November 20, 2020 4:14 am
ATLANTA (AP) – Georgia’s top elections official has certified results showing Democrat Joe Biden won the presidential race in the state. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger certified the results Friday after a hand count of ballots affirmed Biden’s lead over Republican President Donald Trump. Raffensperger said during a news conference Friday that he believes the numbers his office has presented are correct. He says he’s a proud Trump supporter but he’s also an engineer who lives by the motto that “numbers don’t lie.” Now, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp has until 5 p.m. Saturday to certify the state’s slate of 16 presidential electors.
November 20, 2020 4:12 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – President-elect Joe Biden has a birthday Friday and is turning 78. In exactly two months, he’ll take the reins of a politically fractured nation facing the worst public health crisis in a century, high unemployment and a reckoning on racial injustice. As he wrestles with those issues, Biden will be attempting to accomplish another feat: demonstrating to Americans that age is but a number. Biden will enter office as the oldest president in the nation’s history, displacing Ronald Reagan, who left the White House in 1989, when he was 77 years and 349 days old.
November 20, 2020 4:10 am
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) – California is imposing a nighttime curfew as its coronavirus figures soar but it will lean heavily on voluntary compliance and sheriffs of some counties say they won’t enforce it. The stay-at-home order for 41 counties bars nonessential travel and closes nonessential businesses from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. starting Saturday. The order will last until Dec. 21 and comes as a surge in COVID-19 cases threatens to overwhelm the health care system. The curfew covers 94% of the state’s nearly 40 million residents. But sheriffs and some lawmakers in at least four counties say they won’t enforce the curfew.
November 20, 2020 4:09 am
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) – The U.S. government has executed a man who kidnapped and raped a 16-year-old Texas girl before dousing her with gasoline and burying her alive. Orlando Hall is the eighth federal inmate put to death this year after a nearly two-decade hiatus. Hall died by injection Thursday at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. His attorneys cited concerns that Hall, who was Black, was sentenced on the recommendation of an all-white jury. The Trump administration renewed federal executions this year. Only three federal inmates had been executed in the previous 56 years. Hall was convicted in the abduction and death of Lisa Rene in 1994.
November 20, 2020 4:07 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – Pennsylvania’s Legislature is set to vote on an $11 billion no-new-taxes spending package to carry state government through the rest of the fiscal year and fill a multibillion-dollar deficit inflicted by the pandemic. The legislation emerged Thursday from closed-door talks as lawmakers rush to wrap up their two-year session. Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, earlier this fall asked the Republican-controlled Legislature for another $10 billion in spending to round out the fiscal year. That was after lawmakers approved a piecemeal $25.8 billion budget in May. To close the deficit, lawmakers are using more than $3 billion in federal pandemic aid and transferring more than $500 million from off-budget state accounts. House and Senate floor votes are possible Friday.
November 20, 2020 4:05 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – Republicans in the Pennsylvania House are getting a review of election procedures despite opposition from Democrats. The chamber voted Thursday for a resolution directing the Legislative Budget and Finance Committee to conduct the study and report back by early February. Republicans say they’re responding to constituents who were confused by some of the procedures as the state conducted a high-turnout election during a pandemic and under greatly expanded mail-in voting eligibility. Democratic arguments that the measure should be revised or isn’t constitutional were defeated by the GOP majority.
November 20, 2020 4:02 am
The Center for Coalfield Justice held a virtual town hall meeting to update people who are concerned about rare cancers and pediatric cancers about progress with studies by the Pennsylvania Department of Health. Heaven Sensky, a community organizer with the Center stated that progress has been minimal due to the coronavirus pandemic and a seemingly lack of interest from the Department of Health. Organizers want health officials to look into effects on health due to improper treatment and disposal of radioactive fracking waste. Department of Health officials were invited to attend the meeting but all declined invitations. A panel of experts updated the community on their research. Scientific Journalist Justin Nobel went into great detail of his studies of the effects of radioactive waste from fracking. He detailed several avenues of how radioactivity can enter the environment. Dr. Ned Ketyer from the Physicians for Social Responsibility reported on health symptoms and the way cancers develop. He also touched on the June 2020 Pennsylvania grand jury report finding acts of criminal negligence throughout the fracking industry and in the agencies tasked with monitoring public health. Sensky asked that anyone with concerns about their health or home environment contact the Center for Coalfield Justice and they will assist with your questions.
November 20, 2020 2:04 am
NEW YORK (AP) – Jan Morris, the celebrated journalist, historian, world traveler and fiction writer who became a pioneer of the transgender movement, has died at 94. Her literary representative, United Agents, says Morris died in Wales on Friday morning. Her agent Sophie Scard confirmed her death. The British author lived as James Morris until the early 1970s, when she underwent surgery at a clinic in Casablanca and renamed herself Jan Morris. Morris was a prolific and accomplished author and journalist who wrote dozens of books in a variety of genres. Her best-selling memoir “Conundrum,” which came out in 1974, continued the path of such earlier works as Christine Jorgensen’s “A Personal Autobiography” in presenting her decision as natural and liberating.
November 20, 2020 2:03 am
UNDATED (AP) – Another major movie theater chain has struck a deal with Universal Pictures to allow for shorter exclusive theatrical windows. Canada’s Cineplex has agreed on a multiyear “dynamic window” agreement, the film exhibitor and Universal Filmed Entertainment Group said Friday. Like the deal struck with Cinemark earlier this week and AMC Theaters before that, Universal and Focus Features films will have at least three weeks of theatrical exclusivity before hitting premium video on demand services. Titles that have an opening weekend of $50 million or more in North American theaters will be guaranteed at least five weeks in theaters.
November 19, 2020 9:52 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – The number of Americans seeking unemployment aid rose last week to 742,000, the first increase in five weeks and a sign that the resurgent viral outbreak is likely slowing the economy and forcing more companies to cut jobs. The Labor Department’s report Thursday showed that applications for benefits rose from 711,000 in the previous week. Claims had soared to 6.9 million in March when the pandemic first intensified. Before the pandemic, applications typically hovered about 225,000 a week. The economy’s modest recovery is increasingly at risk, with newly confirmed daily infections in the United States having exploded 80% over the past two weeks to the highest levels on record.
