March 24, 2020 3:26 pm
FAIRMONT, W.Va. (AP) – A West Virginia woman has filed a lawsuit against a police department, alleging officers were speeding in a department truck when they fatally struck her husband’s car. The Exponent Telegram reported Monday that Emily Santini filed the suit in Marion County Circuit Court. A crash reconstruction report cited by the lawsuit argues that a Fairmont Police Department pickup was going 73 mph in a 35-mph zone when it struck 72-year-old Steve Santini’s car in July. Police said on the day of the crash that the truck “was not being operated at an extensive rate of speed.” The lawsuit seeks punitive damages and a jury trial. The newspaper says the police chief declined to comment.
March 24, 2020 3:24 pm
NEW CASTLE, Pa. (AP) – Authorities say a man has been found shot to death inside a car parked near a western Pennsylvania apartment building. The shooting in New Castle occurred around 3:30 a.m. Tuesday, but a motive for the slaying was not immediately known. The victim’s name and further details on his injuries were not disclosed. The shooting occurred near the McGrath Manor apartment building, but it wasn’t immediately known if that’s where the victim lived. No other injuries were reported in the shooting.
March 24, 2020 3:19 pm
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump is weighing how to refine nationwide social-distancing guidelines to put some workers back on the job amid the coronavirus outbreak. At a virtual town hall hosted by Fox News on Tuesday, Trump said he is hoping the country will be reopened by Easter. Health experts have made clear that unless Americans continue to dramatically limit social interaction, staying home from work and isolating themselves, the number of infections will overwhelm the healthcare system, as it has in parts of Italy, leading to many more deaths. While the worst outbreaks are concentrated in certain parts of the country, such as New York, experts warn that the highly infectious disease is certain to spread. (Photo courtesy of Fox News)
March 24, 2020 9:25 am
TOKYO (AP) – The Tokyo Olympics have been officially postponed until 2021. The International Olympic Committee along with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and local organizers have decided that the Tokyo Games cannot go ahead as scheduled this year because of the coronavirus outbreak. The IOC says the games will be held “not later than summer 2021” but they will still be called the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
March 24, 2020 8:44 am
MADRID (AP) – The World Health Organization says infections and deaths globally from the new coronavirus are expected to increase “considerably” and is warning the outbreak is still at its early stages. The WHO says 85% of the new cases are being reported in Europe and the United States, and Spain registered a leap in both infections and deaths. A skating rink in a Madrid mall was converted into a makeshift morgue to store bodies until they could be buried or cremated. More than 387,000 people worldwide have been infected by the new coronavirus and more than 16,700 have died; more than 101,000 have recovered.
March 24, 2020 4:03 am
NEW DELHI (AP) – Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has decreed a 21-day lockdown across the nation of 1.3 billion people to save it from the coronavirus pandemic. The announcement is setting off panic in many neighborhoods as people rush to markets to stock up on supplies. Modi says if India isn’t able to manage the next 21 days, the country could be set back by 21 years. India’s stay-at-home order puts nearly one-fifth of the world’s population under lockdown. Indian health officials have reported 469 active cases of the virus, and 10 deaths. Officials have repeatedly insisted there is no evidence yet of localized spread but have conducted relatively scant testing for the disease.
March 24, 2020 4:02 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – Top congressional and White House officials negotiating the nearly $2 trillion coronavirus rescue package say they expect to reach a deal sometime Tuesday. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer say they spoke by phone with President Donald Trump as they met late into the night at the Capitol. While the two sides have resolved many issues in the sweeping package, some disagreements remain. Washington has been straining to respond to the worsening coronavirus outbreak, and tempers in Congress have flared at times. Meantime, President Donald Trump is musing openly about letting a 15-day shutdown expire next Monday.
March 24, 2020 4:01 am
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) – California is scrambling to obtain protective gear for healthcare workers and first responders, reaching out worldwide and working with locals to ratchet up production as the coronavirus outbreak sweeps through the nation’s most populous state. Gov. Gavin Newsom says California is looking at ways of acquiring some 1 billion sets of gloves, along with hundreds of millions of gowns, surgical masks and face shields. California has seen nearly 2,200 cases of COVID-19 and 40 deaths. Newsom says an expected three-month surge of cases will require some 50,000 additional hospital beds.
March 24, 2020 4:00 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – An Associated Press review has found that a series of missteps at the nation’s top public health agency created a critical shortage of reliable tests for the coronavirus. Those stumbles at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hobbled the federal response as the pandemic spread across the nation. President Donald Trump has assured Americans that “anyone who wants a test can get a test.” But more than two months after the first U.S. coronavirus case was confirmed, many people are still unable to get tested and it can take a week for test results to be returned.
March 24, 2020 3:58 am
BEIJING (AP) – Chinese authorities are lifting a lockdown in most of its virus-hit Hubei province. People who are cleared will be able to leave the province after midnight Tuesday. The city of Wuhan, where the outbreak started, will remain locked down until April 8. China barred people from leaving or entering Wuhan starting Jan. 23 and expanded it to most of the province in succeeding days. The drastic steps came as a new coronavirus began spreading to the rest of China and overseas during the Lunar New Year, when many Chinese travel. Hubei has seen almost no new infections for more than a week.
