July 13, 2021 4:10 am
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) – The West Virginia Department of Education has a new program to encourage students, teachers and staff to get their COVID-19 vaccinations. The department says the “I Got Vaxxed Competition” will award $5,000 each to a high school, a middle school and an elementary school for having the highest percentage of eligible people vaccinated. The winners will be announced the week of Oct. 3. School participation is voluntary. Students ages 12 and older and all teachers and staff are eligible for the vaccine.
July 13, 2021 4:08 am
PHILADELPHIA (AP) – President Joe Biden is declaring that preserving voting rights is “a test of our time” as he urges passage of federal legislation to combat efforts by Republican-led state legislatures to restrict access to ballots. Biden laid out what the White House called “the moral case” for voting rights in a speech in Philadelphia Tuesday afternoon. Meanwhile, Democratic Texas state legislators took dramatic action to stymie their state’s latest effort in a nationwide Republican push to tighten ballot restrictions. They took flight to Washington to keep the Texas Legislature from a quorum that would allow legislative action. (Photo: AP)
July 13, 2021 4:05 am
A provision from a proposed library manual attracted both concern and opposition from Peters Township’s council. The manual formally establishes library policies, such as tutoring and using study rooms, alongside any additional provisions. Under one of the provisions, alcohol such as beer and wine, may be served in the township library on certain occasions. These events will be limited to mostly fundraising meetings and must be approved by library director Lacey Love. Council members questioned the enforcement and management of these social events. Member Frank Arcuri remarked that there are “several members of council who don’t think it’s appropriate, I was one of them”. “Some of us don’t believe that you should have alcohol, even if it’s limited to beer and wine, in public places and programs”, said Arcuri. While Arcuri expressed hope in the library staff’s management of these events, Robert Lewis was the only council member who openly rejected the manual’s adoption.
July 12, 2021 5:38 pm
HAVANA (AP) – Large contingents of Cuban police are patrolling the capital of Havana following rare protests around the island nation against food shortages and high prices amid the coronavirus crisis. Cuba’s president says the demonstrations were stirred up on social media by Cuban Americans in the United States. Many young people took part in the Sunday protests in Havana, which disrupted traffic until police moved in after several hours and broke up the march when a few protesters threw rocks. That demonstration and others in communities around the tightly controlled country marked some of the biggest displays of anti-government sentiment in decades, and authorities appeared determined to put a stop to it. (Photo: Yahoo)
July 12, 2021 5:34 pm
(AP) – The U.S. has seen a string of COVID-19 outbreaks tied to summer camps in recent weeks in places such as Texas, Illinois, Florida, Missouri and Kansas, offering what some fear could be a preview of the upcoming school year. The clusters have come as the number of confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the U.S. has reversed course, surging more than 60% over the past two weeks from an average of about 12,000 a day to about 19,500. The rise in many places has been blamed on too many unvaccinated people and the highly contagious delta variant.
July 12, 2021 3:39 pm
(WPXI) – Police in Miami-Dade, Fla. have identified nine additional victims who lost their lives in the Champlain Towers South condo collapse, including Pittsburgh native Nicole Doran-Manishirov. The remains of Doran-Manishirov, 43, were recovered Friday and positively identified Monday. She is a graduate of South Park High School and was a physician’s assistant. She and her husband, Ruslan Manishirov, were just married in May. Authorities recovered his body last Wednesday. Meanwhile, The death toll has climbed to 94. Officials said Monday that 22 people remain unaccounted for. Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said officials are stepping up security at the site to ensure that recovery crews can preserve personal items for family members of the victims. Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said a new round of COVID-19 tests have been administered to local officials after a vaccinated Miami-Dade county commissioner who helped other officials in Surfside announced that he and his chief of staff tested positive for the virus Sunday. She said all rapid tests have come back negative.
July 12, 2021 3:28 pm
LONDON (AP) – British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has confirmed that all remaining lockdown restrictions in England will be lifted in a week despite a sharp rise in coronavirus cases. Johnson said it was “the right moment to proceed” as schools break up for the summer vacation, but urged people to “proceed with caution.” He said although risks of the pandemic remain, legal restrictions will be replaced by a recommendation that people wear masks in crowded places and on public transport. Nightclubs and other venues with crowds should use vaccine passports for entry “as a matter of social responsibility.” Authorities say Britain’s successful vaccine rollout means that nine out of 10 adults in the U.K. now have antibodies against the virus.
July 12, 2021 4:19 am
DETROIT (AP) – A federal judge is considering whether to order financial penalties and other sanctions against some of former President Donald Trump’s lawyers. They had signed onto a lawsuit last year challenging Michigan’s election results. The lawsuit alleging fraud was voluntarily dropped after a judge found nothing but “speculation and conjecture” that votes for Trump somehow were destroyed. Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, the city of Detroit and other officials now want the plaintiffs and their lawyers to face the consequences of pursuing what they call frivolous claims. They include Trump lawyer-allies Sidney Powell of Dallas and L. Lin Wood of Atlanta. Judge Linda Parker in Detroit is holding a hearing by videoconference Monday.
July 12, 2021 4:18 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – U.S. health officials say Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine may pose a “small possible risk” of a rare but potentially dangerous neurological reaction. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday that it has received reports of 100 people who got the shot developing an immune system disorder that can causes muscle weakness and occasionally paralysis. The reports represent a tiny fraction of the nearly 13 million Americans who have received the one-dose vaccine. The government said the vaccines most used in the U.S., made by Pfizer and Moderna, show no risk of the disorder.
July 12, 2021 4:16 am
Firefighters working in searing heat struggled to contain the largest wildfire in California this year while state power operators urged people to conserve energy after a huge wildfire in neighboring Oregon disrupted the flow of electricity from three major transmission lines. A large swath of the West baked during the weekend in triple-digit temperatures that were expected to continue into the start of the work week. Managers of California’s power grid issued a five-hour “flex alert” starting at 4 p.m. Monday and asked consumers to “conserve as much electricity as possible” to avoid outages. California’s largest fire is burning near the Nevada border north of Lake Tahoe and grew by a third on Sunday.
