HARRISBURG, Pa. (@AP) _ Democrat Dan McCaffery has won an open seat on Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court. McCaffery's victory Tuesday preserves a strong Democratic majority on a panel that has produced several critical election-related rulings in the presidential battleground state.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (@AP) _ Two Pennsylvania judges who orchestrated a scheme to send children to for-profit jails in exchange for kickbacks were ordered to pay more than $200 million to hundreds who fell victim to their crimes. U.S. District Judge Christopher Conner awarded $106M in compensatory damages and $100M in punitive damages to nearly 300 plaintiffs in a long-running civil suit against the judges in what came to be known as the kids-for-cash scandal.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (@AP) — The developer of pipelines linking Marcellus Shale gas fields in western Pennsylvania to an export terminal near Philadelphia pleaded no contest Friday to criminal charges it systematically polluted waterways and residential wells across hundreds of miles. Dallas-based Energy Transfer Operating agreed to independent testing of homeowners’ water and promised to remediate contamination in a settlement of two separate criminal cases brought by the Pennsylvania attorney general.

WASHINGTON (@AP) _ The Supreme Court has ended constitutional protections for abortion that had been in place nearly 50 years in a decision by its conservative majority to overturn Roe v. Wade. Friday's outcome is expected to lead to abortion bans in roughly half the states. The decision, unthinkable just a few years ago, was the culmination of decades of efforts by abortion opponents, made possible by an emboldened right side of the court that has been fortified by three appointees of former President Donald Trump.

WASHINGTON (@AP) _ The Senate on Thursday approved a bipartisan gun violence bill, clearing the way for final congressional approval of what will be lawmakers' most far-reaching response in decades to the nation's run of brutal mass shootings. After years of GOP procedural delays that derailed Democratic efforts to curb firearms, Democrats and some Republicans decided that congressional inaction was untenable after last month’s rampages in New York and Texas.

AUSTIN, Texas (@AP) _ Texas police commander says officers could have stopped the gunman in Uvalde school shooting within three minutes. AUSTIN, Texas (@AP) _ Texas public safety chief calls police response to Uvalde school shooting an 'abject failure.'

HARRISBURG, Pa. (@AP) _ A federal court ruled Friday that mail-in ballots without a required date on the return envelope must be allowed in a 2021 Pennsylvania county judge race, a decision that could complicate ongoing vote counting in a neck-and-neck US Senate GOP primary. Elections officials, lawyers and candidates are scrambling to understand and respond to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision, which was issued late in the day without a written opinion laying out its rationale.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (@AP) _ Summer Lee wins Democratic nomination for U.S. House in Pennsylvania's 12th Congressional District. HARRISBURG, Pa. (@AP) _ Summer Lee has won a five-way Democratic primary for a Pittsburgh-based U.S. House seat, making her the favorite in the heavily Democratic district to win the fall general election and become the first Black woman elected to Congress from Pennsylvania.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (@AP) _ Republican US Senate primary in Pennsylvania between Oz and McCormick is too close to call, likely headed for recount. HARRISBURG, Pa. (@AP) _ Pennsylvania’s GOP primary for an open US Senate seat is too close to call and is likely headed for a statewide recount to decide the winner of the contest between heart surgeon-turned-TV celebrity Dr. Mehmet Oz and former hedge fund CEO David McCormick.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (@AP) _ Locked in a near tie Friday, celebrity heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz and former hedge fund CEO David McCormick began staffing up their campaigns with recount specialists as vote counting entered a fourth day in Pennsylvania’s GOP primary for US Senate. Both campaigns have hired Washington-based lawyers to lead their recount efforts, and both have hired Philadelphia-based campaign strategists who helped lead the operation to observe vote-counting on Election Day for Donald Trump's presidential campaign in 2020.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (@AP) _ Vote counting in Pennsylvania's Republican primary for the U.S. Senate dragged into a third day as Dr. Mehmet Oz and former hedge fund CEO David McCormick remained essentially tied with tens of thousands of ballots left to count. Oz, who was endorsed by Donald Trump, led McCormick by 1,240 votes, or 0.09 percentage points, out of 1,334,376 ballots counted as of midday Thursday. The race remained close enough to trigger Pennsylvania’s automatic recount law, with the separation inside the law’s 0.5% margin.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (@AP) — Heart surgeon-turned-TV celebrity Dr. Mehmet Oz and former hedge fund CEO David McCormick spent Wednesday essentially tied in Pennsylvania’s hotly contested race for the Republican nomination to fill an open U.S. Senate seat. The GOP nomination battle was still too early to call.

