November 30, 2020 4:16 am
President-elect Joe Biden is expected in the coming days to name several of his most senior economic advisers. The group includes liberal economists and policy specialists who established their credentials during the previous two Democratic administrations. Biden is placing a premium on diversity in his selection of Cabinet nominees and key advisers. Two expected to be named are former Fed chair Janet Yellen as treasury secretary and Neera Tanden to head the Office of Management and Budget. Yellen would be the first female treasury secretary. Tanden would be the first woman of color and the first South Asian woman to lead the agency that oversees the federal budget.
November 30, 2020 4:11 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A Pennsylvania state senator abruptly left a West Wing meeting with President Donald Trump after being informed he had tested positive for the coronavirus, a person with direct knowledge of the meeting told The Associated Press on Sunday. Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano had gone to the White House last Wednesday with like-minded Republican state lawmakers shortly after a four-hour-plus public meeting that Mastriano helped host in Gettysburg — maskless — to discuss efforts to overturn president-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the state. Trump told Mastriano that White House medical personnel would take care of him, his son and his son’s friend, who were also there for the Oval Office meeting and tested positive. The meeting continued after Mastriano and the others left, the person said.
November 30, 2020 4:06 am
A strong weather system will move through our area over the next few days. As a result, a Winter Weather Advisory is in effect from one a.m. Tuesday until 7 a.m. Wednesday. In addition, a Winter Storm Warning will go into effect for Mercer and Venango Counties as well as the ridges of Westmoreland and Fayette Counties at 1 a.m. Tuesday and continue until 7 a.m. Wednesday. Snow will fall throughout the morning Tuesday and continuing into Tuesday night. Parts of Mercer and Venango Counties could see 5 to 7 inches of snow through Wednesday morning. The ridges could also see up to 7 inches in spots. Parts of Lawrence and Butler Counties could see 3 to 6 inches of snow. The rest of the area will range from 2 to 5 inches, depending on your location. Use caution if you’re traveling early Tuesday as there could be some icy spots. Air temperatures will be cooling below freezing and any moisture or snow on the road will make it slick. Along with the snow, the wind will be strong and could lead to blowing snow and reduced visibility with wind gusts around 30 mph.
November 30, 2020 2:44 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania’s highest court on Saturday night threw out a lower court’s order preventing the state from certifying dozens of contests on its Nov. 3 election ballot in the latest lawsuit filed by Republicans attempting to thwart President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the battleground state. The state Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, threw out the three-day-old order, saying the underlying lawsuit was filed months after the expiration of a time limit in Pennsylvania’s expansive-year-old mail-in voting law allowing for challenges to it. Justices also remarked on the lawsuit’s staggering demand that an entire election be overturned retroactively. “They have failed to allege that even a single mail-in ballot was fraudulently cast or counted,” Justice David Wecht wrote in a concurring opinion. The state’s attorney general, Democrat Josh Shapiro, called the court’s decision “another win for Democracy.” President Donald Trump and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, meanwhile, have repeatedly and baselessly claimed that Democrats falsified mail-in ballots to steal the election from Trump. Biden beat Trump by more than 80,000 votes in Pennsylvania, a state Trump had won in 2016. The week-old lawsuit, led by Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly of northwestern Pennsylvania, had challenged the state’s mail-in voting law as unconstitutional.
November 30, 2020 2:00 am
The 2020 Two-Thousand Turkeys Campaign turned out to be a smashing success! Far exceeding its goal of one-hundred-thousand-dollars. The grand total for this years fundraiser; $207,863. The fundraiser is a grassroots effort supported by local businesses, organizations and individuals whose donations put a turkey dinner on the table of families being served each month by the Greater Washington County Food Bank. This year, the need is great. An estimated 29,000 people in Washington County are food-insecure, and about half of those are served by the food bank. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, dependence on the food bank has increased. By summer, requests for food skyrocketed 150% since the onset of the pandemic. Donations are still being accepted through the Washington County Food Bank’s website at gwcfb.org. You’ll find a listing for 2000 Turkeys. Just click on the link and make your donation. You can also mail your donation to “2000 Turkeys, P.O. Box 2000, Washington, PA, 15301.” Co-sponsored by WJPA Radio and the Observer-Reporter, 2000 Turkeys has been around since the early 1980s, when it was launched to help feed the underemployed and unemployed during the holiday. The 2000 Turkeys campaign is the largest fundraiser for the food bank.
