March 29, 2021 4:16 am
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) – Prosecutors at the trial of Derek Chauvin played a video showing white former Minneapolis police officer kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for 9 minutes, 29 seconds as the Black man pleaded for his life and went limp. The video posted to Facebook soon after Floyd’s arrest by a bystander shows Chauvin pinning Floyd at the officers’ squad car and ignoring onlooker shouts to get off him. Chauvin’s trial began Monday with prosecutor Jerry Blackwell telling jurors that Chauvin “didn’t let up, he didn’t get up” even after Floyd said 27 times that he couldn’t breathe and went motionless. The defense says it’ll show that Chauvin reacted exactly as he was trained. The widely seen video sparked waves of outrage across the U.S. and beyond.
March 29, 2021 4:13 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – Operators of abortion clinics lost in court in their bid to reverse a decades-old Pennsylvania court decision upholding limits on the use of state Medicaid dollars to cover the cost of abortions. An appeal to the state Supreme Court is possible. A seven-judge panel of the Commonwealth Court on Friday ruled, with one dissent, both that the abortion clinic operators do not have standing to assert the constitutional rights of low-income women seeking an abortion and that it is bound by a 1985 state Supreme Court decision. Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf supports abortion rights, but his administration nevertheless fought the case, as did Republican lawmakers who intervened.
March 29, 2021 4:11 am
PHILADELPHIA (AP) – Authorities say a motorcyclist riding past the scene of a fire in north Philadelphia ran over a fire hose, went out of control, and died after a crash. Police said the 34-year-old man was pronounced dead at the scene minutes after the crash shortly before 3:30 a.m. Sunday in the West Oak Lane neighborhood. Officials said firefighters had stretched a hose across Broad Street to battle the flames, and the motorcyclist hit the house while heading north near 68th Avenue. WPVI-TV reported that the rider was thrown about 300 feet.
March 29, 2021 4:10 am
PITTSBURGH — (WPXI) – Special effects artists and actor Tom Savini, known for his work in “From Dusk Till Dawn,” “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” “Machete,” “Dawn of the Dead,” and “Friday the 13th,” was hit by a car and hospitalized in Pittsburgh. According to Savini’s social media, he was riding a bike on Thursday when he was hit. He was forced to cancel an upcoming appearance at the Nashville Full Moon Tattoo & Horror Festival. “Thanks so much to everyone who reached out and a huge thank you to both the Pittsburgh Police department & The Pittsburgh paramedics who came to my aid,” Savini wrote on social media. He shared pictures from UPMC Presbyterian Hospital showing him wearing a neck brace and with an injury to his head.
March 28, 2021 7:44 am
SUEZ, Egypt (AP) — Two additional tugboats sped Sunday to Egypt’s Suez Canal to aid efforts to free a skyscraper-sized container ship wedged for days across the crucial waterway, even as major shippers increasingly divert their boats out of fear the vessel may take even longer to free. The massive Ever Given, a Panama-flagged, Japanese-owned ship that carries cargo between Asia and Europe, got stuck Tuesday in a single-lane stretch of the canal. In the time since, authorities have been unable to remove the vessel and traffic through the canal — valued at over $9 billion a day — has been halted, further disrupting a global shipping network already strained by the coronavirus pandemic. The Dutch-flagged Alp Guard and the Italian-flagged Carlo Magno, called in to help tugboats already there, reached the Red Sea near the city of Suez early Sunday, satellite data from MarineTraffic.com showed. The tugboats will nudge the 400-meter-long (quarter-mile-long) Ever Given as dredgers continue to vacuum up sand from underneath the vessel and mud caked to its port side, said Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement, which manages the Ever Given. Workers planned to make two attempts Sunday to free the vessel coinciding with high tides, a top pilot with the canal authority said.
March 28, 2021 7:43 am
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Police in Indonesia say at least one suicide bomber has detonated outside a packed Roman Catholic cathedral during Sunday Mass, wounding several people. There were no casualties among the congregation in Makassar city in South Sulawesi province. A report from Kompas TV shows police officers securing the area in front of the church. The chief of the South Sulawesi police said that the explosion happened at 10:35 a.m. He said the only dead was the presumed bomber.
March 28, 2021 7:41 am
HOUSTON (AP) — The Biden administration is not requiring FBI fingerprint background checks of caregivers at its rapidly expanding network of emergency sites to hold thousands of immigrant teenagers, alarming child welfare experts who say the waiver compromises safety. In the rush to get children out of overcrowded and often unsuitable Border Patrol sites, President Joe Biden’s team is turning to a measure used by previous administrations: tent camps, convention centers and other huge facilities operated by private contractors and funded by U.S. Health and Human Services. In March alone, the Biden administration announced it will open eight new emergency sites across the Southwest adding 15,000 new beds, more than doubling the size of its existing system. These emergency sites don’t have to be licensed by state authorities or provide the same services as permanent HHS facilities. They also cost far more, an estimated $775 per child per day. And to staff the sites quickly, the Biden administration has waived vetting procedures intended to protect minors from potential harm.
March 28, 2021 7:39 am
BEIJING (AP) — China announced new sanctions against U.S. and Canadian officials in a growing political and economic feud over its policies in the traditionally Muslim region of Xinjiang. A statement from the Foreign Ministry on Saturday said the head of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, Gayle Manchin, will be barred from visiting mainland China, Hong Kong or Macao, and having any dealings with Chinese financial entities. The commission’s vice chair, Tony Perkins, was also included on the sanctions list, along with Canadian Member of Parliament Michael Chong and the body’s Subcommittee on International Human Rights. China has strongly rejected accusations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang and has launched calls for boycotts and other punishments against foreign firms including retailer H&M and Nike, along with sanctions against foreign government officials and activists whom it says are spreading false information about its policies toward Uyghurs and members of other Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang.
March 28, 2021 7:38 am
LONDON (AP) — Britain is taking another small step out of lockdown as it looks nervously at a new virus surge inundating its European neighbors. With U.K. coronavirus vaccination rates outstripping those of European Union nations, Prime Minister Boris Johnson is easing the stark “stay at home” message that has curtailed everyday life — and kept the virus in check — for almost three months. From Monday, it will be replaced in England with a message to stay local. People will be allowed to meet in groups of six outdoors and can resume outdoor sports such as basketball, tennis and golf. The other parts of the U.K. — Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — are taking broadly similar steps. In Wales, thousands of people poured onto beaches and beauty spots on Saturday, after the authorities lifted travel restrictions that have been in place since December.
March 28, 2021 7:35 am
PITTSBURGH (WPXI) — A 41-year-old man was arrested and charged with criminal homicide in connection with a woman found shot to death on a Carrick sidewalk. Investigators said Donte Moss was arrested and is being held at the Allegheny County Jail. The woman was found dead just after 12:30 a.m. in the 400 block of Linnview Avenue. Police said she had been shot in the head. Detectives from the Major Crimes and the Crime Scene Unit processed evidence at the scene.
