The Catholic Diocese of Fresno received taxpayer-funded loans exceeding $5.1 million as part of the federal government's Paycheck Protection Program, according to documents from the Small Business Administration. That's part of at least $1.4 billion in forgivable coronavirus aid obtained by the U.S. Roman Catholic Church, which used a special...
Judge OKs Nearly $25 Billion for PG&E Fire Victims, Insurers
SAN FRANCISCO — A federal bankruptcy judge on Tuesday approved two Pacific Gas & Electric settlements totaling $24.5 billion to help pay the losses suffered by homeowners, businesses and insurers in the aftermath of catastrophic Northern California wildfires that sent the nation’s largest utility into a financial morass. The decision...
Palestinians Protest US Settlement Decision in ‘Day of Rage’
RAMALLAH, West Bank — Thousands of Palestinian protesters took part in a “day of rage” across the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, with some groups clashing with Israeli forces to protest the U.S. announcement that it no longer believes Israeli settlements violate international law. Around 2,000 people gathered in the...
US Angers Palestinians With Reversal on Israeli Settlements
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Monday softened the U.S. position on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, reversing four decades of American policy and further undermining the effort to gain Palestinian statehood. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the U.S. is repudiating the 1978 State Department legal...
Big Question in Opioid Suits: How to Divide Any Settlement
The roughly 2,000 state and local governments suing the drug industry over the deadly opioid crisis have yet to see any verdicts or reach any big national settlements but are already tussling with each other over how to divide any money they collect. The reason: Some of them want to...
Investigation: Many US Jails Fail to Stop Inmate Suicides
The last time Tanna Jo Fillmore talked with her mother, she was in a Utah jail, angry and desperate. She'd called every day that week, begging for help. I need my medicine, she demanded. At 25, Fillmore had long struggled with mental illness, but medication had stabilized her. Now she...
I Visited the Rohingya Camps in Myanmar. This Is What I Saw.
Myanmar recently claimed to have repatriated its first Rohingya refugee family. But, as an official from the United Nations noted, the country is still not safe for the return of its estimated 700,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees, who fled to Bangladesh in 2017 to escape an ongoing state-sponsored military campaign and...