Author: Reporter

Desperation grew on December 7 among Palestinians largely cut off from supplies of food and water as Israeli forces engaged in fierce urban battles with Hamas militants. Strikes in the southern Gaza town of Rafah sowed fear in one of the last places where civilians could seek refuge. United Nations officials say there are no safe places in Gaza nearly a week after Israel widened its offensive into the southern half of the territory. Heavy fighting in and around the city of Khan Younis has displaced tens of thousands of people and cut most of Gaza off from aid...

Sophee Langerman was on her way to a bicycle safety rally in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood in June when a car turning right rolled through a red light and slammed into her bike, which she was walking off the curb and into the crosswalk. The car was moving slowly enough that Langerman escaped serious injury, but the bicycle required extensive repairs. To Langerman, it’s another argument for ending a practice that almost all U.S. cities have embraced for decades: the legal prerogative for a driver to turn right after stopping at a red light. A dramatic rise in accidents killing...

Ira “Ike” Schab had just showered, put on a clean sailor’s uniform and closed his locker aboard the USS Dobbin when he heard a call for a fire rescue party. He went topside to see the USS Utah capsizing and Japanese planes in the air. He scurried back below deck to grab boxes of ammunition and joined a daisy chain of sailors feeding shells to an anti-aircraft gun up above. He remembers being only 140 pounds (63.50 kilograms) as a 21-year-old, but somehow finding the strength to lift boxes weighing almost twice that. “We were pretty startled. Startled and...

Disgraced ex-president Donald Trump declined to rule out abusing power if he returns to the White House after Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity asked him on December 5 to respond to growing Democratic criticism of his rhetoric. The GOP presidential front-runner has talked about targeting his rivals — referring to them as “vermin” — and vowed to seek retribution if he wins a second term for what he argues are politically motivated prosecutions against him. As Trump has dominated the Republican presidential primary, President Joe Biden has stepped up his own warnings, contending Trump is ” determined to...

It is a Monday in September, but with schools closed, the three children in the Pruente household have nowhere to be. Callahan, 13, contorts herself into a backbend as 7-year-old Hudson fiddles with a balloon and 10-year-old Keegan plays the piano. Like a growing number of students around the U.S., the Pruente children are on a four-day school schedule, a change instituted this fall by their district in Independence, Missouri. To the kids, it’s terrific. “I have a three-day break of school!” exclaimed Hudson. But their mom, Brandi Pruente, who teaches French in a neighboring district in suburban Kansas...

On a breezy July morning in South Seattle, a dozen elementary-aged students ran math relays behind an elementary school. One by one, they raced to a table, where they scribbled answers to multiplication questions before sprinting back to high-five their teammate. These students are part of a summer program run by the nonprofit School Connect WA, designed to help them catch up on math and literacy skills lost during the pandemic. There are 25 students in the program, and all of them are one to three grades behind. One 11-year-old boy could not do two-digit subtraction. Thanks to the...