Florida, butt of election jokes, believes system is ready
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Even if the presidential election hinges on a Florida recount like 20 years ago, hanging chads and butterfly ballots won’t be around to trip up voters and officials — changes to ballots, equipment and laws have made the Bush-Gore circus a relic never to be revisited,...
Wisconsin Republican Party says hackers stole $2.3 million
MADISON, Wis. — Hackers have stolen $2.3 million from the Wisconsin Republican Party’s account that was being used to help reelect President Donald Trump in the key battleground state, the party’s chairman told The Associated Press on Thursday. The party noticed the suspicious activity on Oct. 22 and contacted the...
Zeta batters Southeast after swamping Gulf Coast; 6 deadVideo
NEW ORLEANS — Zeta sped across the Southeast on Thursday, leaving a trail of damage and more than 2.6 million homes and businesses without power in Atlanta and beyond after pounding New Orleans with winds and water that splintered homes and were blamed for at least six deaths. A Category...
French prosecutor: Nice killer of 3 got to France from ItalyVideo
PARIS — A man armed with a knife attacked people inside a French church and killed three Thursday, prompting the government to raise its security alert to the maximum level hours before a nationwide coronavirus lockdown. The attack in Mediterranean city of Nice was the third in two months that...
Biden lead holds steady at 6 points in latest Franklin & Marshall College Poll
Former vice president Joe Biden continued to hold a six-point lead among likely voters in Pennsylvania last week as the number of undecided voters declined, a poll Franklin & Marshall College Poll found. The poll of 558 likely Pennsylvania voters, which was conducted from Oct. 19-25, contained a margin of...
Space Force’s second-in-command tests positive for covid-19
The second-highest ranking for the recently formed U.S. Space Force has tested positive for covid-19, the U.S. Air Force said late Wednesday in a statement. Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said the vice chief of space operations, Gen. David Thompson, took the test after learning that a family member with...
Postal Service ordered to increase late trips for election mail
WASHINGTON — Postmaster General Louis DeJoy was ordered to immediately begin expanding mail delivery with extra trips and later deliveries after the U.S. Postal Service failed to improve performance less than a week before the election. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan late Tuesday in Washington granted an emergency request to...
Supreme Court leaves North Carolina absentee ballot deadline at Nov. 12
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court will allow absentee ballots in North Carolina to be received and counted up to nine days after Election Day, in a win for Democrats. The justices, by a 5-3 vote Wednesday, refused to disturb a decision by the State Board of Elections to lengthen the...
Ivanka Trump near Portersville: U.S. ‘much more capable of combating this virus as we wait for the vaccine’Video
The United States and its public health leaders are “much more capable” of confronting the next waves of coronavirus cases than they were when covid-19 first struck last spring, Ivanka Trump said while stumping for her father, President Donald Trump, Wednesday on a Lawrence County farm. Ivanka Trump, 38, whose...
Hurricane Zeta hammers Gulf Coast with rain, wind, outagesVideo
NEW ORLEANS — Hurricane Zeta slammed into the storm-weary Gulf Coast on Wednesday, pelting the New Orleans metro area with rain and howling winds that ripped apart buildings, knocked out power to thousands and threatened to push up to 9 feet of sea water inland in a region already pounded...
Justices deny fast, new look at Pennsylvania ballot deadline
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday said it would not grant a quick, pre-election review to a new Republican appeal to exclude absentee ballots received after Election Day in the presidential battleground state of Pennsylvania, although it remained unclear whether those ballots will ultimately be counted. The court’s order...
Gang member who says he beat up R. Kelly sentenced in deaths
HAMMOND, Ind. — A convicted gang member who said he beat up jailed R&B singer R. Kelly in a Chicago cell in August has been sentenced to life in prison for a racketeering conviction that involved two 1999 murders. A federal judge in Hammond, Ind., sentenced Jeremiah Farmer, 39, on...
