Ingested Articles

A British appeals court has overturned the convictions of 39 postmasters and postmistresses who were accused of theft, fraud and false accounting following the installation of a new computer system in local branches. Announcing the Court of Appeal ruling on Friday, a judge said Britain’s postal service “knew there were serious issues about the reliability” of the Horizon computer system and had a “clear duty to investigate” its defects. Those convicted have spent years trying to clear their names and Friday’s decision reveals one of Britain’s most widespread miscarriages of justice. Many of the local post office chiefs lost their jobs, homes and marriages. 

U.S. authorities are weighing whether to resume the Johnson & Johnson vaccine more than a week after a pause was issued out of an abundance of caution. New guidance is expected late Friday after a government advisory panel deliberates a possible link between J&J’s shot and a handful of vaccine recipients who developed highly unusual blood clots. European regulators earlier this week allowed the rollout of J&J after concluding the benefits of the single-dose vaccine outweigh what appears to be an exceedingly rare risk. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is looking to its advisers to help determine how big any risk really is. 

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — SpaceX’s third crew has an attack helicopter pilot, a former Air France pilot, a Japanese rocket scientist and an oceanographer. The four veteran astronauts should reach the International Space Station on Saturday for a six-month…

BANGKOK (AP) — When the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations holds a special summit Saturday to discuss Myanmar, the regional body will be under as much scrutiny as the general who led the February coup ousting the elected government…

Japan has declared a state of emergency to curb a rapid coronavirus resurgence, the third since the pandemic began. The measures in parts of Japan, including Tokyo, have so far failed to curb infections caused by a more contagious new variant of the virus. Experts have warned that the variant, detected earlier in Britain, is rapidly spreading among younger people in offices and classrooms, causing more serious cases, overburdening hospitals and disrupting regular medical care. Testing remains insufficient. The 17-day emergency begins Sunday and lasts until May 11, just after the end of Japan’s “Golden Week” holidays, to discourage traveling.

Russian troops have begun pulling back to their permanent bases after a massive buildup that caused Ukrainian and Western concerns. On Thursday, Russia's defense minister declared sweeping maneuvers in Crimea and wide swaths of western Russia over, and ordered the military to pull the troops that took part back to their bases by May 1. The Russian Defense Ministry said Friday that its forces that took part in the massive drills in Crimea were moving to board trains, transport aircraft and landing vessels. Ukraine's foreign minister says Kyiv will await confirmation from Ukrainian and NATO intelligence. The U.S. and NATO have called the troop buildup Russia's largest since 2014. 

Tokyo and Japan’s second largest metropolitan area of Osaka are coming under emergency orders aimed at stemming surging cases of the coronavirus. The orders come into effect with the Tokyo Olympics opening in only three months. The measures take effect during Japan’s “golden week” holiday period and are meant to limit travel and keep people out of public places. They are to end on May 11. This is just ahead of a widely reported visit to Hiroshima by International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach. Bach has said the visit is not yet confirmed and has denied the end of the emergency period was linked to his proposed visit.

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — German Chancellor Angela Merkel has defended her lobbying for Wirecard during a 2019 visit to China, testifying before a parliamentary committee Friday that the payments company received no special treatment and that it was in Germany's…

LONDON (AP) — Britain has seen its budget deficit rise during the coronavirus pandemic to its highest level since the year after the end of World War II, official figures showed Friday. The Office for National Statistics said public sector…

BANGKOK (AP) — The disappearance of an Indonesian submarine off the resort island of Bali follows dozens of other disasters in the depths of the world’s vast seas. Military secrecy limits public access to details of accidents that show technological…

Jacob deGrom of the Mets is 1-1 with a 0.45 ERA, 35 strikeouts and three walks in 20 innings going into a homestand opener against Washington and Erick Fedde. While deGrom has a 2.03 ERA in 79 starts since the start of the 2018 season, New York is 37-42 in those games. Meanwhile, Clayton Kershaw starts for the Los Angeles Dodgers in the second game of the big series at Dodger Stadium against the San Diego Padres. Yu Darvish takes the mound for the Padres, who lost two of three last weekend in San Diego during the first series of the season between the NL West rivals.

Four astronauts have arrived at their Florida launch pad for an early morning SpaceX flight. The two Americans, one French and one Japanese astronaut climbed into Teslas for the ride to their rocket, all courtesy of Elon Musk's companies. SpaceX is aiming for a split-second liftoff at 5:49 a.m., an hour before sunrise. Good weather is forecast. This will be SpaceX's third bon voyage in under a year for a NASA crew. For the first time, SpaceX is using a recycled Falcon rocket and Dragon capsule for a crew launch. The capsule soared on SpaceX's first astronaut launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center last May.

The coronavirus pandemic has devastated British theater, a world-renowned cultural export and major economic force. The theaters in London's West End shut even before the U.K.'s first lockdown began in March 2020, and they have remained closed for most of the past 13 months. They are now preparing to welcome audiences back. Some theaters are reopening once the government allows indoor venues to admit limited audiences on May 17.  But with social distancing restrictions, almost no foreign tourists and uncertainty about whether the virus will surge again, the West End and the thousands of people who work in the storied theater district face deep uncertainty.

The San Diego Padres opened the second series of the season between Southern California’s big baseball rivals with a 3-2 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers. Jurickson Profar singled and scored the tiebreaking run in the eighth inning, and Trent Grisham homered and had two hits. Los Angeles took two of three in San Diego last weekend, but the Padres answered with timely hits, strong pitching and a fantastic inning-ending double play in the eighth, capping yet another well-played matchup between two stacked rosters. AJ Pollock and Sheldon Neuse hit back-to-back homers leading off the seventh for the major league-leading Dodgers.

Ten years after the start of the Syrian civil war, Denmark has become the first European country to start revoking the residency permits of some refugees from the Damascus area. The government says it is safe for them to return home now that the Syrian government has reestablished control around the city. For now, the decision only affects a small percentage of the Syrians in Denmark, yet human rights officials are appalled at a move that is causing family separations. The policy underlines how far Denmark's center-left government has lurched to the right on migration in a bid to keep the far right out of power.

War broke out in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray region at the worst possible time for Abraha Kinfe Gebremariam and his family. Their village of Mai Kadra was caught in the first known massacre of a grinding conflict that has killed thousands of ethnic Tigrayans like them. Abraha pleaded with his wife, writhing from post-childbirth complications, to be silent, fearful any noise would bring gunmen to his door. Their hungry newborn twin daughters were wailing beside her. Their two young sons watched in fear. Abraha was terrified his family would not survive. 

Shock G, who blended whimsical wordplay with ’70s funk as leader of the off-kilter Bay Area hip-hop group Digital Underground, has died. He was 57. The group's former head of security says the rapper-producer was found unresponsive in a hotel room in Tampa, Florida. Malonga said Shock G had struggled with drug addiction for years. The group found fame with the Billboard Top 10 hit “The Humpty Dance” in 1990, with Shock G performing as one of his many alter egos, Humpty Hump. He introduced the group's former roadie 2Pac to the world a year later on the song “Same Song.”