June 22, 2021 4:10 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – A government watchdog says that deaths among Medicare patients in nursing homes soared by 32% last year amid the coronavirus pandemic. The Department of Health and Human Services inspector general found two devastating spikes eight months apart in the most comprehensive look yet at COVID-19’s toll among its most vulnerable victims. Investigators say there were more than 169,000 additional deaths last year among Medicare recipients in nursing homes. Also, cases and deaths among Asian patients tracked the more severe impacts seen among Blacks and Latinos. Indeed, Asian Medicare enrollees in nursing homes saw the highest increase in death rates, with 27% dying in 2020.
June 22, 2021 3:16 am
(AP) – A statewide task force has found that Pennsylvania locks up far too many first-time and low-level youth offenders. The bipartisan task force says black youth in particular are disproportionately yanked from their homes and prosecuted as adults. The group says reforms are urgently needed to make the state’s juvenile justice system more fair and more effective. The task force included state lawmakers, Wolf administration officials, local officials and others. It released a plan on Tuesday to reduce the population of young people in residential facilities by nearly 40% in five years.
June 21, 2021 4:28 am
A Washington man was killed in a one-vehicle crash Sunday morning in Amwell Township. The Washington County Coroner’s office says Hunter Hickle, 20 was traveling south on Waynesburg Road when his vehicle left the roadway and struck a tree. He was not wearing a seatbelt. A cause and manner of death are pending. State Police continue to investigate.
June 21, 2021 4:21 am
UNDATED (AP) – The U.S. is reaching a pair of encouraging milestones as the COVID-19 pandemic’s grip on the nation continues to loosen. COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. have dipped below 300 a day for the first time since the outbreak’s early days in March 2020. Meanwhile, nearly 150 million Americans are fully vaccinated against the coronavirus. COVID-19 was the third leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2020, behind heart disease and cancer. Now, however, data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests that more Americans are dying every day from accidents, chronic lower respiratory diseases, strokes or Alzheimer’s disease than COVID-19.
June 21, 2021 4:19 am
EDEN, N.C. (AP) – Local officials in North Carolina say the body of a fourth tuber has been found in a river following a deadly accident in which a family on a recreational float went over a dam. The Rockingham County Sheriff’s Office confirmed in a news release Sunday that 7-year-old Isiah Crawford was the person who was found in the Dan River. The search continued for the last remaining tuber, 35-year-old Teresa Villano. The accident occurred Wednesday night when a group of nine people floated down the river on inflatable tubes and went over a dam. Four people were rescued Thursday, while three tubers’ bodies were found that day. Experts say that low-head dams are known for trapping people in a powerful current.
June 21, 2021 4:17 am
CIUDAD VICTORIA, Mexico (AP) – Fear has invaded the Mexican border city of Reynosa after gunmen in vehicles killed 14 people, including taxis drivers, workers and a nursing student, and security forces responded with operations that left four suspects dead. While this city across the border from McAllen, Texas is used to cartel violence as a key trafficking point, the 14 victims in Saturday’s attacks appeared to be what Tamaulipas Gov. Francisco García Cabeza de Vaca called “innocent citizens.” Local businessman Misael Chavarria Garza said many businesses closed early after the attacks. On Sunday, he said there was “a feeling of anger because now crime has happened to innocent people.”
June 21, 2021 4:16 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – The Supreme Court has decided unanimously that the NCAA cannot enforce rules limiting education-related benefits that colleges offer to student athletes – things like computers and paid internships. Monday’s ruling will help determine whether schools decide to offer athletes tens of thousands of dollars in those benefits for things including tutoring, study abroad programs and graduate scholarships. The case doesn’t decide whether students can be paid salaries. Under current NCAA rules, students cannot be paid, and the scholarship money colleges can offer is capped at the cost of attending the school. The NCAA had defended its rules as necessary to preserve the amateur nature of college sports.
June 21, 2021 4:16 am
ATLANTA (AP) – Tropical Depression Claudette is regaining strength and expected to return to tropical storm status as it nears the coasts of North and South Carolina. The system had maximum sustained winds of 35 mph early Monday, less than two days after Claudette was blamed for 13 deaths in Alabama. A multi-vehicle crash killed eight children who were riding in a van for a youth home for abused or neglected kids. The wreck also claimed the lives of a Tennessee man and his infant daughter. Separately, a tree fell on a home killing an adult and a toddler, and a woman whose car ran off the road into a swollen creek died in north Alabama.
June 20, 2021 7:59 am
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — The Department of Veterans Affairs is moving to offer transgender veterans gender confirmation surgery, Secretary Denis McDonough announced at a Pride Month event in Orlando Saturday. McDonough said in prepared remarks that the move was “the right thing to do,” and that it was part of an effort to overcome a “dark history” of discrimination against LGBTQ service members. The move is just the first step in what’s likely to be a yearslong federal rulemaking process to expand VA health benefits to cover the surgery, but McDonough said the VA will use the time to “develop capacity to meet the surgical needs” of transgender veterans. The decision, he said, will allow “transgender vets to go through the full gender confirmation process with VA by their side.” McDonough also referenced what he said were higher rates of mental illness and suicidal thoughts among LGBTQ veterans, and a fear of discrimination that prevents those veterans from seeking care.
June 20, 2021 7:57 am
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — The U.S. sent 2.5 million doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine to Taiwan on Sunday, tripling an earlier pledge in a donation with both public health and geopolitical meaning. The shipment arrived on a China Airlines cargo plane that had left Memphis the previous day. Health Minister Chen Shih-chung and Brent Christensen, the top U.S. official in Taiwan, were among those who welcomed the plane on the tarmac at the airport outside of the capital, Taipei. Chen said that America was showing its friendship as Taiwan faces its most severe outbreak. “When I saw these vaccines coming down the plane, I was really touched,” he said over the noise inside a building where the boxes of vaccines, some with U.S. flags on them, had been brought on wheeled dollies. Taiwan, which had been relatively unscathed by the virus, has been caught off guard by a surge in new cases since May and is now scrambling to get vaccines. The COVID-19 death toll on the island of 24 million people has jumped to 549, from only about a dozen prior to the outbreak. The U.S. donation also signals its support for Taiwan in the face of growing pressure from China, which claims the self-governing island off its east coast as its territory. The U.S. does not have formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan under what is known as the one-China policy, but is legally bound by its own laws to ensure that Taiwan can defend itself.
