Pennsylvania

SHANKSVILLE, Pa. (AP) — Warning that the nation was falling into division and extremism, former President George W. Bush appealed Saturday for a return to the spirit of cooperation that emerged — almost instantaneously — after the 9/11 attacks 20 years ago.

Delivering the keynote address at the national memorial to the victims of Flight 93, who forced down their airplane hijacked by al-Qaida terrorists before it could be used as a weapon against the nation’s capital, Bush warned of “violence that gathers within.”

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — President Joe Biden declared preserving voting rights an urgent national “test of our time” on Tuesday but offered few concrete proposals to meet it. Texas Democrats took their own dramatic action to stymie Republican efforts to tighten ballot restrictions in their state.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — As Brett Roman Williams stood at the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s office staring at a photo of his older brother’s face, a familiar feeling welled in his chest.

Williams’ father was shot and killed in 1996, when Williams was 11, and the ebb and flow of grief had washed over him for 20 years. But in 2016, when his brother was killed by gunfire, Williams reached out to a grief counselor for help coping.

July 9 (Reuters) - The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday updated its guidance to help reopen schools in the fall, including recommending masking indoors for everyone who is not fully vaccinated and three feet of distance within classrooms.

The CDC in its latest guidance said all kindergarten through grade 12 schools in the United States should continue to mandate wearing masks indoors by all individuals who are not fully vaccinated.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Moments after former officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murder in George Floyd’s death, copies of the original Minneapolis police statement began recirculating on social media. It attributed Floyd’s death to “medical distress” and made no mention that the Black man had been pinned to the ground at the neck by Chauvin, or that he’d cried out that he couldn’t breathe.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Vaccine passports being developed to verify COVID-19 immunization status and allow inoculated people to more freely travel, shop and dine have become the latest flash point in America’s perpetual political wars, with Republicans portraying them as a heavy-handed intrusion into personal freedom and private health choices.

CHESTER, Pa. (AP) — President Joe Biden turned up at a minority-owned flooring business in suburban Philadelphia to highlight how his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package can help small businesses and to put a face on those who have struggled throughout the pandemic.

The visit Tuesday to Smith Flooring Inc. was Biden’s first stop in a cross-country administration roadshow — also involving his vice president and his wife — designed to publicize, and take credit for, the virus relief package.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Bruce L. Castor Jr. answered his cellphone, but he had no time to talk.

“I’m 12 minutes from prime time,” he said, before heading to the well of the U.S. Senate to defend his client, Donald Trump, as one of the defense lawyers in the ex-president’s second impeachment trial.

It may have marked the high point for him.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris pitched in on Martin Luther King Jr. Day service projects as a militarized and jittery Washington prepared for a swearing-in that will play out under extraordinary security.

Biden and his wife, Jill, joined an assembly line in the parking lot of Philabundance, an organization that distributes food to people in need, and helped fill about 150 boxes with fresh fruit and nonperishables.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — President Donald Trump’s legal team suffered yet another defeat in court Friday as a federal appeals court in Philadelphia roundly rejected the campaign’s latest effort to challenge the state’s election results.

Trump’s lawyers vowed to appeal to the Supreme Court despite the judges’ assessment that the “campaign’s claims have no merit.”