Police departments across the country are reviewing the behavior of dozens of officers who were in Washington on the day of the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol. An Associated Press review finds at least 31 officers are being scrutinized or face criminal charges tied to the Jan. 6 events in the nation's capital. Most haven't been publicly identified and only a few have been charged. Experts say it's up to police chiefs to strike a balance between maintaining their officers’ First Amendment rights and dealing with community mistrust of those officers who were on the scene in Washington. Read more

A growing number of Republican senators say they oppose holding an impeachment trial. That's a sign of the dimming chances that former President Donald Trump will be convicted on the charge that he incited a siege of the U.S. Capitol. House Democrats, who will walk the impeachment charge of “incitement of insurrection” to the Senate on Monday evening, are hoping that strong Republican denunciations of Trump after the Jan. 6 riot will translate into a conviction and a separate vote to bar Trump from holding office again. But GOP passions appear to have cooled since the insurrection. And Republican senators who will serve as jurors in the trial are rallying to his legal defense.  Read more

Chicago teachers have voted to defy the school district’s order to return to their classrooms for the resumption of in-person instruction despite not being vaccinated against the coronavirus. The Chicago Teachers Union vote was announced Sunday. The nation’s third-largest district wants roughly 10,000 K-8 teachers and other staffers to return to school Monday for the resumption of in-person instruction on Feb. 1. The union opposes the district’s plan out of concern for its members’ health and called on members to continue teaching from home on Monday, as they have since last March. District officials have said a refusal to return to the classroom when ordered would amount to an illegal strike. The sides continued negotiating Sunday. Read more

At least two people were injured when a police officer responding to a report of a street race plowed his car through a crowd of pedestrians that had gathered around him and were pounding on the car’s windows in downtown Tacoma on Saturday night. Police say a crowd of about 100 was gathered. A witness says the police car was driven through the crowd after people tried to block the vehicle. A video shows the patrol car surrounded by groups of shouting people before it revs its engine and surges forward, running over at least one person. A police spokesperson tells the The News Tribune of Tacoma the officer was afraid the crowd would break the car's windows.  Read more

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel will be closing its international airport to nearly all flights as the government races to bring a raging coronavirus outbreak under control. The entry of highly contagious variants of the coronavirus, coupled with poor enforcement of safety rules in ultra-Orthodox communities, has contributed to one of the world’s highest rates of infections. It also has threatened to undercut Israel’s highly successful campaign to vaccinate its population against the virus. On Sunday, police clashed with ultra-Orthodox protesters in several cities where residents have resisted lockdown orders. Read more

Wildlife biologists say a 34-year-old grizzly bear captured in southwestern Wyoming has been confirmed as the oldest on record in the Yellowstone region. Grizzly bear 168 was captured last summer after it preyed on cattle. The Jackson Hole Hole News & Guide reports the male had just a few teeth left and weighed 170 pounds. When he was 5 years old, he weighed 450 pounds. Wildlife officials euthanized the old bear in July 2020 because of his poor health and because he would likely continue to prey on calves. Read more

President Joe Biden attended Mass for the first time since taking office, worshipping Sunday at the church he frequented when he was vice president. Biden is the nation’s second Catholic president, and he picked Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Washington’s Georgetown neighborhood, a few miles from the White House. It’s where the nation’s only other Catholic president, John F. Kennedy, often went to Mass. White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Friday that Biden hadn't yet settled on a home church in the nation’s capital. She said she expected Biden will continue to regularly attend services during his presidency.  Read more

Three days after choosing Nick Sirianni to be their new coach, the Philadelphia Eagles made it official. The team announced Sirianni’s hiring Sunday morning on Twitter with a photo of Sirianni wearing an Eagles visor and the caption: “Copped ourselves a head coach.” Sirianni was the offensive coordinator for the Indianapolis Colts the past three seasons. He worked under coach Frank Reich, who was offensive coordinator in Philadelphia when the Eagles won the Super Bowl three years ago. The 39-year-old Sirianni previously served as an assistant coach with the Chiefs and Chargers.   Read more

Argentina’s groundbreaking abortion law has gone into force under the watchful eyes of women’s groups and government officials, who hope to ensure its full implementation despite opposition from conservative and church groups. Argentina became the largest nation in Latin America to legalize elective abortion after its Senate on Dec. 30 passed a law guaranteeing the procedure up to the 14th week of pregnancy. The vote was hailed as a triumph for the country’s feminist movement, but church leaders criticized the decision and its supporters say they expect lawsuits from anti-abortion groups in conservative provinces and some private health clinics might refuse to carry out the procedure. Read more

The Miami Heat are bringing back some fans, with help from some dogs. The Heat will use coronavirus-sniffing dogs at AmericanAirlines Arena to screen fans who are coming to their home games. They’ve been working on the plan for months, and the highly trained dogs have been in place for some games where the team has allowed a handful of guests, mostly friends and family of players and staff. Starting this week, a limited number of ticket holders will be in the seats as well. And they’ll have to get past the dogs before gaining admittance. If the dog sits while a fan is walking by, that’s a sign the dog detects the virus and the fan will be denied entry. The idea already has been put into place at airports in the United Arab Emirates and Finland in recent months. Read more

The Turkish health ministry says the country has seen more than 25,000 COVID-19-related deaths since the start of the outbreak in March. A toll of 140 fatalities reported Sunday saw the total figure rise to 25,073. Turkey has recorded more than 2.4 million infections since the first case was recorded on March 11. The government reintroduced restrictions at the start of December, including weekday evening curfews and weekend lockdowns, to stem another surge of infections. The number of daily cases has fallen to around 6,000 in recent days from a high of more than 33,000 in December. Read more

