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Chinese weapons gain credibility after Pakistan-India conflict

Current News / News & Features /

The recent conflict between India and Pakistan is prompting a reassessment of Chinese weapons, challenging long-held perceptions of their inferiority to Western arms and sparking concern in places wary of Beijing.

Pakistan hailed the use of its Chinese J-10Cs to shoot down five Indian fighters, including French-made Rafale aircraft, last week ...Read more

Nick Wagner/The Seattle Times/TNS

Supply chain pro says tariffs affect not just economy, but national security

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The U.S. needs global trade. However, the country needs to be smart about the policies around it, including tariffs, one local expert says.

Scott Martens — who cut his supply-chain chops in the military, worked for Twin Cities companies and now is a University of St. Thomas professor — says the discussion around supply chains and tariffs ...Read more

Kimberly Fraser/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service/TNS

As states rethink wildlife management, New Mexico offers a new model

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For years, outdoors enthusiasts in New Mexico have pushed to overhaul the state Department of Game & Fish — an agency plagued by leadership turnover, funding woes and the scorn of hunters and tree-huggers alike.

Now, state lawmakers have given the agency a new name, a new mission, new leadership and a boost in funding to expand its role. The ...Read more

Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images North America/TNS

Meet the Florida group chipping away at public benefits one state at a time

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PHOENIX — As an Arizona bill to block people from using government aid to buy soda headed to the governor’s desk in April, the nation’s top health official joined Arizona lawmakers in the state Capitol to celebrate its passage.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said to applause that the legislation was just the ...Read more

'Self-promotion' or informing the public? Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker and Council use taxpayer money to sell their wins

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Philadelphia politicians want you to know more about their accomplishments.

They also want taxpayers to pay for the privilege.

In recent months, Mayor Cherelle L. Parker, members of City Council, and other Philadelphia elected officials collectively spent at least $2 million on contracts for outside communications firms, campaign-style ...Read more

A new push to bring recovery homes into state's 'housing first' homeless model in California

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LOS ANGELES — After a long journey of personal recovery and years volunteering as a substance abuse peer counselor, Thea Golden launched her own recovery home.

She and her husband, Tyler, bought a house in the Jefferson Park neighborhood west of USC, turned an illegally converted garage into a permitted ADU, formed a nonprofit and put out ...Read more

Dreamstime/Dreamstime/TNS

Wyandotte County, Kansas, offering low-cost measles vaccines to prevent potential outbreak

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WYANDOTTE COUNTY, Kan. — Although Wyandotte County has yet to see a reported measles outbreak, public health officials are readying public guidance and offering vaccine services as the disease inches north from southwest Kansas.

As of May 7, Kansas’s 48 reported measles cases remained among eight counties in the state’s southwest corner, ...Read more

Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times/TNS

The biggest losers in the GOP plan to slash US climate spending

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House Republicans released their first stab at a bill to extend President Donald Trump’s tax cuts, which would help pay for them by overhauling much of President Joe Biden’s landmark climate law.

The draft framework put out Monday by the Ways and Means Committee takes aim at billions of dollars of incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act, ...Read more

Alfredo Estrella/AFP/Getty Images North America/TNS

Seventeen members of a cartel kingpin's family were escorted into California from Mexico. Why?

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Key pillars of the Trump administration's policy toward Mexico involve large-scale deportations and a crackdown on cartels.

But reports in the Mexican media suggest that U.S. authorities recently orchestrated the secret, cross-border move of at least 17 relatives of Mexico's most notorious drug kingpin — Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán — to ...Read more

Boston City Hall $147K attorney placed on paid leave after announcing bid to challenge Mayor Wu

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The Wu administration has placed a $147,668-a-year city attorney on paid administrative leave days after he announced he was challenging Michelle Wu for Boston mayor.

