AP News in Brief at 9:04 p.m. EST
A pandemic atlas: How COVID-19 took over the world in 2020
Almost no place has been spared — and no one.
The virus that first emerged a year ago in Wuhan, China, swept across the world in 2020, leaving havoc in its wake. More than any event in memory, the pandemic has been a global event. On every continent, households have felt its devastation — joblessness and lockdowns, infirmity and death. And an abiding, relentless fear.
But each nation has its own story of how it coped. How China used its authoritarian muscle to stamp out the coronavirus. How Brazil struggled with the pandemic even as its president scoffed at it. How Israel’s ultra-Orthodox flouted measures to stem the spread of the disease, intensifying the rift between them and their more-secular neighbors.
Spain witnessed the deaths of thousands of elders. Kenyans watched as schools closed and children went to work, some as prostitutes. India’s draconian lockdown brought the rate of infection down — but only temporarily, and at a horrific cost.
At year’s end, promising vaccines offered a glimmer of hope amid a cresting second wave of contagion.
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The Latest: Biden, Pence set to get COVID-19 vaccine soon
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on President-elect Joe Biden (all times local):
6:30 p.m.
President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President Mike Pence are set to receive the COVID-19 vaccine soon.
According to two transition officials familiar with the matter, Biden will receive the vaccine publicly as early as next week. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss it publicly.
The White House says Pence and his wife, Karen, will receive the vaccine publicly on Friday.
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Close but not yet: Deal near on COVID-19 economic aid bill
WASHINGTON (AP) — Congressional negotiators closed in Wednesday on a $900 billion COVID-19 economic relief package that would deliver additional help to businesses, $300 per week jobless checks, and $600 stimulus payments to most Americans. But there was no deal quite yet.
The long-delayed measure was coming together as Capitol Hill combatants finally fashioned difficult compromises, often at the expense of more ambitious Democratic wishes for the legislation, to complete the second major relief package of the pandemic.
A hoped-for announcement Wednesday failed to materialize as lawmakers across the spectrum hammered out details of the sprawling legislation and top negotiators continued to trade offers. But lawmakers briefed on the outlines of the aid bill freely shared them.
It's the first significant legislative response to the pandemic since the landmark CARES Act in March, which delivered $1.8 trillion in aid and more generous jobless benefits and direct payments to individuals. Since then, Democrats have repeatedly called for ambitious further federal steps to provide relief and battle the pandemic, while Republicans have sought to more fully reopen the economy and to avoid padding the government's $27 trillion debt.
President-elect Joe Biden is eager for an aid package to prop up the economy and deliver direct aid to the jobless and hungry, even though the package falls short of what Democrats want. He called the emerging version “an important down payment" and promised more help next year.
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Vaccinations reach nursing homes as California faces crisis
POMPANO BEACH, Fla. (AP) — The first COVID-19 vaccinations are underway at U.S. nursing homes, where the virus has killed more than 110,000 people, even as the nation struggles to contain a surge so alarming it has spurred California to dispense thousands of body bags and line up refrigerated morgue trucks.
With the rollout of shots picking up speed Wednesday, lawmakers in Washington closed in on a long-stalled $900 billion coronavirus relief package that would send direct payments of around $600 to most Americans. Meanwhile, the U.S. appeared to be days away from adding a second vaccine to its arsenal.
At the same time, a major snowstorm pushing its way into the Northeast raised concern it could disrupt distribution of the first vaccine.
Nursing home residents in Florida began receiving shots Wednesday, after nearly 2,000 such vaccinations were administered in West Virginia on Tuesday. Thousands more are scheduled there in the coming days. Other states are expected to follow soon.
The elderly and infirm in long-term care have been among the most vulnerable to the virus and, together with health workers, are first in line to get the limited, initial supplies of the vaccine developed by Pfizer and Germany's BioNTech. Nursing home residents and workers account for more than one-third of the nation's 300,000 or so confirmed deaths from COVID-19.
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Health officials track safety as COVID-19 vaccines roll out
As COVID-19 vaccinations roll out to more and more people, health authorities are keeping close watch for any unexpected side effects.
On Tuesday, a health worker in Alaska suffered a severe allergic reaction after receiving the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. Doctors already knew to be on the lookout after Britain reported two similar cases last week.
In the U.S., vaccine recipients are supposed to hang around after the injection in case signs of an allergy appear and they need immediate treatment — exactly what happened when the health worker in Juneau became flushed and short of breath 10 minutes after the shot.
Allergies are always a question with a new medical product, but monitoring COVID-19 vaccines for any other, unexpected side effects is a bigger challenge than usual. It's not just because so many people need to be vaccinated over the next year. Never before have so many vaccines made in different ways converged at the same time — and it’s possible that one shot option will come with different side effects than another.
The first vaccine beginning widespread use in the U.S. and many Western countries, made by Pfizer Inc. and Germany’s BioNTech, and a second option expected soon from competitor Moderna Inc. both are made the same way. The Food and Drug Administration says huge studies of each have uncovered no major safety risks.
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Biden picks deal-makers, fighters for climate, energy team
WASHINGTON (AP) — Joe Biden is picking deal-makers and fighters to lead a climate team he’ll ask to remake and clean up the nation’s transportation and power-plant systems, and as fast as politically possible.
