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By KATHLEEN FOODY A health care worker tests people for COVID-19 at a drive-up testing center at Tropical Park, Wednesday, Dec. 29, 2021, in Miami. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell) More than a year after the vaccine was rolled out, new cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. have soared to their highest level on record at over 265,000 per day on average, a surge driven largely by the highly contagious omicron variant.

Hundreds of law enforcement officers from North Carolina’s largest city gathered on Wednesday for the funeral of a colleague killed last week when she was struck by a semi-truck while responding to an accident. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Officer Mia Goodwin, who died only days after returning to work following maternity leave, was remembered at the service for her dedication to her family, her faith and her job, news outlets reported.  “Mia paid that

By TOM HAYS and LARRY NEUMEISTER In this courtroom sketch, Ghislaine Maxwell, center, sits in the courtroom during a discussion about a note from the jury, during her sex trafficking trial, Wednesday, Dec. 29, 2021, in New York. (AP Photo/Elizabeth Williams) The British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted Wednesday of luring teenage girls to be sexually abused by the American millionaire Jeffrey Epstein. The verdict capped a monthlong trial featuring

By ANDREW MELDRUM FILE - Retiring Archbishop of Cape Town Desmond Tutu, right, greets President Nelson Mandela at a service in Cape Town, Sunday June 23, 1996 held to celebrate the end of Tutu's tenure as leader of the Anglican Church in South Africa. Tutu, South Africa’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning activist for racial justice and LGBT rights and retired Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, has died, South African President Cyril

By AMY FORLITI and SCOTT BAUER In this screen grab from video, former Brooklyn Center Police Officer Kim Potter testifies in court, Friday, Dec. 17, 2021 at the Hennepin County Courthouse in Minneapolis, Minn. Potter is charged with first and second-degree manslaughter in the April 11 shooting of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black motorist, following a traffic stop in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center. (Court TV, via AP, Pool)

By MICHAEL WARREN Atlanta's skyline is shown, with Bellwood Quarry Reservoir in the foreground, on Dec. 20, 2021. Atlanta was built with slavery’s successor: unpaid convict labor. Thousands of Black men worked in horrific conditions to break granite at the quarry, now a reservoir holding the city's backup water supply. (Elliott Augustine via AP) The City of Atlanta’s official seal shows a phoenix rising from the ashes of the Civil

During a rather uninspiring commencement speech that sounded like a campaign stump speech for failed and unpopular policy proposals, President Joe Biden said, “Did we meet the moment? Forty years from now they're gonna be talking about did we meet the moment?"   Instead of waiting decades to ask the question, Biden should ask it right now to every parent, family, and student in America: have I missed the moment? The answer to the question

By Jonathan Landrum FILE - Kangol Kid attends the "Black Nativity" premiere on Monday, Nov. 18, 2013, in New York. Kangol Kid, a member of the legendary hip-hop group UTFO, has died after a battle with colon cancer at age 55. The family of Kangol Kid — whose real name is Shaun Shiller Fequiere -- said in a statement that he died peacefully early Saturday, Dec. 18, 2021, at a

By JIM GOMEZ Residents stand amid damaged homes following Typhoon Rai in Talisay, Cebu province, central Philippines on Saturday, Dec. 18, 2021. The strong typhoon engulfed villages in floods that trapped residents on roofs, toppled trees and knocked out power in southern and central island provinces, where more than 300,000 villagers had fled to safety before the onslaught, officials said. (AP Photo/Jay Labra) The governor of an island province in

Firefighters work on cleanup after a fire ripped through a distribution center for the QVC home-shopping television network in Rocky Mount, N.C. on Saturday, Dec. 18, 2021. More than 300 employees were working at the facility when the fire was reported shortly after 2a.m. No injuries were immediately reported. (AP Photo/Tom Copeland) A fire ripped through a distribution center in North Carolina for the QVC home-shopping television network early Saturday,