May 29, 2020 4:05 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump is calling protesters in Minneapolis “thugs” and vowing that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Trump tweeted as violence boiled over Thursday night, with protesters torching a police station. Trump and his allies had taken a very different tone with the in-custody death of a black man in Minneapolis compared with past instances of police brutality involving African Americans, questioning the officers and sympathizing with the man who died. Trump said earlier Thursday that he felt “very, very badly” about George Floyd’s death, calling it “a very shocking sight.”
May 29, 2020 4:03 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – Some county and state officials are warning that a flood of mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania will create problems in Tuesday’s primary election that must be fixed before November’s presidential election. For one, they are warning that there will be no way to produce timely election results in November unless the law changes. Even in Tuesday’s relatively low turnout primary election, election-night results might be unlikely in closely contested races. Of more immediate concern is the question of whether voters can mail their ballots back to county election offices in time to be counted in Tuesday’s primary election.
May 28, 2020 4:13 pm
BOSTON (AP) – The Boston Marathon has been canceled for the first time in its 124-year history. Organizers said Thursday that they instead will have a “virtual event” in which participants who verify that they ran 26.2 miles on their own will receive their finisher’s medal. The race had originally been scheduled for April 20 before being postponed for five months because of the coronavirus pandemic. The longest-running annual marathon in the world, the Boston Marathon began in 1897.
May 28, 2020 8:45 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – Roughly 2.1 million people applied for U.S. unemployment benefits last week, a sign that companies are still slashing jobs in the face of a deep recession even as more businesses reopen and rehire some laid-off employees. About 41 million people have now applied for aid since the virus outbreak intensified in March, though not all of them are still unemployed. The Labor Department’s report Thursday includes a count of all the people now receiving unemployment aid: 21 million. That is a rough measure of the number of unemployed Americans. áThe national jobless rate was 14.7% in April, the highest since the Great Depression.
May 28, 2020 4:05 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump is escalating his war on social media companies, signing an executive order challenging the liability protections that have served as a bedrock for unfettered speech on the internet. He declared he was “fed up” with what he considers bias as prepared to sign the order on Thursday. Still, the move appears to be more about politics than substance, as the president aims to rally supporters after he lashed out at Twitter for applying fact checks to two of his tweets. Legal experts have expressed doubts Trump can do much by himself, without an act of Congress. And the order is certain to face legal challenges.
May 28, 2020 4:03 am
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) – The U.S. has surpassed a jarring milestone in the coronavirus pandemic: 100,000 deaths. That number Wednesday is the best estimate and most assuredly an undercount. But it represents the stark reality that more Americans have died from the virus than from the Vietnam and Korea wars combined. According to a tally by Johns Hopkins University, the virus has infected more than 5.6 million people worldwide and killed over 350,000. The U.S. has the most infections and deaths by far. Early on, President Donald Trump downplayed the severity of the coronavirus and predicted the country wouldn’t reach this death toll.
May 28, 2020 4:02 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – The House has passed an overwhelmingly bipartisan measure to modify a new “paycheck protection” program for businesses that have suffered COVID-related losses. It would give businesses more flexibility to use federal subsidies for other business costs and extend the program for four additional months. Senate passage is likely next week. But talks on a much bigger measure to inject more than $3 trillion more into the economy remain stalled. The Paycheck Protection Program required businesses to spend their loan money within an eight-week window to get the loans forgiven. The new measure gives business owners 24 weeks to spend the federal aid.
May 28, 2020 4:01 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – The nation’s capital will begin a gradual reopening Friday, even as Mayor Muriel Bowser warns it probably will result in more coronavirus infections. Restaurants will be permitted to seat guests outdoors. Barbers and hair salons will open. But nail parlors and public playgrounds will remain closed. Nonessential businesses will be allowed to offer curbside or front-door pickup services. Golf courses and tennis courts will reopen and gatherings of up to 10 people will be permitted. Bowser says the public health emergency she declared in March will remain in place.
May 28, 2020 3:58 am
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) – Connecticut State Police say a college student wanted for two slayings in Connecticut has been captured in Maryland. Peter Manfredonia had been the subject of a six-day search involving several police agencies and the FBI. Connecticut State Police say the University of Connecticut senior killed a 62-year-old man and wounded another in northeastern Connecticut on Friday and killed a high school classmate in Derby on Sunday before abducting the man’s girlfriend and driving to New Jersey. Police say Manfredonia was found in the area of a truck stop in Hagerstown, Maryland. A lawyer for the suspect’s family, Michael Dolan, said they were relieved the search had ended peacefully.
May 28, 2020 3:57 am
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) – Protests rocked Minneapolis for the second straight night Wednesday after a man’s death in police custody. One person was killed in what police were investigating as a homicide amidst violence that included looting and setting fires. The protests began outside the police precinct in the part of the city where 46-year-old George Floyd died on Memorial Day. Four Minneapolis officers were fired after video footage showed one of them kneeling on the handcuffed Floyd’s neck until he became unresponsive. News helicopter footage showed several nearby stores being looted as police encircled the precinct house and made no evident move to intervene.
