|
March 21, 2018 at 4:27 pm
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions will be in his home state of Alabama this week to address a black law enforcement group that is sometimes at odds with the Trump administration.
The U.S. attorney's office in Birmingham says Sessions will speak to the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives on Friday.
The group has been critical of President Donald Trump for his disparaging comments about immigrants from Africa and Haiti. It has also criticized Trump's move to let police agencies obtain surplus military equipment.
The organization opposed Trump's pardon of Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio (ahr-PY'-oh) and noted Sessions' past opposition to clemency.
Sessions will speak at a meeting that includes numerous large-city po...
|
March 21, 2018 at 4:27 pm
Stocks fell Wednesday after the Federal Reserve added a third rate hike to its 2019 plans, reflecting views that inflation is beginning to pick up.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 44.96 points, 0.18%, to 24,682 in recent trading. The S&P 500 fell 5.01 points to 2,711.93. The Nasdaq Composite was down 19.02 points at 7,345.29.
The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate and maintained its stance for three rate hikes in 2018, partly easing concerns that the central bank would tighten policy at a faster pace than expected. The Fed said it is looking for three more rate hikes in 2019, up from its previous plan to raise rates two times.
“We suspect the Fed is leaning on the mixed inflation data in wages along with the escalating risks of a trade war to buy some ...
|
March 21, 2018 at 4:13 pm
The man suspected of planting four bombs in the Texas capital this month that killed two people and injured four others was an unemployed college dropout who doesn't appear to have left much of a trail online aside from some 2012 blog posts about gay marriage and other topics.
Authorities say Mark Anthony Conditt blew himself up in a motel parking lot overnight as a SWAT team approached his SUV. Police haven't publicly released Conditt's name, but a law enforcement official who had been briefed on the investigation identified Conditt as the suspect on the condition of anonymity because the official hadn't been authorized to discuss the case publicly.
Conditt grew up in Pflugerville, a suburb just northeast of Austin where he was still living after moving out of his pa...
|
March 21, 2018 at 2:33 pm
Baltimore, MD – Mar. 21, 2018 – Due to the inclement weather, Seven Mile Market will close this evening, Wednesday, Mar. 21, at 6:00 PM.
|
March 21, 2018 at 1:26 pm
Baltimore, MD - Mar. 20, 2018 - On Wednesday evening, March 7, Bais Yaakov of Baltimore hosted their 76th Anniversary Banquet, celebrating “An Education for Eternity.”
Divrei brachah were delivered by Harav Aharon Feldman, shlita, Rosh Yeshivah of Yeshivas Ner Yisroel, who praised the school as a premier makom of chinuch habanos. “This Bais Yaakov is a model for the rest of the country,” the Rosh Yeshivah asserted. “In the past 75 years, it was mechanech thousands of mothers and wives. May Hakadosh Baruch Hu bentch everyone who has a share in this remarkable school, which should continue to flourish and educate future wives and mothers.”
The evening was opened by Dr. Shmuel Markovitz, president, who discussed the school’s significant growth, ...
|
March 21, 2018 at 1:18 pm
WASHINGTON (AP) — As hundreds of people stood in line for food and many went hungry during the days and weeks after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, Walmart Inc. and local supermarkets threw out tons of spoiled meat, dairy and produce.
Emails and text messages made public Tuesday in a letter sent by the top Democrat on the House oversight committee describe frantic efforts by officials at Walmart and the Puerto Rican government to get fuel for generators to prevent food from going bad.
From the Federal Emergency Management Agency came only silence.
Within a three-hour time span, Walmart officials were able to connect, through email and text messages, with a congressman's office and local Puerto Rican government officials. They passed on their urgent request for help, just two...
|
March 21, 2018 at 12:50 pm
BOSTON (AP) — The top prosecutors in Massachusetts and New York have sent a letter to Facebook demanding the social media giant protect its users' private information.
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman launched a joint investigation Saturday after reports that British data analysis firm Cambridge Analytica captured information from 50 million Facebook users without their consent. The firm is tied to President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign.
