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In a country shadowed by the threat of mass shootings and neighborhood violence, courts have embraced an increasingly absolute reading of the right to guns. That raises difficult questions about how to protect the full range of freedoms Americans cherish. With nearly 400 million guns in civilian hands, the violence they enable feels to many like a threat to their right to worship in peace, go to school and be safe at home. To many others, an unfettered right to own and carry guns is essential to protecting those liberties. With shooting deaths...
This past week, Americans watched as the hallowed chambers of the Capitol were overrun and defiled, not by some foreign enemy of democracy but a mob of their fellow citizens. And then they tried to make sense of it. In letters to the editor and posts on social media, they raised their voices. In Iowa, a lifelong Republican mourned the shredding of the country’s political norms. In Tennessee, a pastor and activist, alarmed by the rioters’ behavior, wondered if it might provide an impetus for change. In Mississippi, a young teacher worried wha...
After a punishing fall that left hospitals struggling, some Midwestern states are seeing a decline in new coronavirus cases. But the signs of improvement are offset by the virus's accelerating spread on both coasts: In California, officials scrambled to distribute body bags and deploy mobile morgues as infections rose at an alarming rate. States including Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Nebraska have seen decreases in the number of people testing positive for COVID-19 over the past couple of weeks. All, however, are still experiencing an...
POMPANO BEACH, Fla. (AP) — The first COVID-19 vaccinations are underway at U.S. nursing homes, where the virus has killed more than 110,000 people, even as the nation struggles to contain a surge so alarming it has spurred California to dispense thousands of body bags and line up refrigerated morgue trucks. With the rollout of shots picking up speed Wednesday, lawmakers in Washington closed in on a long-stalled coronavirus relief package that would send direct payments of perhaps $600 to most Americans. Meanwhile, the U.S. appeared to be d...
Pro-Trump protesters — some of them openly carrying rifles and handguns — rallied outside vote-tabulation centers in a few cities around the country Friday, responding to groundless accusations from President Donald Trump that the Democrats were trying to steal the White House. Elections officials in several states where Democrat Joe Biden was ahead said the anger outside their doors made them fear for the safety of their employees. Roughly 100 Trump supporters gathered for a third straight day in front of the elections center in Phoenix, whe...
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Virus cases are surging across Europe and many U.S. states, but responses by leaders are miles apart, with officials in Ireland, France and elsewhere imposing curfews and restricting gatherings even as some U.S. governors resist mask mandates or more aggressive measures. The stark contrasts in efforts to contain infections come as outbreaks on both sides of the Atlantic raise similar alarms, including shrinking availability of hospital beds and rising deaths. Governors of states including Tennessee, Oklahoma, Nebraska a...
NEW YORK (AP) — What is this enemy? Seven months after the first patients were hospitalized in China battling an infection doctors had never seen before, the world has reached an unsettling crossroads. Countless hours of treatment and research, trial and error now make it possible to take much closer measure of the new coronavirus. But to take advantage of that intelligence, we must confront our persistent vulnerability. "It's like we're in a battle with something that we can't see, that we don't know, and we don't know where it's coming f...
Hour after hour in the dark, Chander Shekhar's mind raced ahead to morning. More than three months had dragged by since the coronavirus forced Shekhar to shut down his business — a narrow, second-floor shop racked with vibrantly colored saris, on a block in New York's Jackson Heights neighborhood once thronged with South Asian immigrant shoppers. Today, finally, he and other merchants were allowed to reopen their doors. But they were returning to an area where COVID-19 had killed hundreds, leaving sidewalks desolate and storefronts to gather d...
NEW YORK (AP) — From the streets of Manila to the plazas of Santiago, Chile, people around the world marked International Women's Day on Sunday with calls to end exploitation and increase equality. But tensions marred some celebrations, with police reportedly using tear gas to break up a demonstration by thousands of women in Turkey and security forces arresting demonstrators at a rally in Kyrgyzstan. "In many different ways or forms, women are being exploited and taken advantage of," Arlene Brosas, the representative of a Filipino advocacy g...
