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Iran fires on Gulf nations

Iran fired on U.S. allies in the Gulf early Wednesday following a night of American bombardment that Iranian state media says included a deadly strike on a wedding party. The latest violence came after a monthlong lull in fighting. The six-month war has led to a spike in oil prices, roiled the global economy and posed increasing political problems for U.S. President Donald Trump’s Republican Party ahead of November midterm elections. Fighting has escalated since the American military hit Iranian rocket launchers on an island in the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend, saying Iran was ...

2 killed in Minneapolis shooting

MINNEAPOLIS — Two people were killed and the suspect is dead after a shooting in a downtown Minneapolis apartment building Wednesday afternoon, according to police. Three Minneapolis police officers were also injured, including two of them from gunshot wounds, police Sgt. Garrett Parten said at a press conference on Wednesday evening. All three officers are in stable condition, according to Hennepin County Medical Center. A 911 call about shots fired at the building came in just after 4:30 p.m. and within three minutes officers entered the high-rise and found victims, Parten ...

UN: Global warming will exceed safe threshold

In a strategic retreat in the fight against climate change, the United Nations has acknowledged that Earth has lost its chance to prevent some of the worst of global warming’s harms. So now the world must figure out how to get temperatures below the danger zone and back to safety, officials ...

Who are these people?

It was a day of deep thinking and heroic typing, my brain so fried I could hardly call out for pizza. Then the news and social media feeds exploded with reports that Harry and Meghan plan to leave California and move back to England. What was that to me? I don’t care that the royals moved away or believe in royal anything except perhaps Royal Crown Cola. Most media, not me, insist on referring to Harry and his sitcom actress wife, Meghan Markle, as “Duke and Duchess of Sussex.” Their two children carry the official royal titles of prince and princess. And to think their parents ...

The rarity of freedom is sobering

This well-known rhetorical flourish at the beginning of the Declaration of Independence needs closer consideration. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” it states. Look through history and you’ll find little evidence that most people experienced these self-evident truths. Until the West led the way in abolishing it, slavery was an accepted historical institution. Notre Dame Professor Keith Bradley once ...

The cost and value of comfort

According to a recent breakdown from financial tech company SmartAsset, people need a lot more money than they are making to be comfortable. A single Pennsylvanian, for instance, needs about $97,011 to hit that threshold. For a family of four, it’s $247,936. The numbers can be a little startling. The U.S. Census Bureau puts the per capita income in the Keystone State at $44,355. For that four-person household, the median is $100,262. Compare those sets of figures, and it points to an idea. A lot of Pennsylvanians are economically uncomfortable. So what does it mean to be ...