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Looking beyond Election Day, Capitol Hill is on edge

Current News / News & Features /

WASHINGTON — Blanca de Leon won’t be closing up shop or boarding up the windows of her beauty parlor on Pennsylvania Avenue Southeast because of fears about the election, even as other businesses around the city brace for the worst.

That doesn’t mean de Leon, who owns Capitol Hair Salon a block away from the Capitol, isn’t nervous.

“...Read more

HYOSUB SHIN / AJC/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution/TNS

6 charged in alleged plot to kill Georgia jail officers to protect drug ring

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ATLANTA — Six people, including a Fulton County Jail officer and several members of the Goodfellas gang, have been indicted on charges of conspiring to kill two detention officers, the U.S. Department of Justice said Tuesday.

The alleged plot was attempted in exchange for money and to protect a drug ring inside the jail, officials said, and ...Read more

David Dee Delgado/AFP/Getty Images North America/TNS

NYC Election Day glitches hit Queens voting machines

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NEW YORK — The NYC Board of Elections is sending out technicians to polling sites across Queens Tuesday after reports that machines at several locations have been rejecting ballots.

Vinnie Ignizio, BOE’s deputy executive director, confirmed to the Daily News that some scanners in the borough have been “kicking ballots out,” requiring ...Read more

Alex Wroblewski/AFP/Getty Images North America/TNS

Officials ask for patience in waiting on election results

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It’s Election Day in America.

Voters are heading to the polls in one of the most consequential elections in American history. In a politically polarized country, potential delays in reporting results might further fuel conspiracy theories that have spread widely.

Across the country, more than 77 million voters already cast their ballots ...Read more

Girl hospitalized after shooting self on school bus in St. Petersburg

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A 13-year-old girl was hospitalized Tuesday after she shot herself on a school bus in St. Petersburg, police said.

The shooting happened when the bus was near the intersection of 49th Street North and 18th Avenue North, according to the St. Petersburg Police Department.

Pinellas County’s 911 call site shows the call came in at 9:22 a.m.

The...Read more

Brian Krista/Baltimore Sun/TNS

Republicans vow to bar federal election monitoring in key states. What do monitors do?

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Republican leaders in several key states are vowing to keep federal election monitors away from voting sites in the name of election integrity, spurring anger from many who say the party is doing the opposite of protecting voters’ rights.

In Texas, Democrats are calling for the involvement of federal election monitors as an added layer of ...Read more

AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post/TNS

Denver City Council rejects eight amendments to city's tight 2025 budget

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DENVER — The Denver City Council voted down eight proposed amendments to the city’s 2025 budget on Monday night, including rejecting a request to give another $2.5 million to the Denver Basic Income Project, a program that is gauging the impact of providing direct cash assistance to homeless or formerly homeless Denverites.

The final vote ...Read more

How you can help veterans every day

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As the nation celebrates our 16 million living veterans, it is also important to know that the chance these heroes will end their own lives prematurely is still higher than among civilians.

Among veterans with PTSD, suicide is the fourth most common cause of death. Among veterans younger than 35, it’s second.

Over the past ...Read more

Battlefields around the world are finding new purpose as parks and refuges

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The horrors of war are all too familiar: lives lost, homes destroyed, entire communities forced to flee. Yet as time passes, places that once were sites of death and destruction can become peaceful natural refuges.

One of the deadliest battles fought on U.S. soil, for example, was the Battle of Gettysburg. Tens of thousands of men ...Read more

Is Miami-Dade's corruption watchdog getting quietly pushed out by county commissioners?

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MIAMI — The top investigator in Miami-Dade County government, Inspector General Felix Jimenez, wants another four years on the job but says he can’t get a response from the County Commission.

In a memo last week, Jimenez said the commission’s chair, Oliver Gilbert, for months has not responded to Jimenez’s request for a vote on a four-...Read more

Orland Park Police Department/Orland Park Police Department/TNS

Illinois man arrested for punching 74-year-old election judge at polling station

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A man was arrested at a polling station in Illinois after he tried to cut the line to cast his vote, then punched an election judge who ordered him to wait his turn, police said.

Approximately 100 people were waiting to cast an early ballot at the Orland Park Township Office when the chaos erupted Sunday morning, CBS Chicago reported. Officers ...Read more

Carline Jean/South Florida Sun-Sentinel/TNS

Election Day 2024 has arrived. Here's what you need to know

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FORT LAUDERDALES, Fla. — We’ve reached Election Day, the final day of voting in the 2024 presidential election after millions of Floridians already have cast their votes.

Neighborhood polling places will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday.

Those heading to the polls are less likely to face rain earlier in the day: The rain chances are ...Read more

Are famous people more likely to die at 27, or does dying at 27 make them more famous?

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LOS ANGELES — Their deaths have fueled the notion that 27 is a lethal age for musicians and other notable artists.

Amy Winehouse, the iconoclastic singer-songwriter, was that age when she died of alcohol poisoning in 2011. So was grunge rocker Kurt Cobain when he died of suicide in 1994 and rock 'n' roll queen Janis Joplin when she succumbed ...Read more

How Native Americans guarded their societies against tyranny

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When the founders of the United States designed the Constitution, they were learning from history that democracy was likely to fail – to find someone who would fool the people into giving him complete power and then end the democracy.

They designed checks and balances to guard against the accumulation of power they had found when ...Read more

Beefing up Border Patrol is a bipartisan goal, but the agency has a troubled history of violence and impunity

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With U.S. voters across the political spectrum strongly concerned about border security, presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have been trying to one-up each other on who can reduce migration at the nation’s southern border fastest and most effectively.

Trump’s rhetoric is more extreme: He’s called the U.S. a �...Read more

Is the election making you feel adrift and wobbly? That’s ‘zozobra’ – and Mexican philosophers have some advice

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Ever had the feeling that you can’t make sense of what’s happening? One moment everything seems normal, then suddenly the frame shifts to reveal a world on fire, struggling with war, climate change and political violence and upheaval.

That’s “zozobra,” the peculiar form of anxiety that comes from being unable to settle into ...Read more

Kristallnacht’s legacy still haunts Hamburg − even as the city rebuilds a former synagogue burned in the Nazi pogrom

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Johanna Neumann was 8 when she witnessed a mob of local citizens and Nazis vandalizing the Bornplatz Synagogue in Hamburg. They were “shouting and throwing stones at the marvelous glass windows,” as she later said in an oral history interview. Other students at the Jewish school nearby described a mountain of prayer books and Torah ...Read more

Voting while God is watching – does having churches as polling stations sway the ballot?

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Houses of worship may be busier than usual come Election Day as Americans head to the polls rather than the pews.

A 2010 census of religious congregations identified nearly 350,000 churches, mosques, temples and other religious establishments attended by more than 150 million Americans, primarily for spiritual needs and social ...Read more

Lawyer seeks release of Haiti cop accused of police killing while protecting Blinken

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The lawyer for a jailed senior Haiti policeman accused of planning the assassination of a motorcycle driver with alleged gang ties is demanding his release from jail.

Mario Delcy filed the request to Investigative Judge Brunet Salomon on Monday on behalf of Haiti National Police officer Livenston Gauthier, the former head of the police ...Read more

Tropical Storm Rafael forecast to become hurricane on path to Gulf of Mexico

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ORLANDO, Fla. — The National Hurricane Center forecasts Tropical Storm Rafael to grow into the season’s 11th hurricane on Tuesday as it moves toward Cuba with winds and storm surge expected to only sideswipe Florida as it moves into the Gulf of Mexico.

As of the NHC’s 7 a.m. advisory, Rafael was located about 80 miles south-southwest of ...Read more