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Deaths are down in NC jails. But in the latest toll, records show a pattern

Current News / News & Features /

Editor’s note: This story contains reporting about suicides, a topic that will be disturbing to some readers.

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When detention officers at the Wilson County jail found Reggie Monroe, he was already cold to the touch.

He had gone unchecked for at least two hours and died from a fentanyl overdose, according to a state investigative report...Read more

NASA/JPL-Caltech/TNS

NASA's attempt to bring home part of Mars is unprecedented. The mission's problems are not

Current News / News & Features /

Massive cost overruns. Key deadlines slipping out of reach. Problems of unprecedented complexity, and a generation's worth of scientific progress contingent upon solving them.

That's the current state of Mars Sample Return, the ambitious yet imperiled NASA mission whose rapidly ballooning budget has cost jobs at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory...Read more

Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images North America/TNS

School voucher proponents spend big to overcome rural resistance

Current News / News & Features /

AUSTIN, Texas — In rural Texas, public schools are the cultural heart of small towns. People pack the high school stadium for Friday night football games, and FFA classes prepare the next generation for the agricultural life. In many places, more people work for the school district than for any other employer.

For years, many rural Texas ...Read more

Phil Galewitz/KFF Health News/TNS

COVID and Medicare payments spark remote patient monitoring boom

Current News / News & Features /

Billy Abbott, a retired Army medic, wakes at 6 every morning, steps on the bathroom scale, and uses a cuff to take his blood pressure.

The devices send those measurements electronically to his doctor in Gulf Shores, Alabama, and a health technology company based in New York, to help him control his high blood pressure.

Nurses with the company,...Read more

Dreamstime/Dreamstime/TNS

Telehealth sites promise cure for 'male menopause' despite FDA ban on off-label ads

Current News / News & Features /

Online stores sprang up during the COVID-19 pandemic’s telehealth boom touting testosterone as a cure-all for men’s age-related illnesses — despite FDA rules issued years ago restricting such “low testosterone” advertising.

In ads on Google, Facebook, and elsewhere, testosterone telemedicine websites may promise a quick fix for ...Read more

Dania Maxwell/Los Angeles Times/TNS

Why was 2023 such a deadly year in Los Angeles County jails? It depends on whom you ask

Current News / News & Features /

LOS ANGELES -- It was well after dark, but Tawana Hunter lingered in the hospital parking lot, watching the minutes tick by on her phone. As midnight drew closer, she ran through all the things she wished had been different.

She wished her father had been in better health. She wished he hadn't gotten arrested. She wished he hadn't spent the ...Read more

National Marine Fisheries Service/TNS/TNS

These Puget Sound orcas could be designated as distinct species

Current News / News & Features /

SEATTLE —For more than a century, killer whales have been understood to be just one worldwide species, Orcinus orca, with many types.

But now, after decades of work, scientists have determined the differences between the two types of killer whales that frequent the Salish Sea are so large, they ought to be designated separate species ...Read more

Ivan Couronne/AFP/GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/TNS

Few states cover fertility treatment for same-sex couples, but that could be changing

Health / Women /

Elizabeth Bauer was working out at the gym one morning last August when she got a phone call from her fertility nurse. It was a call that Bauer and her wife, Rebecca, had long been waiting for.

Elizabeth dialed in Rebecca so they could listen together: They were pregnant.

The Washington, D.C., couple decided before they got married three years...Read more

Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times/TNS

Starvation has decimated gray whales off the Pacific Coast. Can the giants ever recover?

Current News / News & Features /

LOS ANGELES — When large numbers of gray whales began washing up along North America’s Pacific Coast nearly six years ago, marine scientists could only speculate at the reason: Was it disease? Ocean pollution? Increasing ship collisions?

Many of the doomed cetaceans looked skinny or emaciated, while others looked torn up by orcas. Some had ...Read more

Ludovic Marin/AFP/Getty Images North America/TNS

Dubai's glitz dims for Russians on costs, US sanction pressures

Current News / News & Features /

Two years ago, Dubai became a hot favorite with Russians looking to park money or build new lives after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. That allure is now dimming as the cost of living in the glitzy emirate surges and its banks get stricter in enforcing U.S. sanctions.

Russian money flows into the United Arab Emirates...Read more

Jeff Swensen/Getty Images North America/TNS

Punxsutawney Phil and his wife had BABY GROUNDHOGS!