Florida man charged with changing governor’s voting address
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis couldn’t initially cast his ballot this week because someone illegally changed his address online, a complication that resulted in a suspect’s arrest on felony charges and raised questions about the security of the state’s online registration system. DeSantis went to an early...
Social media CEOs get earful on bias, warning of new limits
WASHINGTON — With next week’s election looming, the CEOs of Twitter, Facebook and Google received a hectoring from Republicans at a Senate hearing Wednesday for alleged anti-conservative bias in the companies’ social media platforms — and were warned of coming restrictions from Congress. Lawmakers of both parties, citing the companies’...
60 charged in $300M phone scam targeting elderly victims
MINNEAPOLIS — Sixty people have been charged in a widespread magazine telemarketing scam that authorities say netted $300 million from more than 150,000 elderly and vulnerable people nationwide, the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota announced Wednesday. U.S. Attorney Erica MacDonald called the scam the largest elder fraud scheme in the...
Justice Department charges 8 in Chinese harassment plot in U.S.Video
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has charged eight people with working on behalf of the Chinese government in a pressure campaign aimed at coercing a New Jersey man who was wanted by Beijing to return to China to face charges, officials said Wednesday. The defendants participated in a Chinese government...
Police: 7 taken to hospitals after Trump Omaha airport rally
OMAHA, Neb. — At least seven people were taken to hospitals after an Omaha airport rally for President Donald Trump that drew thousands, many of whom were left stranded miles from their parked cars in freezing weather. Omaha police said in a written statement that first responders dealt with 30...
Former DHS official says he wrote ‘Anonymous’ Trump critique
WASHINGTON —A former Trump administration official who penned a scathing anti-Trump op-ed and book under the pen name “Anonymous” revealed himself Wednesday as a former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security. The official, Miles Taylor, said in a tweet six days before Election Day that Donald Trump...
Germany, France look to more limits to curb rebounding virus
BERLIN — French President Emmanuel Macron has announced a second lockdown in France from Friday, to try to combat a strong resurgence of the coronavirus. With over 520 deaths recorded Tuesday, the French leader said that a new nationwide lockdown would be the only possible way to successfully fight covid-19....
Breonna Taylor grand jurors: Louisville officers deserved more chargesVideo
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A Kentucky man who served on the Breonna Taylor grand jury said he felt police actions on the night of her death were “criminal” but grand jurors were not given the chance to explore charges related to her shooting death by officers. Two grand jurors, one a...
Pennsylvanians urged to drop off mail-in ballots in person
HARRISBURG — With six days until Election Day, Pennsylvania’s top elections official on Wednesday urged voters in the presidential battleground state who have a mail-in ballot to drop it off in person rather than mail it. In addition to concerns over Postal Service delays, litigation in front of the U.S....
What is ‘ballot harvesting,’ and who can and can’t deliver your mail ballot in Pa.
Spotlight PA is an independent, non-partisan newsroom powered by The Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with PennLive/The Patriot-News, TribLIVE/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and WITF Public Media. Sign up for our free newsletters. This article is made possible through Votebeat, a nonpartisan reporting project covering local election integrity and voting access. HARRISBURG — On...
German officials agree on partial lockdown to curb virus
BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel says German officials have agreed to a four-week shutdown of restaurants, bars, cinemas, theaters and other leisure facilities in a bid to curb a sharp rise in coronavirus infections. Merkel and the country’s 16 state governors, who are responsible for imposing and easing restrictions, agreed...
All about Section 230, a rule that made the modern internet
OAKLAND, Calif. — Twenty-six words tucked into a 1996 law overhauling telecommunications have allowed companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google to grow into the giants they are today. Those are the words President Donald Trump’s administration has challenged directly via executive order, one that would strip those protections if online...
Lockdowns, business rollbacks threatened amid surging virus
The alarming surge in coronavirus cases in Europe and the U.S. is wiping out months of progress against the scourge on two continents, prompting new business restrictions, raising the threat of another round of large-scale lockdowns and sending a shudder through financial markets. “We are deep in the second wave,”...
