November 29, 2021 4:20 am
Weather officials are urging Northwest residents to remain alert because more rain is on the way to an area with lingering water from extreme weather from a previous storm. Everson Mayor John Perry says the Nooksack River topped Main Street in his city on Sunday afternoon. Main Street’s flooding is about a foot deep. He says he’s continuing to monitor things even though the rain has slowed down. November has been wet for northwest Washington. The National Weather Service said Bellingham recorded 11.64 inches at midnight Sunday – an all-time record for the month.
November 29, 2021 4:19 am
NEW YORK (AP) – It’s an omnipresent truth: Merriam-Webster has declared vaccine its 2021 word of the year. Peter Sokolowski, editor at large for the dictionary company, tells The Associated Press that lookups for the word vaccine increased 601% over 2020. Even more telling, searches on the Merriam-Webster website increased by 1,048% over 2019, before the COVID pandemic took hold. The selection follows “vax” as word of the year from the folks who publish the Oxford English Dictionary. And it comes after Merriam-Webster chose “pandemic” as tops in lookups last year on its online site.
November 29, 2021 4:17 am
CHICAGO (AP) – A jury has been seated in the trial of Jussie Smollett. The former “Empire” actor is accused of staging what he says was a racist and homophobic attack in Chicago in January 2019. Authorities say he concocted and staged a fake attack, with help from two brothers. The men say they took part in the “attack” that made headlines around the world but say Smollett planned the whole thing and paid them to do it. Potential jurors were asked Monday if they have been the victim of a hate crime and if they’ve watched “Empire” or TMZ. The trial is expected to last a week.
November 29, 2021 4:15 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – The Republican field of candidates aiming to capture Pennsylvania’s open U.S. Senate seat is churning. Out is Sean Parnell, the candidate endorsed by former President Donald Trump. Parnell’s exit is reshuffling the race. Getting in might be a couple guys who are relative unknowns to many party figures. First, there’s Mehmet Oz, the cardiac surgeon and host of TV’s “Dr. Oz Show.” He’s a longtime New Jersey resident. The other is David McCormick, a Connecticut resident who runs one of the world’s largest hedge funds, but grew up in Pennsylvania. The campaign could determine Senate control in next year’s election.
November 29, 2021 4:13 am
PITTSBURGH — (WPXI)- The sale of the Pittsburgh Penguins to Fenway Sports Group is another step closer to being official. On Monday, it was announced that FSG has entered into an agreement to acquire controlling interest in the Penguins. Pending approval from the NHL Board of Governors, the deal is expected to close by the end of the year. Under the deal, both Mario Lemieux and Ron Burkle will remain part of the team’s ownership group. “As the Penguins enter a new chapter, I will continue to be as active and engaged with the team as I always have been and look forward to continuing to build on our success with our incoming partners at FSG,” Lemieux said in a statement. “They have an organizational philosophy that mirrors the approach that worked so well for Ron and me over the past 22 years.” In a news release, the Penguins said Lemieux will “continue his role guiding hockey operations for the organization. In addition, continuity of leadership will be maintained among the club’s senior management team of CEO David Morehouse, COO Kevin Acklin, President of Hockey Operations Brian Burke, General Manager Ron Hextall, and Head Coach Mike Sullivan.” Lemieux and Burkle purchased the team in 1999.
November 29, 2021 3:11 am
The body of a Washington teenager was found Sunday morning in a vacant lot on Seminole Avenue in Washington. Police say 18-year-old Connor Brock had been shot and his body was found shortly after nine o’clock by a woman living near the property. The coroner says that Brock died from an apparent gunshot wound. Police say they believe he had been shot sometime between 10:30 Saturday night and 9:15 Sunday morning. The coroner’s office and Washington city police detectives are investigating the shooting as a suspected homicide. Police say they have no suspects at this time and are asking for the public’s help. If anyone has information they are asked to call police.
November 29, 2021 3:09 am
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week dropped its percentage of vaccinated adults in Pennsylvania by nearly five percentage points in what apparently was a data correction to weed out duplicates. The agency on Wednesday adjusted the percentage to 68.9%, after a day earlier putting the percentage at 73.7% of Pennsylvanians 18 and older. The downward revision amounted to a reduction of about 1.2 million doses. The data correction comes as infections, hospitalizations and intensive-care unit cases are all on the upswing in Pennsylvania, as well as in many other states.
November 28, 2021 8:06 am
MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian court on Saturday ordered five people to remain in pre-trial detention for two months pending an investigation into a devastating blast in a coal mine in Siberia that resulted in dozens of deaths. Russian authorities reported 51 deaths after a methane explosion rocked the Listvyazhnaya mine in the Kemerovo region in southwestern Siberia on Thursday — 46 miners and five rescuers. The tragedy appears to be the deadliest in Russia since 2010. The Central District Court in the city of Kemerovo ruled to jail the director of the Listvyazhnaya mine, Sergei Makhrakov, his deputy Andrei Molostvov and section supervisor Sergei Gerasimenok. They are facing charges of violating industrial safety requirements for hazardous production facilities that resulted in multiple deaths. If convicted, they may be imprisoned for up to seven years.
November 28, 2021 8:04 am
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The Netherlands confirmed 13 cases of the new omicron variant of the coronavirus and Australia found two on Sunday as the countries half a world apart became the latest to detect it in travelers arriving from southern Africa. A growing raft of curbs are being imposed by nations around the world as they scramble to slow the variant’s spread, with Israel deciding Sunday to bar entry to foreign nationals in the toughest move so far. Confirmed or suspected cases of the new variant have already emerged in several European countries, in Israel and in Hong Kong, just days after it was identified by researchers in South Africa. The “act first, ask questions later” approach reflected growing alarm about the emergence of a potentially more contagious variant nearly two years into a pandemic that has killed more than 5 million people, upended lives and disrupted economies across the globe. While much remains to be learned about the new variant, researchers are concerned that it may be more resistant to the protection provided by vaccines and could mean that the pandemic lasts for longer than anticipated.
November 28, 2021 8:03 am
WASHINGTON (AP) — Both sides are telling the Supreme Court there’s no middle ground in Wednesday’s showdown over abortion. The justices can either reaffirm the constitutional right to an abortion or wipe it away altogether. Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that declared a nationwide right to abortion, is facing its most serious challenge in 30 years in front of a court with a 6-3 conservative majority that has been remade by three appointees of President Donald Trump. A ruling that overturned Roe and the 1992 case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey would lead to outright bans or severe restrictions on abortion in 26 states, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights. The case being argued Wednesday comes from Mississippi, where a 2018 law would ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, well before viability. The Supreme Court has never allowed states to ban abortion before the point at roughly 24 weeks when a fetus can survive outside the womb. The justices are separately weighing disputes over Texas’ much earlier abortion ban, at roughly six weeks, though those cases turn on the unique structure of the law and how it can be challenged in court, not the abortion right. Still, abortion rights advocates were troubled by the court’s 5-4 vote in September to allow the Texas law, which relies on citizen lawsuits to enforce it, to take effect in the first place.
