Georgia counts ballots as Senate control hangs in balanceVideo
ATLANTA — Georgia officials counted the final votes of the nation’s turbulent 2020 election season early Wednesday as polls closed in two critical races that will determine control of the U.S. Senate and, in turn, the fate of President-elect Joe Biden’s legislative agenda. The two Senate runoff elections are leftovers...
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice defends his resort’s party on New Year’s EveVideo
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice brushed off criticism that the posh resort he owns did not follow coronavirus pandemic guidelines after video surfaced of a New Year’s Eve gala showing a tightly packed ballroom, with many people not wearing masks. The Republican governor, who did not attend...
Analysis: With call, Trump shows no limit to his power grabVideo
ATLANTA — President Donald Trump’s ongoing efforts to overturn the 2020 election results — laid out in stark detail in an hourlong weekend phone call with a Georgia election official — are demonstrating his unrestrained determination to maintain a grip on power no matter the consequences for the nation’s democratic...
Proud Boys leader arrested, accused of burning church banner
WASHINGTON — Police in the nation’s capital on Monday arrested the leader of the Proud Boys, who is accused of burning a Black Lives Matter banner that was torn down from a historic Black church in downtown Washington last month. Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, 36, was arrested by Metropolitan Police Department...
Attorney: Congressional seat data from census won’t be ready in January
A Trump administration attorney said Monday that the numbers used for deciding how many congressional seats each state gets won’t be ready until mid-February at the earliest, putting in jeopardy an effort by President Donald Trump to exclude people in the country illegally from those figures. The U.S. Census Bureau...
Worries about vaccine rollout rise as New York finds coronavirus variantVideo
ALBANY, N.Y. — In an effort to speed up what has been a sluggish rollout of the coronavirus vaccine, New York’s governor threatened Monday to fine hospitals up to $100,000 if they don’t finish their first round of inoculations by the end of the week. Gov. Andrew Cuomo made the...
Prosecutor: Wisconsin pharmacist thought covid vaccine was unsafeVideo
PORT WASHINGTON, Wis. — A Wisconsin pharmacist convinced the world was “crashing down” told police he tried to ruin hundreds of doses of coronavirus vaccine because he believed the shots would mutate people’s DNA, according to court documents released Monday. Police in Grafton, about 20 miles north of Milwaukee, arrested...
Urging calm, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser calls in National Guard for protestsVideo
Bracing for possible violence, the nation’s capital has mobilized the National Guard ahead of planned protests by President Donald Trump’s supporters in connection with the congressional vote expected Wednesday to affirm Joe Biden’s election victory. Trump’s supporters are planning to rally Tuesday and Wednesday, seeking to bolster the president’s unproven...
South Africa testing whether vaccines work against variant
JOHANNESBURG — Scientists in South Africa are urgently testing to see if the vaccines for covid-19 will be effective against the country’s variant virus. The genomic studies come as Britain’s health minister, Matt Hancock, and other experts in the U.K. have said they worry that vaccines may not be effective...
In farewell, DeVos urges Congress to reject Biden’s policies
In a farewell letter to Congress on Monday, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos urged lawmakers to reject President-elect Joe Biden’s education agenda, while imploring them to shield Trump administration policies that Biden has promised to eliminate. DeVos does not explicitly acknowledge President Donald Trump’s election defeat nor does she refer to...
U.K. prime minister orders new virus lockdown for England
LONDON — Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on Monday a new national lockdown for England until at least mid-February to combat a fast-spreading new variant of the coronavirus, even as Britain ramped up its vaccination program by becoming the first nation to start using the shot developed by Oxford University...
Federal judge rejects lawsuit seeking to overturn Trump loss
MADISON, Wis. — A federal judge on Monday rejected a lawsuit filed by two Republican Wisconsin lawmakers, voting rights groups and others seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Wisconsin and four other swing states where Democrat Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg,...
Prosecutor says Wisconsin pharmacist thought vaccine was unsafe
PORT WASHINGTON, Wis. — A Wisconsin pharmacist told police he tried to ruin hundreds of doses of coronavirus vaccine because he felt the medicine wasn’t safe, a prosecutor said Monday. Police in Grafton, about 20 miles north of Milwaukee, arrested the Advocate Aurora Health pharmacist last week following an investigation...
