It’s recited in schools across the US every day by students standing stiffly with their hands over their hearts. “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” The Pledge of Allegiance has…… MORE
Anthony “T.J.” Cunningham, a former Seattle Seahawks player and assistant principal at a Colorado high school, has died after being shot during a parking dispute, the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office said. Cunningham, 46, an NFL safety during the 1996 season, was shot by a neighbor early Sunday and taken to a hospital, where he died…… MORE
Houston police will do away with no-knock warrants, Chief Art Acevedo told residents at a testy town hall dealing with a drug raid that left two people dead and five officers hurt. He did not provide the specific timing for implementing the policy. “The no-knock warrants are going to be going away … and so…… MORE
A potent winter storm is poised to deliver a mixture of snow, sleet, freezing rain and possible flooding across much of the Eastern US through Thursday. More than 90 million people from the Plains and Midwest to the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast are under some sort of winter weather watch, warning or advisory. Nearly 20 million…… MORE
Wallace Broecker, the renowned geophysicist who popularized the term “global warming,” has died. He was 87. Broecker died Monday in New York, said Kevin Krajick, a senior science writer at Columbia University’s Earth Institute. Broecker spent many years as a professor at Columbia, and his vast body of work focused on the relationship between oceans,…… MORE
Less than a year after launching teachers’ walkouts across the country, West Virginia teachers are back on strike, but it’s not clear for how long. On Tuesday, the state House of Delegates decided to “postpone indefinitely” any decision on Senate Bill 451, the proposed legislation that spurred the teachers to strike. The American Federation of…… MORE
Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds says the state will not appeal a ruling striking down the so-called “fetal heartbeat” law, which would have been one of the nation’s most restrictive abortion bans. The law, signed by Reynolds in May 2018, would have prohibited Iowa doctors from performing most abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected. An…… MORE
The gunman who killed five people in an Illinois manufacturing plant pleaded guilty in 1995 to aggravated assault in Mississippi, a felony that should have prevented him from getting a gun. But when Gary M. Martin applied for a gun owner’s identification card in Illinois in 2014, he answered “no” to the question, “Have you…… MORE
The fiancé of missing Colorado mother Kelsey Berreth killed her by wrapping a sweater around her head and bashing her with a baseball bat, according to testimony at a preliminary hearing in Cripple Creek, west of Colorado Springs. On Tuesday, nearly three months after Berreth went missing, prosecutors filed new charges against Patrick Frazee, including…… MORE
About 4.8 million people worldwide — roughly the population of Ireland — became victims of sex trafficking in 2016, according to the International Labour Organization. Sex trafficking is commercial sex induced by force, fraud or coercion or performed by a minor. Though US figures can be hard to pin down, 7,255 sex trafficking victims were…… MORE
