Author: rpnadmin

CONCORD, N.H. — A Vermont man who was 17 when he and a friend killed a pair of married Dartmouth College professors 25 years ago will have a chance at parole in about 20 years, when he reaches the age of one of his victims, a judge ruled Monday. Lawyers for Robert Tulloch, 43, and the prosecution reached an agreement on the terms, avoiding a three-day planned re-sentencing hearing. Tulloch was automatically sentenced to life without parole after pleading guilty to first-degree murder in the 2001 stabbing deaths of Half and Susanne Zantop. But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in…

Yet another attempt to make daylight saving time the year-round standard in the U.S. is heading to the House floor. The bill headed to a vote, Rep. Vern Buchanan’s Sunshine Protection Act, is one of six pieces of legislation currently in Congress that attempt to end the biannual clock-changing ritual. Some want to freeze on standard time and others on daylight saving time, a dispute that has helped dash every bid for a single, year-round time standard. All of the other time-change bills in the House are stuck in the Energy and Commerce Committee. Not only did Mr. Buchanan’s bill…

American consumers — and the Federal Reserve — are being hit with another high-cost headache. The gusher of investment in data centers — likely topping $700 billion this year — to power artificial intelligence has made memory chips, computer processors, and other equipment, as well as electricity more expensive, and economists expect it will continue to push up inflation at least through the end of this year. While it won’t be as large a spike as occurred in 2021-2023, when inflation peaked at 9.1%, massive AI spending is likely to keep prices rising more quickly than the Federal Reserve would…

NEW YORK — A week ago, 18-year-old Nolan Xavier Wells took a boat trip with friends to celebrate the Fourth of July on an island off Mississippi’s Gulf Coast. He never came back. Two days later, he was found dead. What happened, Wells’ parents say, is a mystery riddled with conflicting stories, implausible explanations and missing details. It is a case shadowed by the state’s fraught racial history and lingering distrust in law enforcement. At a news conference Friday in New York City, Christine and Elmore Wonsley called for a thorough and transparent investigation into their son’s death, skeptical of…

HARRISBURG, Pa. — As the explosive energy demand of artificial intelligence spurs a renaissance for fossil fuels, renewable energy allies are trying to ensure that massive data centers will be powered by climate-friendly sources, too. Lawmakers in states with stronger climate policies don’t want data centers to hinder their goal of slashing planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. In other states, environmental advocates and corporations with clean energy goals are working regulatory levers to push monopoly utilities that historically control the energy supply and grid access. The problem clean energy proponents are confronting is that tech giants are demanding power at such…

Justice Antonin Scalia usually let his opinions speak for themselves, but he was so irked by criticism of one of his religious liberty rulings that he wrote a private defense of his reasoning, according to an unsealed court document obtained by “Seen, Heard & Whispered.” The case was Employment Division v. Smith, where Scalia led the court’s majority in rejecting a pair of drug counselors challenging the denial of unemployment benefits after they were fired for ingesting peyote, a powerful hallucinogen. They said they used it as part of their American Indian faith and argued the denial was punishment for…

TOPEKA, Kan. — A proposed legal settlement with the U.S. government would require the Keystone Pipeline system’s operator to pay a $26.9 million civil penalty over a major oil spill in Kansas in December 2022 and spend about $40 million more to prevent future accidents. The agreement would resolve allegations from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Kansas that South Bow, based in Canada, violated U.S. and state clean water laws. The rupture dumped nearly 13,000 barrels of heavy crude oil into a creek running through a rural pasture in Washington County, Kansas, about 150 miles northwest of Kansas City.…

PHILADELPHIA — Residents in some Philadelphia neighborhoods and surrounding counties were cleaning up Sunday from widespread damage caused by a line of severe, short thunderstorms that passed through. The storms, called microbursts, passed through Saturday afternoon, downing trees and power lines, flooding a handful of streets and causing structural damage. A building that collapsed in a West Philadelphia neighborhood threw bricks into the street, crushing cars and blocking trolley tracks. The National Weather Service said at least four of the microbursts brought straight-line wind gusts of 60 to 70 mph to Montgomery and Philadelphia counties between about 2:30 and 3:15…

ATLANTA — A judge has set a plea and sentencing hearing later this month for a teenager accused of killing four people in a September 2024 shooting at Apalachee High School in Georgia. Colt Gray, 16, had pleaded not guilty to charges including murder in the shooting that killed two students and two teachers, and left several others wounded, at the high school northeast of Atlanta. In a court filing Friday, the judge overseeing his case set a “Non-Negotiated Plea and Sentencing Hearing” to begin July 24. The judge had previously said that if Gray wanted to plead guilty ahead…

Dating is hard enough without throwing illegal immigration into the equation. But that’s exactly what women in South Florida are now facing, a conservative communications professional told “Seen, Heard & Whispered.” She said at least three of her friends have been bamboozled by migrants to date — and even marry — American citizens. As she tells it, couples will meet and date, and then months into a relationship, the man is revealed to be in the country with less-than-firm legal status. One friend met an immigrant at church, and they dated for several months, even going to Thanksgiving dinner together.…