The Petersburg Post
Top News Stories for Saturday, April 4th 2026
Friday, Apr 3rd, 2026 -
What a US attorney general actually does – a law professor spells it out President Donald Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi on April 2, 2026, only 14 months after she was sworn into office , making her time in the role the shortest in 60 years . While much recent attention has focused on Trump's decision to fire Bondi, there has been less attention on what the attorney general actually does, or what ...
Source: theconversation.com
Friday, Apr 3rd, 2026 -
April 3 (UPI) -- NASA's Artemis II crew left Earth orbit Thursday evening en route for the moon, marking a milestone not reached in more than 50 years. The Orion spacecraft began a scheduled 5-minute, 50-second burn at 7:49 p.m. EDT, successfully propelling it and its four-person crew out of Earth orbit. "Nominal translunar injection burn complete. The Artemis II crew is officially on the way to the moon," NASA ...
Source: upi.com
Friday, Apr 3rd, 2026 -
Iran's missiles set alight a refinery and damaged a desalination plant in Kuwait on Friday as Israeli and U.S. strikes kept hitting Iran. As the war that began Feb. 28 was to enter its sixth week, Israel, Bahrain and Kuwait warned about incoming missile fire, although it was unclear if anything was struck. Activists in Iran reported strikes around Tehran and the central city of Isfahan. Iran's attacks on Gulf ...
Source: news4jax.com
Friday, Apr 3rd, 2026 -
Washington — Officials from 23 Democratic states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit Friday seeking to block President Trump's latest executive order that aims to restrict mail voting, arguing the directive unconstitutionally attempts to interfere with states' administration of elections. The lawsuit, led by California, was filed with the U.S. district court in Massachusetts. It asserts that neither ...
Source: cbsnews.com
Trump threatens to destroy Iranian infrastructure, saying its government 'knows what has to be done'
Friday, Apr 3rd, 2026 -
Donald Trump threatened Iranian bridges and power plants as rhetoric escalated. His words come as a recently constructed bridge near Tehran was destroyed in an airstrike. China, Russia and France vetoed a resolution calling for military action against the country. Significant sections of the B1 Bridge are seen destroyed after an airstrike attributed to the United States and Israel targeted the site near Tehran, in ...
Source: cnbc.com
Friday, Apr 3rd, 2026 -
The United States added 178,000 jobs in March, blowing past expectations and showing a resilient labor market just as the war with Iran began escalating, sending up oil prices. The unemployment rate fell to 4.3% last month, down from 4.4%. The gains were concentrated in health care, construction, transportation and warehousing. Despite the outsized headline figure, there were further indications that the job market ...
Source: nbcnews.com
Friday, Apr 3rd, 2026 -
For Tiger Woods , another arrest on charges of driving under the influence has put golf on hold . There will be no chance of a return to the Masters next week. No Ryder Cup captaincy in 2027. Golf is being pushed to the side while Woods seeks treatment following his crash a week ago in Florida. Authorities say Woods had pain pills in his pocket and showed signs of impairment following the crash — his fourth ...
Source: apnews.com
Friday, Apr 3rd, 2026 -
Proposal, a win for RFK Jr's Maha movement, is a 'first step' toward tackling plastic pollution, advocates say The Environmental Protection Agency ( EPA ) proposed on Thursday to include microplastics and pharmaceuticals on a list of contaminants in drinking water for the first time, a step that could lead to new limits on those substances for water utilities. Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator, said the agency was ...
Source: theguardian.com
Friday, Apr 3rd, 2026 -
WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ousted the Army's top uniformed officer and two other generals, the Pentagon said Thursday without giving a reason for the departures while the United States is waging a war against Iran . Gen. Randy George "will be retiring from his position as the 41st Chief of Staff of the Army effective immediately," said Sean Parnell, the Pentagon's top ...
Source: wfla.com
Friday, Apr 3rd, 2026 -
The legal battle between "It Ends With Us" co-stars Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni took an unexpected turn this week when a federal judge dismissed her sexual harassment claims against him, significantly narrowing the scope of the case. Lively has accused Baldoni of sexual harassment during the production of the 2024 movie "It Ends With Us," which he directed. Lively has also alleged that Baldoni's production ...