A new 5,000-lira bank note is going into circulation in Syria as the country reels from 10 years of conflict and a crippling economic crisis. The new bank note floated Sunday would be the largest on the market. Syria’s currency has been on a downward spiral since the conflict began in 2011. Then the lira went for 47 liras to the dollar. Now, it's up to trading 1,250 liras to the dollar. On the black market, the dollar is trading at nearly double the official value.  The currency crash has sent prices of food and basic goods soaring.   Read more

NORTHAMPTON COUNTY, Pa. -- A man has died after being involved in a vehicle accident Saturday evening.  Read more

Estonia’s two biggest political parties say they have clinched a deal to form a new government to be led by a female prime minister for the first time in the Baltic country’s history, replacing the previous Cabinet that collapsed into a corruption scandal earlier this month.  The party councils of the the opposition, center-right Reform Party and the ruling. left-leaning Center Party were expected on Sunday to vote in favor of joining a Cabinet headed by Reform’s prime minister-designate and chairwoman Kaja Kallas. Both parties are set to have seven ministerial portfolios in the 14-member government which would muster a majority at the 101-seat parliament. Read more

As one of his first acts, President Joe Biden offered a sweeping immigration overhaul that would provide a pathway to U.S. citizenship for the estimated 11 million people who are in the country illegally. It’s the type of proposal that many Latino activists have longed for. But it must compete with Biden’s other marquee legislative goals, from dealing with the coronavirus pandemic to aiding the struggling economy. In the best of circumstances, enacting an immigration overhaul would be difficult. But in a narrowly divided Congress, it could be impossible. And that has some Latinos worried Biden could cut deals that weaken the finished product too much — or fail to pass anything at all. Read more

An 85-year-old Green Bay Packers fan who has never missed a playoff game at Lambeau Field thought her streak was coming to an end this week until two charitable brothers heard her story. Fritzie Neitzel went to her first Packers game with her father in October 1945, when she was 10. As longtime season ticket holders, her family unsuccessfully tried buying seats for the NFC championship game once they went on sale. That's when the Spirit of Wisconsin Booster Club, a charity led by Steve and Neal Ewing, heard Neitzel's story and gifted her tickets to the game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Because of COVID-19 restrictions, the Packers said all tickets on cellphones are nontransferable. So Steve Ewing drove from Milwaukee to Green Bay to hand off the phone with the tickets. Read more

U.S. hospital intensive care units in many parts of the country are straining to handle record numbers of COVID-19 patients. These hospital units take care of the sickest of the sick. Some are running out of space and supplies, while scrambling to pay the soaring rates of temporary traveling nurses. Hundreds of ICUs are struggling at the same time, with many clustered in the South and West. An Associated Press analysis shows that since November, the share of U.S. hospitals nearing the breaking point has doubled. More than 40% of Americans live in areas running out of ICU beds. Experts say sustained surges can jeopardize the quality of care in ICUs. Read more

Britain is expanding a coronavirus vaccination program that has seen more than 6 million people get the first of two doses — even as the country’s death toll in the pandemic approaches 100,000. Health Secretary Matt Hancock said Sunday that three-quarters of the U.K.’s over-80s have received a vaccine shot. He said three-quarters of nursing home residents have also had their first jab. More than 6.3 million doses of vaccine had been administered by Sunday. Health officials aim to give first shots to 15 million people, including everyone over 70, by Feb. 15. Britain’s vaccination campaign is a rare success in a country with Europe’s worst confirmed coronavirus outbreak. The U.K. has recorded 97,939 virus deaths, the fifth highest in the world. Read more

Republican lawmakers in several more states want to loosen gun restrictions by allowing people to carry concealed firearms without having to get a permit, continuing a trend that gun control advocates call dangerous. Fifteen states already allow concealed carry without a permit, and lawmakers in nine others have proposed allowing or expanding the practice. Most states require people to do things like get weapons training and undergo a background check to get a permit to carry a gun hidden by a jacket or inside a purse. Groups like the National Rifle Association and state lawmakers who support gun rights argue those requirements are ineffective and undermine Second Amendment protections. Read more

A former CIA software engineer charged with leaking government secrets to WikiLeaks says he's held in solitary confinement in an area of a jail where inmates are treated like “caged animals.” Joshua Schulte asked a Manhattan federal judge Tuesday to find that the conditions imposed on him for the last two years at the Metropolitan Correctional Center are unconstitutional. Schulte is held under rules often used against terrorism defendants to prevent them from communicating with others. He says he's confined to a freezing cell where bright lights are on 24 hours a day. A message seeking comment was sent to the federal Bureau of Prisons and the Department of Justice. Read more

As a student in college and seminary, then as a pastor in Texas, Dwight McKissic has been affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention for more than 45 years. Now he’s pondering whether he and his congregation should break away — following in the footsteps of several other Black pastors who exited in dismay over race-related actions of some white SBC leaders. A crucial moment could come in June at the SBC’s national meeting in Nashville, Tennessee. McKissic says he’s ready to leave the white-dominated denomination if delegates rebuff views shared by many Black SBC pastors related to systemic racism in the U.S.  Read more

The fire in currently under investigation by the Lehigh Township Fire Marshal.   Read more