August 24, 2020 4:22 am
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) – The Republican Party has formally nominated President Donald Trump for another term. Monday’s state-by-state voting was one of the first acts of a GOP convention that has been dramatically scaled down to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Trump has sought to minimize the toll of the pandemic, but its impact was evident as proceedings began in Charlotte. Instead of the thousands of people who were expected to converge on the city for a week-long extravaganza, just 336 delegates participated in a roll-call vote from a Charlotte Convention Center ballroom. After Trump’s renomination, much of the action will shift to Washington, where Republicans will spend the rest of the week trying to convince the American people that the president deserves a second term.
August 24, 2020 4:20 am
NEW ORLEANS (AP) – Tropical Storm Marco is falling apart as it nears the Louisiana coast, but Laura is just behind it, and forecasters now fear it could become a major hurricane. Marco weakened from a hurricane, but the system is causing flooding and setting the stage for a supercharged Laura to hit the coast as a possible Category 3 storm. People in the path of the weather are evacuating to shelters that are set up with the coronavirus pandemic in mind. Laura killed 11 people in the Caribbean, where it triggered power outages and flooding across the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
August 24, 2020 4:20 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – One of President Donald Trump’s most influential and longest-serving advisers, Kellyanne Conway, says she will be leaving the White House at the end of the month. Conway was Trump’s campaign manager during the stretch run of the 2016 race, and she was the first woman to successfully steer a White House bid. She then became a senior counselor to the president. Conway cites a need to spend time with her four children in a resignation letter she posted Sunday night.
August 24, 2020 4:18 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump says without evidence that the coronavirus is fading, a claim he has been making for months. Trump spoke to several hundred people at an airport in Fletcher after addressing delegates at the Republican National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. Trump says the nation would “will have the vaccines very soon, but it’s going to be fading, and it is starting to fade.” The U.S. coronavirus death toll and case count have been climbing for months. More than 176,000 Americans have now died of the coronavirus, by far more than any other country.
August 24, 2020 4:16 am
PITTSBURGH (AP) – A western Pennsylvania woman convicted in the shooting death of an FBI agent during pre-dawn drug raid at her home a dozen years ago is seeking release from prison, citing the coronavirus. The Tribune-Review reports that Christina Korbe is currently scheduled for release in May 2022. She was sentenced to 15 years on voluntary manslaughter and a firearms pleas in the November 2008 death of Special Agent Samuel Hicks. Her attorney said she contracted COVID-19 in March and is still recovering, and notes that she will be eligible for release to a halfway house in less than a year. The U.S. Attorney’s office declined comment.
August 24, 2020 4:15 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – A federal judge in Pennsylvania is halting a high-profile election case, telling President Donald Trump’s campaign that its claims must wait, at least until October, for state courts in the presidential battleground to clear up crucial fights over collecting and counting mail-in ballots. U.S. District Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan on Sunday put the case on hold until Oct. 5. Opponents had argued that matters of state law should be left to state courts to interpret. Opponents say the Trump campaign is trying to make it more difficult for people in Pennsylvania to vote safely during the pandemic. Trump’s campaign claims Pennsylvania election officials are jeopardizing election security ahead of the Nov. 3 election.
August 24, 2020 2:01 am
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (WPXI) — Days ahead of the start of the fall semester at Penn State University, 148 students have already tested positive for COVID-19 and school officials are awaiting results from over 5,000 more tests. And an additional 7,000 tests haven’t even been submitted yet. According to a news release, 17,042 students from “areas with a high prevalence of coronavirus” were required to be tested before classes started. Students who have tested positive were told to stay at home to isolate for 10 days and until they could be cleared by a medical professional before returning to the main campus in State College. University officials said at least 1% of students, faculty and staff would be randomly tested each day as part of the plan to monitor the spread of coronavirus.
August 23, 2020 8:15 am
WASHINGTON (AP) — With heated debate over mail delays, the House approved legislation in a rare Saturday session that would reverse recent changes in U.S. Postal Service operations and send $25 billion to shore up the agency ahead of the November election. Speaker Nancy Pelosi recalled lawmakers to Washington over objections from Republicans dismissing the action as a stunt. President Donald Trump urged a no vote, including in a Saturday tweet, railing against mail-in ballots expected to surge in the COVID-19 crisis. He has said he wants to block extra funds to the Postal Service. The daylong session came as an uproar over mail disruptions puts the Postal Service at the center of the nation’s tumultuous election year, with Americans rallying around one of the nation’s oldest and more popular institutions. Millions of people are expected to opt for mail-in ballots to avoid polling places during the coronavirus pandemic.
August 23, 2020 8:13 am
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Schools across the United States are facing shortages and long delays, of up to several months, in getting this year’s most crucial back-to-school supplies: the laptops and other equipment needed for online learning, an Associated Press investigation has found. The world’s three biggest computer companies, Lenovo, HP and Dell, have told school districts they have a shortage of nearly 5 million laptops, in some cases exacerbated by Trump administration sanctions on Chinese suppliers, according to interviews with over two dozen U.S. schools, districts in 15 states, suppliers, computer companies and industry analysts. As the school year begins virtually in many places because of the coronavirus, educators nationwide worry that computer shortfalls will compound the inequities — and the headaches for students, families and teachers.
August 23, 2020 8:10 am
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s older sister, a former federal judge, is heard sharply criticizing her brother in a series of recordings released Saturday, at one point saying of the president, “He has no principles.” Maryanne Trump Barry was secretly recorded by her niece, Mary Trump, who recently released a book denouncing the president, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.” Mary Trump said Saturday she made the recordings in 2018 and 2019. In one recording, Barry, 83, says she had heard a 2018 interview with her brother on Fox News in which he suggested that he would put her on the border to oversee cases of immigrant children separated from their parents.