Healey says residents in her state "deserve answers immediately," from Facebook and Cambridge Analytica about what data was shared and how it was allowed to happen. Her office says it has been in touch with Facebook about the investigation.
Schneiderman says that if the company v...
|
March 21, 2018 at 12:44 pm
Palestinian teen provocateur Ahed Tamimi was sentenced to eight months in prison Wednesday for an incident in which she slapped an IDF soldier and accosted him and a comrade.
|
March 21, 2018 at 12:39 pm
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal health officials are taking a closer look at flavors in tobacco products that appeal to young people, particularly menthol-flavored cigarettes, which have escaped regulation despite nearly a decade of government scrutiny.
The Food and Drug Administration issued a call Tuesday for more information about flavored cigars and electronic cigarettes, which currently have no flavor restrictions. Extra attention will fall on menthol, the only cigarette flavor permitted by Congress under the 2009 law that brought tobacco under FDA regulation. The FDA's past efforts to begin regulating the ingredient have been stalled by industry.
Studies have shown the minty flavor appeals more to younger smokers. More than 50 percent of underage smokers reported smoking menth...
|
March 21, 2018 at 12:34 pm
BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union says international donors have raised 456 million euros ($560 million) to build a desalination plant in the Gaza Strip to provide around 2 million people with safe drinking water.
At a pledging conference in Brussels on Tuesday, the EU offered more than 77 million euros, which combined with other donations will meet around 80 percent of the plant's costs.
People in the impoverished coastal strip rely on an underground aquifer for their water. But quality is poor and Gazans are drawing off around four times what the aquifer can sustain each year.
The Palestinians say water shortages are creating health problems and exacerbating political tensions.
The EU says that funding the plant is part of its efforts to help build a Palestinian state.
|
March 21, 2018 at 12:30 pm
ROUND ROCK, Texas (AP) — The Latest on the Austin bombings (all times local):
10:35 a.m.
A neighbor who watched the Austin bombing suspect grow up says he "always seemed like he was smart" and "polite."
Jeff Reeb said Wednesday that he's lived next to the parents of Mark Anthony Conditt for about 17 years and that they are good neighbors.
Reeb says Mark Conditt and his grandson played together into middle school and that Conditt visited his parents regularly.
The parents live a few miles from the Pflugerville home where Mark Conditt lived with roommates. Reeb says Conditt was in the process of gutting the house and remodeling it, which meant a lot of hammers and nails around frequently.
He says police had an unmarked car parked near Conditt's parents' house overn...
|
March 21, 2018 at 12:29 pm
ATLANTA (AP) — Prosecutors in west Georgia focused on the race of black potential jurors as they purposely and systematically excluded them from the trials of black men facing the death penalty four decades ago, lawyers for one of the men said in a court filing this week.
An all-white jury in 1977 convicted Johnny Gates of raping and murdering a white woman and sentenced him to die. His lawyers have asked a judge for a new trial and argued in a court filing Monday that newly disclosed prosecution trial notes from a string of capital cases tried in Muscogee County in the late 1970s, combined with the consistent striking of black prospective jurors, demonstrate systematic race discrimination in jury selection.
"When you have this kind of race discrimination infecting a trial from the...
|
March 21, 2018 at 12:12 pm
NEW YORK (AP) — Google Inc. has finalized the $2.4 billion purchase of New York City's Chelsea Market building.
The management company Jamestown Properties announced the sale of the former Nabisco factory on Tuesday.
The building is directly opposite Google's New York City headquarters in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood.
Google has about 7,000 employees in New York, the most of any location outside of its Silicon Valley headquarters.
Google vice president for real estate David Radcliffe says the Chelsea Market purchase "further solidifies" the company's commitment to New York.
Google and Jamestown say they'll work together to ensure a smooth transition with minimal impact to tenants.
The building's office tenants include Major League Baseball and ...
|
March 21, 2018 at 12:09 pm
GREAT MILLS, Md. (AP) — The Latest on Tuesday's school shooting in Maryland (all times local):
11:30 a.m.
The two students wounded during a shooting at their Maryland high school are still recovering in hospitals.