SOAVE, Italy (AP) — The battle to halt the coronavirus brought sweeping new restrictions Monday, with Italy expanding a travel ban to the entire country, Israel ordering all visitors quarantined just weeks before Passover and Easter, and Spain closing all schools in and around its capital. Even as workers in Beijing returned to their jobs and new infections in China continued to subside, Italians struggled to navigate the rapidly changing parameters of the nation's self-imposed lockdown. The fears fanned by the virus sent Wall Street stocks t...
NEW YORK (AP) — The coronavirus spread to ever more countries and world capitals Monday — and the U.S. death toll climbed to six — even as new cases in China dropped to their lowest level in over a month. A shift in the crisis appeared to be taking shape: Hundreds of patients were released from hospitals at the epicenter of the outbreak in China, while the World Health Organization reported that nine times as many new infections were recorded outside the country as inside it over the past 24 hours. Alarming clusters of disease continued to sw...
NEW YORK (AP) — The coronavirus outbreak began to look more like a worldwide economic crisis Friday as anxiety about the infection emptied shops and amusement parks, canceled events, cut trade and travel and dragged already slumping financial markets even lower. More employers told their workers to stay home, and officials locked down neighborhoods and closed schools. The wide-ranging efforts to halt the spread of the illness threatened jobs, paychecks and profits. "This is a case where in economic terms the cure is almost worse than the d...
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. health officials warned Tuesday that the burgeoning coronavirus is certain to spread more widely in the country at some point, even as their counterparts in Europe and Asia scrambled to contain new outbreaks of the illness. "It's not so much a question of if this will happen anymore, but rather more a question of exactly when this will happen — and how many people in this country will have severe illness," Dr. Nancy Messonnier of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a call with reporters. The CDC...
PITTSBURGH (AP) — As the first funerals for the victims of the Pittsburgh massacre began, two rabbis and five other volunteers approached the sawhorses cordoning off the Tree of Life synagogue, and an FBI agent led them into the crime scene. Inside the desecrated temple, the men donned white forensic coveralls, face masks and gloves, and set to work. Judaism asks the living to take special care of the dead, and this group had a last, sacred duty to fulfill: gather up every drop of blood and other bodily traces of the 11 people killed in the d...
PITTSBURGH (AP) — Up in the choir loft, alone, Rabbi Jeffrey Myers whispered to a 911 dispatcher on his cellphone. Below him, down in the sanctuary, eight of his congregants had been felled by a gunman's bullets. Up here, though, Myers couldn't see them — or any of the other horrors going on beyond his hideaway. He could only listen. He waited for another round of semiautomatic gunfire, but all was silent. Then he heard what he feared even more. Could that be footsteps? Myers rushed into the loft's bathroom, barricading himself inside. Days ear...
DETROIT (AP) — Courtroom 801 is nearly empty when guards bring in Bobby Hines in handcuffs. More than 27 years ago, Hines stood before a judge to answer for his role in killing a man over a friend's drug debt. He was 15 then, just out of eighth grade. Another teen fired the shot that killed 21-year-old James Warren. But Hines had said something like, "Let him have it," sealing his punishment: life in prison with no chance for parole. The judgment came during an era when many states, fearing teen "superpredators," enacted laws to punish j...
DETROIT (AP) — Courtroom 801 is nearly empty when guards bring in Bobby Hines, hands cuffed in front of navy prison scrubs. It's been more than 27 years since Hines stood before a judge in this building. He was 15 then, just out of eighth grade, answering for his role in the murder of a man over a friend's drug debt. He did not fire the deadly shot, but when he and two others confronted 21-year-old James Warren, Hines said something like, "Let him have it," words that sealed his conviction and punishment: mandatory life with no chance for p...