November 29, 2020 7:59 am
LONDON (AP) — The British government appointed a vaccines minister on Saturday as it prepares to inoculate millions of people against the coronavirus, potentially starting within days. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Conservative lawmaker Nadhim Zahawi will oversee the country’s biggest vaccine program in decades. The U.K. medicines regulator is currently assessing two vaccines — one developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, the other by Oxford University and AstraZeneca — to see if they are safe and effective. The Guardian newspaper reported that hospitals have been told they could receive the first doses of the Pfizer shot the week of Dec. 7, if it receives approval.
November 29, 2020 7:58 am
WASHINGTON (AP) — A former Trump campaign associate who was the target of a secret surveillance warrant during the FBI’s Russia investigation says in a federal lawsuit that he was the victim of “unlawful spying.” The suit from Carter Page alleges a series of omissions and errors made by FBI and Justice Department officials in applications they submitted in 2016 and 2017 to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to eavesdrop on Page on suspicion that he was an agent of Russia. “Since not a single proven fact ever established complicity with Russia involving Dr. Page, there never was probable cause to seek or obtain the FISA Warrants targeting him on this basis,” the lawsuit says, using the acronym for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Page has received death and kidnapping threats and has suffered economic losses and “irreparable damage to his reputation,” according to the lawsuit, which was filed Friday in federal court in Washington. The lawsuit to some extent echoes the conclusions of a Justice Department inspector general report that found significant problems with the four applications. Former FBI and Justice Department leaders who were involved in signing off on the surveillance have since testified they wouldn’t have done so had they known of the extent of the issues, and the FBI has initiated more than 40 corrective steps aimed at improving the accuracy and thoroughness of applications.
November 29, 2020 7:56 am
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis, joined by the church’s newest cardinals in Mass on Sunday, warned against mediocrity as well as seeking out “godfathers” to promote one’s own career. Eleven of the 13 new cardinals sat near the central altar of St. Peter’s Basilica, where Francis on Saturday had bestowed upon them the red hats symbolizing they are now so-called princes of the church. Two of the new cardinals couldn’t make it to Rome because of pandemic travel complications. The freshly-minted cardinals who did come to the Vatican wore protective masks and purple vestments, as the Church began the solemn liturgical season of Advent in the run-up to Christmas. In his homily, Francis decried what he called “a dangerous kind of sleep: it is the slumber of mediocrity.” He added that Jesus “above all else detests lukewarm-ness.”
November 29, 2020 7:54 am
LONDON (AP) — Dave Prowse, the British weightlifter-turned-actor who was the body, though not the voice, of arch-villain Darth Vader in the original “Star Wars” trilogy, has died. He was 85. Prowse died Saturday after a short illness, his agent Thomas Bowington said Sunday. Born in Bristol, southwest England, in 1935, Prowse was a three-time British weightlifting champion and represented England in weightlifting at the 1962 Commonwealth Games before breaking into movies with roles that emphasized his commanding size, including Frankenstein’s monster in a pair of Hammer Studios horror films. Director George Lucas saw Prowse in a small part in “A Clockwork Orange” and asked the 6-foot-6-inch (almost 2-meter) actor to audition for the villainous Vader or the Wookie Chewbacca in “Star Wars.” Prowse later told the BBC he chose Darth Vader because “you always remember the bad guys.”
November 29, 2020 7:52 am
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Faulting inaction in Washington, governors and state lawmakers are racing to get pandemic relief to small-business owners, the unemployed, renters and others whose livelihoods have been upended by the widening coronavirus outbreak. In some cases, elected officials are spending the last of a federal relief package passed in the spring as an end-of-year deadline approaches and the fall COVID-19 surge threatens their economies anew. Democrats have been the most vocal in criticizing President Donald Trump and the GOP-controlled Senate for failing to act, but many Republican lawmakers are also sounding the alarm. Underscoring the need for urgency, the number of new COVID-19 cases reported in the United States reached 205,557 on Friday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University – the first time its daily figure topped the 200,000 mark. Its previous daily high was 196,000 on Nov. 20. The total number of cases reported in the U.S., since the first one in January, has topped 13 million.