A spokeswoman for MedStar St. Mary's Hospital said Wednesday that the 14-year-old male victim of Tuesday's shooting at Great Mills High School remains in good condition. Authorities have not released his name.
A spokeswoman for the University of Maryland Prince George's Hospital Center says the 16-year-old female victim remains in critical condition. The girl's family has identified her as Jaelynn Willey.
Authorities have said Jaelynn and the teen identified as the shooter, 17-year-old Austin Rollins, had previously had a relationship. They hav...
|
March 21, 2018 at 12:09 pm
JERUSALEM (AP) — A fragment of an enigmatic Dead Sea Scroll has gone on public display at Jerusalem's Israel Museum for the first time since its discovery 70 years ago.
The Genesis Apocryphon, the sole copy of an ancient Jewish text elaborating on stories from the first book of the Bible, dates to the first century B.C. and was among the first seven scrolls found in the Judean Desert in 1947. The Associated Press previewed the exhibit Tuesday.
The Dead Sea Scrolls, a collection of Jewish texts found in desert caves in the West Bank near Qumran in the 1940s and 1950s, date from the third century B.C. to the first century A.D. They include the earliest known copies of biblical texts, documents outlining the beliefs of a little understood Jewish sect, as well as related texts lik...
|
March 21, 2018 at 12:04 pm
BALTIMORE (AP) — Federal regulators have cited a Baltimore hospital in connection with a January incident in which a mentally ill woman was discharged and left at an open-air bus stop wearing only a flimsy gown and socks.
The Baltimore Sun reported Tuesday that a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services investigation found the University of Maryland Medical Center violated patient rights as well as several patient safety and hospital management regulations.
The 22-year-old woman had been treated for a head wound, but authorities say she became resistant while being discharged. Security intervened and escorted the visibly disoriented woman outside, where temperatures were in the 30s (near zero Celsius).
The hospital, which previously apologized for a lack of "basic hu...
|
March 21, 2018 at 11:48 am
The Agudah celebrates 96 years of serving Klal Yisrael
Life requires movement. Where there is movement there is life, and where there is life there is a different kind of movement; growth, progress and accomplishment. For over 96 years Agudas Yisrael has been the movement of Torah true yidishkeit.
What is a movement? A movement is people uniting behind similar ideals, visions and goals. A movement harnesses the power of numbers to advance those goals. The Agudah has been furthering and continues to further the goals and ideals of Torah and our community, taking the timeless principles of Torah and applying them faithfully to each and every circumstance under the guidance of our Gedolim. It is a movement that has shown the capacity to persevere, and function as effectively today as it did...
|
March 21, 2018 at 11:31 am
Shachar Strug of elite Duvdevan unit buried at military cemetery in Tel Aviv. Strug apparently killed by bullet from his comrade's weapon.
Staff Sergeant Shachar Strug, 20, the soldier from the elite Duvdevan special operations force who was killed yesterday by an unintentionally discharged bullet, was laid to rest today, Wednesday, at the Kiryat Shaul military cemetery in Tel Aviv.Among those present at the funeral were Minister Ze'ev Elkin (Likud), Givatayim mayor Ran Konik, and Boaz Kukia, the father of Ron Kukia, murdered in a terror attack in Arad in November.Strug went to high school in Givatayim, and enlisted in the Duvdevan unit a year ago. He is survived by his parents and sister, all of whom eulogized him at the funeral.
A fellow soldier in ...
|
March 21, 2018 at 11:29 am
The wintry mess will continue around Maryland for a little while longer.
A Winter Storm Warning is in effect from 2 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Wednesday.
There will be variable travel conditions Wednesday as the snow continues. Snow ends before 10 p.m. Wednesday evening. Some roads will remain snow covered Wednesday, even with the sun up and air temperatures warming above freezing.
SHA said it is not in danger of running out of salt and that it has been replenishing its supply between storms.
Temperatures return to the 40s Thursday and Friday.
From the National Weather Service:
...WINTER STORM WARNING IN EFFECT FROM 2 AM TO 8 PM EDT WEDNESDAY...
* WHAT...Heavy snow expected. Total snow accumulations of 4 to 8 inches are expected.
* WHERE...The District of Columbia, portions of ...
