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NEW YORK (AP) — Authorities say a New Jersey woman with the Instagram handle AntiVaxMomma sold several hundred fake COVID-19 vaccination cards at $200 a pop to New York City-area jab dodgers, including people working in hospitals and nursing homes. Prosecutors say Jasmine Clifford, of Lyndhurst, New Jersey, sold about 250 fake vaccine cards in

By KATHY GANNON Associated Press KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghanistan’s new Taliban rulers face tough economic and security challenges as they return to power in a country that is vastly different from the one they left 20 years ago. When they last ruled in the late 1990s, Afghanistan was a poor, agricultural nation, and the

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR and MARTIN CRUTSINGER Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — The sharp shock of the coronavirus recession pushed Social Security a year closer to insolvency but left Medicare’s exhaustion date unchanged, the government reported Tuesday. It’s a counterintuitive assessment that deepens the uncertainty around the nation’s bedrock retirement programs. Social Security’s massive trust fund

NEW YORK (AP) — For Alicia Keys, “Girl On Fire” isn’t just a million-selling single, but the title and inspiration for a young adult graphic novel scheduled for next year. HarperCollins Publishers announced Tuesday that “Girl On Fire,” the story of 14-year-old Lolo Wright and her telekinetic powers, will come out March 1. The book

MOUNTAIN VIEW Google is once again postponing a return to the office for most workers until mid-January. The internet search giant is also to requiring all employees to be vaccinated once its sprawling campuses are fully reopened. The highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus is driving a dramatic spike in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations.

By JOSEF FEDERMAN and WAFAA SHURAFA Associated Press JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel has allowed dozens of truckloads of construction materials into the Gaza Strip, easing a tight blockade it has maintained on the Hamas-ruled territory since an 11-day war in May. The imports Tuesday came during a tense period in which Hamas activists have launched

By EMILY McFARLAN MILLER Religion News Service Terry Wildman hopes a new translation of the New Testament published Tuesday will help Christians and Indigenous peoples read Scripture again in a fresh way. Wildman, a licensed local pastor in the United Methodist Church, has been working for two decades to translate the Bible into words and

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Republican Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi says he has fully recovered from COVID-19, less than two weeks after being diagnosed. The 70-year-old Wicker says Tuesday that he’s looking forward to traveling in Mississippi this week. He’s one of three senators who announced Aug. 19 that they had tested positive for COVID-19.

By PAUL J. WEBER and ACACIA CORONADO Associated Press AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The Texas Legislature has signed off on a sweeping GOP rewrite of election laws after months of protests by Democrats. The nearly 75-page bill that won final approval Tuesday in both the House and Senate would ban 24-hour polling locations and empowers

By JONATHAN MATTISE Associated Press NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Authorities say rain from Tropical Depression Ida is temporarily hampering cleanup efforts for a rural Tennessee community ravaged by recent deadly flooding. But the extra dousing has brought on no recurrence of flooding Tuesday. The Humphreys County Emergency Management Agency said about 2.5 inches of rain

By DAVID I. KLEIN Religion News Service The grounds of the Berkshire Hills Eisenberg Camp in Copake, New York, were alive in mid-August with a gaggle of nearly 100 campers, young and old. Like at many camps, they played sports, boated in the lake, swam in the pool and sang songs around the campfire. But

By MIKE HOUSEHOLDER Associated Press DETROIT (AP) — The parents and brother of an American journalist who has been detained in Myanmar for 100 days are vowing to never stop working to secure his release. Danny Fenster is managing editor of Frontier Myanmar, an independent online news outlet based in Yangon, which is the Southeast