While the president-elect's picks have the experience to do the heavy lifting required in a climate overhaul of the U.S. economy, they also seem to be reassuring skeptics that he won’t neglect the low-income, working class and minority communities hit hardest by fossil fuel pollution and climate change.
Progressives, energy lobbyists, environmental groups and auto workers on Wednesday welcomed Biden’s choice of popular former Mayor Pete Buttigieg as transportation secretary. His expected picks of former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm for energy secretary and former Environmental Protection Agency chief Gina McCarthy as leader of domestic climate efforts also were met with general applause.
Along with the yet-to-be-named heads of EPA and the Interior Department, Buttigieg, Granholm and McCarthy will be part of an effort to rapidly build and develop technology to retool the United States’ transportation and power grid systems from petroleum and coal to a greater reliance on solar, wind and other cleaner forms of energy.
Democratic Rep. Deb Haaland of New Mexico is considered the frontrunner for Interior — and won a key endorsement Wednesday from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — but Biden has not announced his choice. If selected, Haaland would be the first Native American to serve as a Cabinet secretary.
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Senate hearing elevates baseless claims of election fraud
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican senators on Wednesday further perpetuated President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud, two days after Democrat Joe Biden’s victory was sealed by the Electoral College.
Lawmakers bickered heatedly at times during a committee hearing as Democrats pushed back against the unfounded allegations and a former federal cybersecurity official who oversaw election security said continued attempts to undermine confidence in the process were corrosive to democracy.
The session, held by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee over Democratic protests, elevated the groundless claims of fraud to the highest levels of government and provided two of Trump’s lawyers with one more public opportunity to make the false assertions after repeatedly losing in court.
The hearing mimicked those held in some battleground states with local lawmakers, where Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani led some Republicans in airing their election grievances without any proof. Those hearings were held after consistent legal defeats.
GOP Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, the committee chairman and one of Trump’s fiercest defenders, said his goal was to have a bipartisan hearing to examine the election. But he repeated Trump’s assertions without evidence and focused heavily on the claims being made by the president's team.
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'If not one thing, it's another': Storm rolls into Northeast
NEW YORK (AP) — A major snowstorm rolled into the Northeast on Wednesday at a key moment in the coronavirus pandemic, days after the start of the U.S. vaccination campaign and in the thick of a virus surge that has throngs of people seeking tests per day.
Snow was falling from northern Virginia to points north of New York City by late afternoon. The storm was poised to drop as much as 2 feet (0.6 meters) of snow in some places by Thursday, and the pandemic added new complexities to officials' preparations — deciding whether to close testing sites, figuring out how to handle plowing amid outdoor dining platforms in New York City streets, redefining school snow days to mean another day of learning from home, and more.
“Our theme today ought to be, ‘If it’s not one thing, it’s another,’” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said as he gave residents storm guidance that's new this year — mask up if you help your neighbors shovel.
Still, officials said they didn't expect the winter blast to disrupt vaccine distribution, which began Monday for frontline health care workers, the first group of Americans to get the shots. The first 3 million shots are being strictly limited to those workers and to nursing home residents.
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Wednesday that the government is tracking the vaccine shipments precisely, has staffers already in place to receive them and believes the companies transporting them can navigate the storm.
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MLB reclassifies Negro Leagues as major league
NEW YORK (AP) — Willie Mays will add some hits to his record, Monte Irvin's big league batting average should climb over .300 and Satchel Paige may add nearly 150 victories to his total.
Josh Gibson, the greatest of all Negro League sluggers, might just wind up with a major league record, too.
The statistics and records of greats like Gibson, Paige and roughly 3,400 other players are set to join Major League Baseball's books after MLB announced Wednesday it is reclassifying the Negro Leagues as a major league.
MLB said Wednesday it was “correcting a longtime oversight in the game's history” by elevating the Negro Leagues on the centennial of its founding. The Negro Leagues consisted of seven leagues, and MLB will include records from those circuits between 1920-48. The Negro Leagues began to dissolve one year after Jackie Robinson became MLB's first Black player with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.
Those leagues were excluded in 1969 when the Special Committee on Baseball Records identified six official “major leagues” dating to 1876.
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Cookies, hot cocoa, pick-me-up notes: 'Sparks' of kindness
A tin of cookies is left on the running board of an ambulance outside a nursing home with a note for the emergency workers who operate it: “You’re AMAZING! Yes, you!”
A baggie sits on the edge of a fountain with dozens of copper coins and another message, for anyone who passes by and fancies tossing one in: “Take a penny. Make a wish! Hope your dreams come true.”
This is the world of Sparks of Kindness, an online community of people going out of their way to put a smile on the faces of others through small but touching good deeds, especially in tumultuous times of pandemic, protests and political division.
“There’s so much bad in the world, and that’s kind of what we hear about,” said Debbie McFarland, a 53-year-old photographer from Peachtree City, Georgia, who founded the group on Facebook. “But I found that there’s so many people that want to do good — they just don’t really know how to start.”
That’s where Sparks of Kindness comes in. It has lists of ideas for “sparks,” or small kindnesses people can do such as thanking a teacher with candy or leaving coloring books in a hospital waiting room.