Month: November 2021

By ROD McGUIRK Associated Press CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced plans to encourage people to buy electric vehicles but won’t be subsidizing the purchases. Morrison says the price of the technology will reduce in time. Instead, his conservative government will partner with private enterprise to accelerate the rollout of

By AAMER MADHANI and BRUCE SCHREINER Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is launching his sales pitch for his recently passed $1 trillion infrastructure bill. Biden predicted Monday that a notoriously congested bridge that sits in Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell’s backyard will finally get a long overdue overhaul. Biden said in an

By JOHN O’CONNOR AP Political Writer SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — The Illinois governor has signed into law a change to the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act to prevent it from being used to avoid penalties for refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Gov. J.B. Pritzker took the action Monday to stem what he

BOONE, N.C. (AP) — A spokesman for Franklin Graham says the evangelist underwent a specialized heart surgery to treat a condition which had developed in recent months. Mark Barber, a spokesman for North Carolina-based Samaritan’s Purse, said in a news release that Graham successfully underwent the procedure Monday at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. The

By EDITH M. LEDERER Associated Press UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Five European countries are expressing “serious concern” at Israel’s designation of six Palestinian civil society organizations as terrorist groups and say they will be seeking more information from Israeli authorities on the reasons for their listing. The Security Council discussed the designations Monday and took

GLASGOW, Scotland (AP) — Unlike some of her European colleagues, Leonore Gewessler arrived at the U.N. climate conference with a clean conscience. Her 27-hour train journey spared Austria’s environment minister the criticism many VIPs faced for taking planes to a conference on cutting greenhouse gas emissions. The Green Party politician has pushed to revive Europe’s

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A St. Louis County man is charged with two separate killings, and police are trying to determine if he was involved in at least four other homicides in Missouri and Kansas. Perez Deshay Reed is suspected of killing a 16-year-old girl and a 40-year-old man in September in St. Louis County.

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — A toddler was killed by a stray bullet on an Oakland freeway while he slept in his car seat, the latest victim of a recent spike in shootings on San Francisco Bay Area highways in the last two years, some of them attributed to gangs. The nearly 2-year-old boy was killed

CHRISTOPHER WEBER Associated Press LOS ANGELES (AP) — Two California couples gave birth to each others’ babies after a mix-up at a fertility clinic and spent months raising children that weren’t theirs before swapping the infants. That’s according to a lawsuit filed Monday in Los Angeles. Daphna Cardinale says she and her husband had immediate

By MARIA VERZA Associated Press MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican prosecutors say they have arrested a businessman on charges he used the Pegasus spyware to spy on a journalist. The software marketed by the Israeli spyware firm NSO Group has been implicated in government surveillance of opponents and journalists around the world.  Mexico had the

By LISA MASCARO AP Congressional Correspondent WASHINGTON (AP) — Rarely have the leaders of Congress been asked to do so much with so little in trying to navigate President Joe Biden’s big domestic vision into law. Biden is reaching for Franklin Roosevelt-style accomplishments with slimmer-than-ever Democratic majorities. The challenge has been politically messy and it’s

By DYLAN LOVAN Associated Press LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A criminal fraud trial in Kentucky aims to determine whether four officials of the now-bankrupt Armstrong Coal company skirted federal rules meant to reduce deadly coal dust in underground mines. The trial started with opening statements on Monday. Federal prosecutors say the former officials ordered workers

By GENE JOHNSON Associated Press SEATTLE (AP) — A metallurgist in Washington state has pleaded guilty to fraud after she spent decades faking the results of strength tests on steel that was being used to make U.S. Navy submarines. Elaine Marie Thomas was the director of metallurgy at a foundry in Tacoma. The foundry supplied

By EDITH M. LEDERER Associated Press UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The African Union’s envoy for the Horn of Africa is warning that there is a short “window of opportunity” and little time to reverse the crisis in northern Ethiopia which has drastically deteriorated in recent weeks amid an escalating offensive by Tigray forces against the

By JOHN FLESHER and DAVID EGGERT Associated Press LANSING, Mich. (AP) — The release of communications related to Benton Harbor’s water crisis shows strained ties between state environmental regulators and the head of the city’s drinking water system as they tried to contain what has become Michigan’s second high-profile lead contamination crisis in less than

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Rapper and fashion mogul Ye’s high-end clothing company Yeezy has agreed to pay $950,000 to settle a lawsuit over slow shipping to customers. The district attorneys of four California counties brought the suit last month. They said Yeezy had violated state law by failing to send online orders within 30 days.

By JANET McCONNAUGHEY Associated Press NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing threatened status for alligator snapping turtles — huge, spike-shelled beasts that lurk at the bottom of slow waterways, luring prey to their mouths by extending a wormlike lure. Every state in their range now protects them, but the

FAIRBANKS, Alaska (AP) — Authorities say a gunman who killed a man outside of an Alaska grocery store over the weekend didn’t break stride as he continued inside and sprayed gunfire across the store, wounding one other person. Joshua Eric Butcher turned himself into police minutes after Sunday’s shooting in Fairbanks and has been charged

By CURT ANDERSON Associated Press From the soils underground to eyes in the sky, officials say the federal probe into the deadly collapse of a Florida condominium building is gaining steam but is far from completion. The National Institute of Standards and Technology did not provide any firm timetable at a meeting Monday for results

By AAMER MADHANI Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden has welcomed the NBA champion Milwaukee Bucks to the White House. The president praised team members not just for their achievements on the court, but also for their efforts to promote coronavirus vaccinations and for speaking out after the 2020 police shooting of Jacob

By MIKE CATALINI Associated Press TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — New Jersey Republican Jack Ciattarelli’s campaign denies that there was fraud in this year’s governor’s election but says the margin could shrink enough to warrant a recount. Campaign attorney Mark Sheridan said Monday that “no one on this team is alleging fraud or malfeasance.” But, he

By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN and JUAN A. LOZANO Associated Press HOUSTON (AP) — The Houston police and fire departments were deeply involved in safety measures for the music festival where a surging crowd killed eight people. Now the city’s police department is leading the criminal investigation into how the deadly chaos erupted during a performance by

By MICHAEL R. SISAK Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — A prominent New York City lawyer who married a Hollywood star and spent the last eight years overseeing police reforms as the NYPD’s court-appointed federal monitor died Monday. Peter Zimroth was 78. Zimroth’s death was confirmed by his top deputy on the monitoring team. Zimroth