Source: nbcnews.com
Friday, Apr 3rd, 2026 -
) introducing something unrelated to carts. Just 2 days after launching new business credit cards, Amazon is making a move that could ripple across millions of businesses and potentially affect the prices shoppers pay. The reality is that rising oil prices are starting to hit closer to home as the Iran war enters its fifth week, as of April 2nd. Actually, it's the 34th day, and energy markets remain volatile, ...
Source: bradenton.com
Friday, Apr 3rd, 2026 -
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... By RIO YAMAT, AP Airlines and Travel Writer Most travelers flying with United Airlines will pay $10 more to check their luggage beginning on Friday, as higher jet fuel costs driven by the war in the Middle East push another major U.S. carrier to increase fees. The first piece of checked luggage will now cost customers $45 on flights within the United States, ...
Source: orlandosentinel.com
Friday, Apr 3rd, 2026 -
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli announced that federal officials arrested eight people – including three nurses, a chiropractor, and a psychologist – accused of several health care fraud schemes totaling $50 million from Medicare and other insurance companies throughout Southern California. According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, the arrests were conducted in coordination with an anti-fraud ...
Source: floridianpress.com
Friday, Apr 3rd, 2026 -
HAVANA (AP) — Katia Arias buzzed with hope on Friday morning as she gathered at the gates of a prison on the outskirts of Havana, waiting with other families for their loved ones to be freed in one of the biggest prison releases by the Cuban government in years. When her 20-year-old son Emilio Alejandro Leyva walked out of the doors of the detention facility with dozens of other prisoners, bags and a small ...
Source: apnews.com
Friday, Apr 3rd, 2026 -
Follow Earth on Google What if love could happen without even seeing each other? In the mysterious world under the ocean, octopuses show that connection can go far beyond sight. A new study by Harvard biologists reveals a surprising and almost romantic story about how these creatures find their mates using touch and taste combined. Octopuses find mates without seeing Octopuses live mostly alone and meet others only ...
Source: earth.com
Friday, Apr 3rd, 2026 -
President Donald Trump's White House released a budget proposal on Friday that pairs an unprecedented, debt-exploding $1.5 trillion in military spending with tens of billions of dollars in cuts to domestic agencies and education, healthcare , climate, and housing programs. Trump's budget request for fiscal year 2027, which must be approved by Congress, includes $73 billion in total cuts to nondefense spending while ...
Source: commondreams.org
Friday, Apr 3rd, 2026 -
Eugene Mirman , a comedian and voice actor in "Bob's Burgers," is speaking out just days after he was pulled from a car engulfed in flames following a crash into a New Hampshire toll booth. "Thank you so much for all the well wishes, love and kind messages from friends and strangers," Mirman wrote in an Instagram post Friday . "I am extraordinarily thankful to the heroic people that pulled me from the car and to ...
Source: nbcnews.com
Friday, Apr 3rd, 2026 -
ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia state lawmakers spent months debating ideas to curb the impact of data centers . But as their annual legislative session ended Thursday, they did nothing. Now with election season upon them, lawmakers are returning home to find local communities up in arms against the warehouses full of computers that power artificial intelligence. "I think they failed us, that's what I think" said Judy ...
Source: apnews.com
Friday, Apr 3rd, 2026 -
Khimberly Zavaleta Chuquipa, 12, was allegedly attacked at school while trying to protect her older sister from a group of bullies 2-MIN READ A 12-year-old has been arrested in connection with the death of a classmate who was hit in the head with a metal water bottle during an alleged bullying incident at a Los Angeles school, authorities said Friday. The juvenile, whose age and gender have not been made public, ...
Source: scmp.com
Friday, Apr 3rd, 2026 -
April 3 (UPI) -- More than three million bottles of eye drops sold at stores across the United States have been recalled by their manufacturer because they may not be sterile. K.C. Pharmaceuticals earlier this month issued a nationwide U.S. recall of roughly 3.1 million bottles of eight different eye drop products because of a "lack of assurance of sterility," an FDA notice about the recall said. The drops have ...
Source: upi.com
Friday, Apr 3rd, 2026 -
OpenAI is making an unexpected media move, buying Silicon Valley tech talk show TBPN in a deal reportedly valued in the low hundreds of millions of dollars, according to the Financial Times . The acquisition stands out because it pushes the ChatGPT maker beyond software and deeper into the business of shaping the public conversation around artificial intelligence. According to the FT, OpenAI has acquired the ...
