USA

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Spacewalking astronauts completed their part of a three-year power upgrade to the International Space Station on Thursday, replacing six more outdated batteries with powerful new ones.

It was the third spacewalk in as many weeks involving battery work by NASA’s Bob Behnken and Chris Cassidy.

Running more than an hour ahead of schedule, they managed to complete the battery swaps in a single spacewalk rather than two. Their fourth spacewalk next week will now focus on other chores.

“Great job,” Mission Control radioed.

BALTIMORE (AP) — Rising coronavirus infections across dozens of states are threatening the U.S. economic recovery, forcing businesses and consumers to freeze spending and keeping the unemployment rate stubbornly high.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Critics of the Trump administration’s most sweeping set of rules to restrict asylum in the United States sent in a deluge of comments opposing the effort, hoping an old law that serves as a check on presidential power will weaken or even doom it.

Opponents submitted nearly 80,000 public comments before Wednesday’s deadline, with about 20,000 in the final hours. The Trump administration must address each concern in the final rules, setting itself up for legal challenges if it rushes or is careless.

CHICAGO (AP) — The baseless conspiracy theory took off after an anonymous user posted a bizarre question in an internet chatroom: What if retail giant Wayfair is using pricey storage cabinets to traffic children?

Self-proclaimed internet sleuths quickly responded by matching up the names of Wayfair products to those of missing children, producing social media posts that have since overrun Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is suing Atlanta’s mayor and city council to block the city from enforcing its mandate to wear a mask in public and other rules related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kemp and Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, in a suit filed in state court late Thursday in Atlanta, argue that Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has overstepped her authority and must obey Kemp’s executive orders under state law.

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) — A meth kingpin from Iowa who killed five people, including two young girls, is scheduled Friday to become the third federal inmate to be executed this week, following a 17-year pause in federal executions.

Dustin Honken, 52, was sentenced to death for killing government informants and children in his effort to thwart his drug trafficking prosecution in 1993.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Western governments on Thursday accused hackers believed to be part of Russian intelligence of trying to steal valuable private information about a coronavirus vaccine, calling out the Kremlin in an unusually detailed public warning to scientists and medical companies.

HOUSTON (AP) — The coronavirus kept surging in hot spots around the U.S. on Thursday, with one city in South Carolina urging people to pray it into submission, a hospital in Texas bringing in military medical personnel and morgues running out of space in Phoenix.

Record numbers of confirmed infections and deaths emerged again in states in the South and West, with hospitals stretched to the brink and fears worldwide that the pandemic’s resurgence is only getting started.

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 16 (APP): The United Nations environment chief has warned that an aging oil tanker moored off Yemen’s Red Sea coast with 1.1 million barrels of crude on board risked the possibility of a rupture, causing an environmental “catastrophe” if its experts cannot immediately attend to the decaying vessel.

WASHINGTON, July 16 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The United States accused a Russian mercenary group of laying landmines in and around Tripoli and imposed sanctions over its alleged cooperation with Sudan’s ousted dictator.

The Pentagon’s Africa Command said it had “verified photographic evidence” that the Wagner Group, a private security operation allegedly sponsored by the Russian government, planted mines “indiscriminately” around Tripoli and toward Sirte east of the capital since mid-June.