March 6, 2025 10:44 am
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House has voted to censure Al Green, Democratic congressman from Texas, for disrupting President Donald Trump’s address to Congress earlier in the week. Green offered no regrets when he explained his actions on the House floor and said he’d do it again. The resolution against Green was approved in a mostly party-line vote of 224-198 on Thursday. House Speaker Mike Johnson had Green removed from the chamber during the early moments of Trump’s speech Tuesday night. Green shouted at Trump after the Republican president said voters had given him a mandate not seen for decades. Green said Trump has no mandate to cut Medicaid. Trump has said about the health care program that “we’re not going to touch it.”
March 6, 2025 8:57 am
Applications for U.S. jobless benefits fell last week as the labor market remains sturdy ahead of an expected purge of federal government employees. The number of Americans filing for jobless benefits fell by 21,000 to 221,000 for the week ending March 1, the Labor Department said Thursday. That’s significantly fewer than the 236,000 new applications analysts expected. Weekly applications for jobless benefits are considered a proxy for layoffs, which have remained mostly in a range between 200,000 and 250,000 for years. The total number of Americans receiving unemployment benefits for the week of Feb. 22 rose by 42,000 to 1.9 million.
March 6, 2025 5:05 am
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge has ruled Thursday that President Donald Trump acted illegally when he fired a member of an independent labor agency, and the judge ordered that she be allowed to remain on the job. National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox sued Trump after he fired her and the agency’s general counsel. U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington, D.C., found that Trump did not have the authority to remove Wilcox. Government attorneys argued that NLRB members should be “removable at will to ensure democratic accountability.” Wilcox was the first Black woman to serve on the five-member board in its 90-year history.
March 6, 2025 4:56 am
ROME (AP) — Pope Francis is resting Thursday after a peaceful night during his third week of hospital treatment for double pneumonia. The pope has been sleeping with a non-invasive mechanical mask to guarantee that his lungs expand properly overnight and help his recovery. He has been transitioning to receiving oxygen with a nasal tube during the day. The 88-year-old pope has been stable for two days after suffering two respiratory crises on Monday. Doctors underlined that his prognosis remained guarded.
March 6, 2025 4:54 am
Veterans who have been abruptly fired from federal jobs say they feel betrayed by the Trump administration’s dramatic downsizing of government. Nathan Hooven, who voted for Trump in November, lost his job last month as an inventory management specialist at the Salem VA Medical Center in Virginia. He says the administration didn’t take the time to think about veterans who have served their country. Hooven and other veterans also say they’re particularly angered by how they were fired: in an email that cited inadequate job performance — despite receiving positive reviews while they were working.
March 6, 2025 4:50 am
CAIRO (AP) — The Hamas militant group has brushed off President Donald Trump’s latest threat and reiterated that it will only free the remaining Israeli hostages in exchange for a lasting ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. Hamas accused Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of trying to back out of the ceasefire agreement they reached in January. The agreement calls for negotiations over a second phase in which the hostages would be released in exchange for more Palestinian prisoners, a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Negotiations on that phase were supposed to begin in early February. Only limited preparatory talks have been held so far.
March 6, 2025 4:48 am
BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union leaders are holding emergency summit talks to beef up their own military defenses and make sure Ukraine will still be properly protected by its allies. Friedrich Merz, the likely next chancellor of Germany, was conferring with summit host Antonio Costa on Thursday morning. They want to meet the challenge on a short deadline only days after Merz pushed plans to loosen the nation’s rules on running up debt to allow for higher defense spending. At the same time, the 27-nation bloc was waking up to the news from French President Emmanuel Macron would confer with EU leaders the possibility of using France’s nuclear deterrent to protect the continent from Russian threats.
March 6, 2025 4:46 am
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korean fighter jets have accidentally dropped eight bombs on a civilian area, injuring eight people on the ground. The South Korean air force says the MK-82 bombs released by the KF-16 fighter jets fell outside a firing range on Thursday morning. The air force apologized and expressed hopes for a speedy recovery of the injured. It says it will investigate the accident in Pocheon, a city close to the heavily armed border with North Korea. Pocheon’s disaster response center say six civilians and two soldiers were injured.
March 6, 2025 4:40 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania is spending more than $10 million to replace its electronic voter registration database with an election management system. Under a contract announced Wednesday, a new system is being developed that will also provide election night results and handle campaign finance filings and lobbyist registration. Secretary of State Al Schmidt announced the Civix system should be fully in use by the time of the next presidential election in 2028. It will replace the existing Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors, often called the SURE system. State officials say the Civix system’s functions for public use will provide information about voter registration, coming elections and voting data.
March 6, 2025 2:48 am
A man charged with attempted homicide who was mistakenly released from the Washington County Jail is back in police custody. Washington County District Attorney Jason Walsh says numerous Washington County police units swarmed a house on Murtland Avenue Wednesday afternoon and captured a fugitive who had been released from the Washington County Jail by mistake last December. Walsh says that Samuel Valle who was to appear in court last week on attempted homicide charges is now in custody. Walsh says a woman associated with Valle was arrested and she faces a criminal charge of harboring, among others. Authorities say the Sheriff’s Fugitive Unit, along with Washington County Detectives, State Police, City of Washington Police and Washington County SWAT were all involved in the apprehension. Valle was in jail – charged with attempted homicide, aggravated assault and reckless endangerment after police say he shot at a man following a house party and gunfight at a home in Charleroi in September of 2023. He was accidentally released from custody in December, but the Washington County District Attorney’s Office wasn’t aware until late February. Washington County commissioners say they will be collaborating with the county courts to identify where the mistake occurred and ensure it doesn’t happen again.