Source: pymnts.com
Friday, Apr 3rd, 2026 -
The Justice Department has concluded that a federal law requiring the preservation of presidential records is unconstitutional, which could effectively permit White House lawyers to try to set their own voluntary presidential recordkeeping policy and, potentially, upend decades-old legal precedent established in response to Richard M. Nixon's effort to keep control of records upon his resignation from the Oval ...
Source: abajournal.com
Friday, Apr 3rd, 2026 -
Microsoft just shipped the clearest signal yet that it is building an AI empire without OpenAI Six months after renegotiating the contract that once barred it from independently pursuing frontier AI, Microsoft has released three in-house models that directly challenge the partner it spent $13 billion cultivating. MAI-Transcribe-1, MAI-Voice-1, and MAI-Image-2 are now available in Microsoft Foundry, and they do not ...
Source: thenextweb.com
Friday, Apr 3rd, 2026 -
Follow Earth on Google Life on Earth has a long and fascinating history, but scientists still uncover surprises that change what we know. A recent fossil discovery in China has revealed that complex animal life began earlier than previously believed. Scientists from Oxford University 's Museum of Natural History, the Department of Earth Sciences, and Yunnan University have uncovered a remarkable fossil site in ...
Source: earth.com
Friday, Apr 3rd, 2026 -
Soaring energy prices caused by the US-Israeli war of choice on Iran is driving up global food prices while shrinking the economies of Gulf Arab states targeted in Iranian counterstrikes, according to a pair of reports published this week by United Nations agencies. On Friday, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) published its latest Food Price Index (FFPI), which measures the monthly change in ...
Source: commondreams.org
Friday, Apr 3rd, 2026 -
More than 100 United States-based international law experts have signed an open letter condemning US and Israeli military strikes on Iran as a violation of the United Nations Charter and potentially amounting to "war crimes". The letter, published on Thursday, also said the conduct of US forces and statements by senior US officials "raise serious concerns about violations of international human rights law and ...
Source: aljazeera.com
Thursday, Apr 2nd, 2026 -
By Hopes that the U.S. housing market was starting to thaw have ebbed as the war in the Middle East extended into April, raising costs for many Americans. The average 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage rate hit 6.46%, the mortgage finance giant Freddie Mac said on Thursday. That's up from 6.38% the week before and the highest since the first week of September. Mortgage rates fell below 6% before the war started, but they ...
Source: miamiherald.com
Thursday, Apr 2nd, 2026 -
Tina Peters, an election denier, was found guilty in 2024 of allowing unauthorized access to county's voting equipment A Colorado appeals court on Thursday ordered the resentencing of a former state election official who was found guilty of allowing unauthorized access to her county's voting equipment, the latest development in a closely watched case that has attracted considerable attention from Donald Trump and ...
Source: theguardian.com
Thursday, Apr 2nd, 2026 -
3 min read President Donald Trump is imposing a new 100% tariff on certain pharmaceutical companies that have not struck deals to sell their drugs directly to consumers as part of his "Most Favored Nation" pricing initiative, the White House announced on Thursday. The forthcoming tariff will apply to imports of patented drugs and their active ingredients, in an effort to pressure foreign manufacturers to move their ...
Source: edition.cnn.com
Thursday, Apr 2nd, 2026 -
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's White House ballroom is expected to win approval from a key agency on Thursday, days after a federal judge ordered a halt to construction unless Congress allows what would be the biggest structural change to the American landmark in more than 70 years. The National Capital Planning Commission, the agency tasked with approving construction on federal property in the ...
Source: apnews.com
Thursday, Apr 2nd, 2026 -
Built from the same research as Gemini 3, the new family spans a 2B edge model that runs on a Raspberry Pi to a 31B dense model currently ranked third on the Arena AI open-model leaderboard. The Apache 2.0 licence is a significant shift from previous Gemma releases. Google has released Gemma 4 , the latest generation of its open-weight model family, in four sizes designed to cover everything from on-device ...
Source: thenextweb.com
Thursday, Apr 2nd, 2026 -
By The U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) issued a public health alert announcement on April 1, 2026, for certain packets of ready-to-eat, frozen, dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets, sold at Walmart stores nationwide. During routine sample testing conducted by a state partner, officials found that the frozen, ready‑to‑eat chicken nuggets could be contaminated with ...
Source: miamiherald.com