Current News / News & Features /

PHILADELPHIA — We're pleased to bring you very serious and important breaking news regarding cute, furry, baby animals and Pennsylvania lore: Punxsutawney Phil and his wife, Phyllis, have babies.

As first reported by ABC27 News, the iconic groundhog couple has welcomed two baby groundhogs into their family. Although we don't know their names,...Read more

Arvin Temkar/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution/TNS

Judge recommends disbarring attorney who aided Trump

Current News / News & Features /

Another defendant in the Georgia election interference case may lose his license to practice law for aiding Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

John Eastman devised questionable legal theories that Trump used to try to persuade state legislators and Vice President Mike Pence to reject Democrat Joe Biden’s ...Read more

Jerry Jackson/The Baltimore Sun/TNS

Yellen: Bridge collapse impact on economy being 'tracked very closely'

Current News / News & Features /

ATLANTA — U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Wednesday during an event in metro Atlanta the federal government is watching closely the economic impact of the Baltimore port closure in the wake of Tuesday’s collapse of Maryland’s Francis Scott Key Bridge.

Yellen, who visited the Suniva solar panel plant in Norcross, was asked about ...Read more

Will doughnut-eating DEA agent's sweet tooth disprove Aryan Brotherhood prosecution? One lawyer thinks it could

Current News / News & Features /

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Within some seedy enclaves of Northern California, Brian Nehring is known as a master of disguise for the Drug Enforcement Administration with the uncanny ability to convince seasoned and suspicious drug dealers that he’s not a cop.

But this sly government chameleon may now be trapped by his own apparent sweet tooth. ...Read more

Andre Ribeiro/TheNEWS2/Zuma Press/TNS

Bolsonaro tells Brazil's top court he didn't seek asylum with Hungary

Current News / News & Features /

Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s defense told the Supreme Court that is “illogical” to suspect him of having sought political asylum with Hungary when there is no adequate reason for him to be arrested in his home country.

His lawyers told the court on Wednesday that Bolsonaro has been “highly collaborative” with the ...Read more

Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images North America/TNS

Baltimore bridge collapse reverberates from cars to coal

Current News / News & Features /

The 1.6-mile-long bridge collapsed in a matter of seconds. The catastrophic consequences are set to stretch out for weeks.

As much as 2.5 million tons of coal, hundreds of cars made by Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co., and lumber and gypsum are threatened with disruption after the container ship Dali slammed into and brought down ...Read more

Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images North America/TNS

US and Israel are working to reschedule canceled meeting on Gaza

Current News / News & Features /

WASHINGTON — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has agreed to reschedule his delegation’s visit to Washington to discuss possible military operations in Rafah after canceling a planned meeting earlier this week, the White House said.

Netanyahu scrapped plans to send high-ranking advisers to meet with President Joe Biden�...Read more

Andrew Burton/Getty Images North America/TNS

Alaska lawmaker proposes constitutional amendment to unify management of subsistence hunting and fishing under the state

Current News / News & Features /

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — An Alaska lawmaker is pursuing a state constitutional amendment in hopes of resolving a decades-old conflict between state and federal management over subsistence hunting and fishing.

The measure from state Rep. Thomas Baker of Kotzebue, a Republican appointed to his seat by Gov. Mike Dunleavy in November, could revive an ...Read more

Kent Nishimura/Getty Images North America/TNS

Judge skeptical of Hunter Biden's effort to dismiss tax case as politically motivated

Current News / News & Features /

LOS ANGELES — Lawyers for Hunter Biden asked a federal judge in Los Angeles to throw out nine tax-related charges, arguing that the president’s son is being vindictively prosecuted by the Justice Department and had his rights trampled by two IRS agents who publicly revealed his confidential tax records.

At a hearing Wednesday, U.S. District...Read more

Kenneth K. Lam/Baltimore Sun/TNS

What we know about the 6 workers killed in Baltimore bridge collapse

Current News / News & Features /

BALTIMORE — Seven men left home Monday evening for a night shift on the Francis Scott Key Bridge repairing the Interstate 695 roadway.

Six members of the crew — fathers, husbands and at least one grandfather — did not return to their families in Baltimore, Dundalk, Owings Mills and Glen Burnie when the sun rose Tuesday over the wreckage ...Read more