John Houton, who has worked in the city’s law department for the past 18 years and is listed on the city payroll as assistant corporation counsel, said he sees the Wu ...Read more

Cellule Communication/Haiti National Police/TNS

Haiti gang leader back on trial in U.S., this time for missionaries' 2021 kidnapping

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The one-time ‘king’ of one of Haiti’s most violent criminal gang, already looking at spending 35 years in a U.S. prison for his role in a gunrunning conspiracy that funneled high-powered weapons to gang members using kidnapping proceeds, will soon learn if he will face more prison time in the United States for his alleged role in the ...Read more

Residents of California town baffled by mysterious exploding birds

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The residents of a California town are raising the alarm after dozens of birds appear to have exploded without explanation.

The phenomena appears to be limited to a single neighborhood in Richmond, about 10 miles north of Oakland.

Neighbors claim that more than 50 birds have suddenly fallen dead to the ground after sitting on a stretch of ...Read more

Renee C. Byer/The Sacramento Bee/TNS

Gov. Newsom claims Trump's tariffs will reduce California revenues by $16 billion

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Gov. Gavin Newsom's Office said Tuesday that President Trump's tariff policies will reduce state revenues in California by $16 billion through next year.

Despite personal income tax and corporate tax receipts in the state coming in $6.8 billion above projections through April, the Newsom administration is predicting that overall revenues will ...Read more

KENA BETANCUR/GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/TNS

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka returns to ICE detention center days after arrest

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Newark Mayor Ras Baraka returned to the gates of an ICE detention center days after he was arrested for allegedly trespassing at the same facility.

Baraka, a Democrat running for New Jersey governor, was turned away shortly after he arrived outside Delaney Hall on Tuesday. He was blocked from getting within 20 feet of the entrance by eight ...Read more

Jim LoScalzo/CNP/ZUMA Press/TNS

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took his family swimming in a toxic D.C. creek

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Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. celebrated Mother’s Day with his family by swimming in a contaminated Washington, D.C., creek used for sewer runoff.

“Mother’s Day hike in Dumbarton Oaks Park with Amaryllis, Bobby, Kick, and Jackson, and a swim with my grandchildren, Bobcat and Cassius in Rock Creek,” Kennedy ...Read more

Ed Reed/New York Mayoral Photography Office/TNS

New York City Mayor Adams announces new Office to Combat Antisemitism

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NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams Tuesday announced a new city Office to Combat Antisemitism amid a surge in anti-Jewish hate crimes and an increasing focus on the issue in this year’s mayoral race.

The mayor said NYPD stats show that more than half of hate crimes are antisemitic despite Jewish New Yorkers making up about 10% of the city’s ...Read more

Arvin Temkar/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution/TNS

Georgia high court weighs limits on tenant claims against housing authorities

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The Georgia Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday in a closely watched case to decide if housing authorities in the state are shielded from liability when tenants sue them over violent crime or other dangerous conditions.

Christina Guy, a former tenant at the Dogwood Terrace apartment complex in downtown Augusta, sued the city’s housing ...Read more

MIKE NELSON/AFP/Getty Images North America/TNS

LA judge resentences Menendez brothers, giving them chance at freedom

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LOS ANGELES — The resentencing hearing for Erik and Lyle Menendez Tuesday featured emotional testimony from family members, several of whom said in court that the brothers should be freed from prison for the shotgun killing of their parents more than 30 years ago.

The result, announced at the end of the day by Judge Michael Jesic, was a ...Read more

Burrito road rage incident ends in felony charge for grandfather, Texas cops say

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A Texas man’s retaliation over a thrown burrito put several people in danger and ended in his arrest on a felony charge, according to police.

The burrito road rage incident happened Friday, May 9, near a Dollar Tree in Spring, the Harris County Precinct 4 Constable’s Office said in a May 12 news release.

A man threw a burrito at the ...Read more

Roberto Schmidt/AFP/GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/TNS

Trump accepting luxury jetliner from Qatar raises alarm on both sides of political aisle

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President Donald Trump has spent the first major overseas trip of his second administration — next stop Wednesday in Qatar — beating back allegations that he was personally profiting from foreign leaders by accepting a $400-million luxury airliner from the Gulf state’s royal family.

Trump has bristled at the notion that he should turn ...Read more