Harvard professor believes asteroid was actually old alien techVideo
It would appear that one man’s rock is another alien’s outdated cellphone. Avi Loeb, an Israeli-American theoretical physicist and professor at Harvard University, theorizes in his upcoming book “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) that a rock that entered our solar system in September...
California’s covid-19 numbers grow with hospitals swamped
LOS ANGELES — California’s coronavirus death toll has topped 26,500 and confirmed cases have neared 2.4 million since the pandemic began, health officials said. The state’s swamped hospitals held more than 22,000 covid-19 patients, including nearly 4,700 in intensive care units, the Department of Public Health said Monday. Gov. Gavin...
France charges an alleged organizer of giant New Year’s rave
PARIS — An alleged organizer of an illegal New Year’s Eve rave that at least 2,500 people attended for more than a day in western France was charged Monday with endangering lives amid a coronavirus curfew and other restrictions. The 22-year-old man also faced property damage and drug charges among...
Amazon’s Bezos tops list of richest charitable gifts in 2020
SILVER SPRING, Md. — The world’s richest person made the single-largest charitable contribution in 2020, according to The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s annual list of top donations, a $10 billion gift that is intended to help fight climate change. Amazon’s founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, whose “real-time” worth Forbes magazine estimates...
Saudi Arabia to lift Qatar embargo, open airspace and border
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Kuwait’s foreign ministry on Monday announced that Saudi Arabia will lift a years-long embargo on Qatar, opening its air and land borders in the first steps toward ending the Gulf crisis. The state-run Kuwait News Agency reported the announcement, saying that Saudi Arabia would open...
Kentucky officers in Breonna Taylor face termination hearing
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Two Kentucky police detectives involved in the raid that left Breonna Taylor dead, including the one who shot her, were scheduled Monday to face a termination hearing. Detectives Myles Cosgrove and Joshua Jaynes received notice last week from Louisville Police interim Chief Yvette Gentry that she intends...
Judge weighing disputed ballots in undecided N.Y. House race
ALBANY, N.Y. — A judge in upstate New York on Monday was reviewing 2,500 challenged ballots that could determine the winner of the nation’s last undecided U.S. House race. Entering the new year, former U.S. Rep. Claudia Tenney, a Republican, had a 29-vote lead over the incumbent Democrat, U.S. Rep....
Pa. will get more covid vaccine this week, availability to general public still ‘months’ away
Thousands more doses of covid-19 vaccines are set to arrive in Pennsylvania this week, with more than half reserved for health workers awaiting their second dose of the two-dose vaccination, Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine said Monday. So far, 135,044 people across the state have received the vaccine in...
Tanya Roberts, Bond girl and ‘’70s Show’ star, hospitalized
LOS ANGELES — Tanya Roberts, who captivated James Bond in “A View to a Kill” and later played Midge Pinciotti in the sitcom “That ’70s Show,” has been hospitalized after falling at her home. The actor had mistakenly been reported dead by her publicist earlier Monday. Roberts’ publicist Mike Pingel...
Pennsylvania reports 7,800 more covid cases, 122 deaths over 2 days
The Pennsylvania Department of Health’s latest report, released Monday, shows another 7,805 more cases of covid-19 over the past two days. While still a high number of cases, the latest figures were nearly 10% less than were reported a week ago (8,663). Officials said the case counts are atypically low...
Vaccination campaign picks up speed around the world
The campaign to vanquish the coronavirus is picking up speed, with Britain beginning to dispense the second vaccine in its arsenal Monday. But authorities in France and elsewhere in Europe are coming under fire for slow rollouts and delays. In the U.S., meanwhile, government officials reported that vaccinations have accelerated...
Lava spatters, flows inside crater of Hawaii volcano
HONOLULU — Lava spattered and flowed over the weekend inside the crater of a Hawaii volcano that began erupting in December. The Hawaiian Volcano Observatory said the lava is confined to the summit crater of Kilauea, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported Sunday. The eruption began Dec. 20 within Hawaii Volcanoes National...
