was charged with reckless murder after allegedly forcing his girlfriend’s unruly 5-year-old son to get out of a car at night along a road where the boy was hit and killed by another vehicle, authorities said. Army Sgt. Bryan Starr, 35, surrendered to...
‘This has got to stop’: Republican Georgia election official calls out Trump, GOP
A Georgia elections official has had it with threats against himself and fellow elections workers in that battleground state that was awarded to Joe Biden during last month’s presidential election. Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s Voting Systems Implementation Manager, who is Republican, said emphatically in a Tuesday press conference that it has...
Visitor: Monolith toppled by group of men who said ‘leave no trace’Video
SALT LAKE CITY — New clues have surfaced in the disappearance of a gleaming monolith in Utah that seemed to melt away as mysteriously as it appeared in the red-rock desert — though it’s no longer the only place where a strange structure has come and gone. A Colorado photographer...
Biden unveils economic team declaring, ‘Help is on the way’
WILMINGTON, Del. — President-elect Joe Biden on Tuesday introduced top advisers he says will help his administration rebuild an economy hammered by the coronavirus pandemic, declaring, “I know times are tough but I want you to know that help is on the way.” Biden said he’d chosen a “first rate...
FDA chief called to White House as Trump pushes for vaccine
WASHINGTON — The head of the agency responsible for approving any covid-19 vaccine for the U.S. was summoned to the White House Tuesday as an increasingly frustrated President Donald Trump complained approval wasn’t coming faster. White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows called in Stephen Hahn, the head of the...
Rescue efforts slowed a week after Zimbabwe mine collapse
BINDURA, Zimbabwe — Rains and flooding have slowed rescue efforts at a Zimbabwean mine where a shaft collapsed last week, trapping at least 10 artisanal miners. Hopes of finding survivors are vanishing and relatives camped at the site on Tuesday expressed their desperation for decent burials of their loved ones...
Detroit police fatally shoot gunman suspected in slaying
DETROIT — Police killed a gunman during a shootout early Tuesday who was suspected of fatally shooting a woman over a child-custody issue and firing shots at a Detroit police station, authorities said. Members of the department’s Special Response Team approached the 28-year-old man about 7 a.m. as he sat...
U.S. officials say mountain pine tree that feeds grizzlies is threatened
BILLINGS, Mont. — Climate change, voracious beetles and disease are imperiling the long-term survival of a high-elevation pine tree that’s a key source of food for some grizzly bears and found across the U.S. West, U.S, officials said Tuesday. A Fish and Wildlife Service proposal scheduled to be published Wednesday...
China says probe sent to retrieve lunar rocks lands on moon
BEIJING — A Chinese robot probe sent to return lunar rocks to Earth for the first time since the 1970s landed on the moon Tuesday, the government announced, adding to a string of increasingly bold space missions by Beijing. The Chang’e 5 probe “successfully landed” at its planned site, state...