Oz led McCormick by 1,723 votes Wednesday, out of more than 1.3M votes counted. There were tens of thousands of votes left to be counted, including at least 22,000 mail ballots and an unknown number cast on election day.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (@AP) — Doug Mastriano is not the only candidate who won a Republican primary on Tuesday after embracing Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen. But no GOP contender did more to subvert that presidential election. And no one may be better positioned to subvert the next one -- than Mastriano if he’s elected Pennsylvania’s governor.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (@AP) _ A judge has ordered a temporary halt to Gov. Tom Wolf’s plan to toll as many as nine bridges on interstate highways in Pennsylvania, siding Wednesday with a county and seven municipalities that challenged the process as both illegal and unconstitutional. Commonwealth Court Judge Ellen Ceisler ordered the halt, saying the state Department of Transportation must stop all studies, right-of-way acquisitions, construction or work under any contracts, and put off any planned hearings, meetings or spending.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (@AP) _ One of the Pennsylvania Legislature’s most powerful Republicans lost a primary race and another was in real danger Wednesday of going down to defeat, both targeted by challengers from the right. As vote counting continued, state Sen. Pat Browne of Lehigh County was a few dozen votes behind school board member and pilot Jarrett Coleman. Rep. Stan Saylor of York County lost to Wendy Jo Fink, who promised to eliminate school property taxes.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (@AP) _ Heart surgeon-turned-TV celebrity Mehmet Oz and former hedge fund CEO David McCormick are in a too-early-to-call race in Pennsylvania for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. Both men emerged at their election-night watch parties to say they will have to wait for vote-counting Wednesday to determine a winner. Some counties have yet to tabulate mail-in ballots in the presidential battleground state.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (@AP) _ Douglas Mastriano wins Republican nomination for governor in Pennsylvania primary election. HARRISBURG, Pa. (@AP) _ Doug Mastriano won the GOP nod for Pennsylvania governor on Tuesday, beating eight rivals and a party establishment that had tried to head off his nomination over fears that he is too extreme to win a general election in the presidential battleground.

MARIUPOL, Ukraine (@AP) — The bodies of the children all lie here, dumped into this narrow trench hastily dug into the frozen earth of Mariupol to the constant drumbeat of shelling. There’s 18-month-old Kirill, whose shrapnel wound to the head proved too much for his little toddler’s body. There’s 16-year-old Iliya, whose legs were blown up in an explosion during a soccer game at a school field.

LEBANON, Pa. (@AP) _ As CEO of the world's largest hedge fund, David McCormick wore suits, lived on Connecticut's ritzy Gold Coast, talked up bipartisanship and described China as America's most important "bilateral relationship." Now, as a Republican running for US Senate in Pennsylvania, McCormick wears jeans and casual dress shirts. He recounts the greatest hits of the right's culture war attacks on Democrats and he frames China as an “existential threat."

HARRISBURG, Pa. (@AP) — Candidates are down to the final hours before Tuesday’s deadline to file paperwork to get on Pennsylvania’s primary ballots, as large fields shape up for the open governor’s office and U.S. Senate seat. This year’s election is the first in decades that Pennsylvania has its governor’s office and US Senate seat on the same ballot with no incumbent running.

That has sparked heavy interest in contests viewed as wide open. Nineteen candidates have filed for those two offices alone.

WASHINGTON (@AP) — The U.S. for the first time has approved the direct delivery of Stinger missiles to Ukraine as part of a package approved by the White House on Friday. TORONTO (@AP) — Canada will send an additional $25 million worth of defensive military equipment to Ukraine in an effort to help the country defend against Russia’s invasion.