AP News Digest 6 p.m.
Here are the AP’s latest coverage plans, top stories and promotable content. All Times EST. For up-to-the minute information on AP’s coverage, visit Coverage Plan at https://newsroom.ap.org.
———————————————
NEW & DEVELOPING
———————————————
Adds: POLICE-CORRUPTION-SETTLEMENTS, MARSHALL-PLANE CRASH, TROPICAL WEATHER, MOUNT-RAINIER-HIKER-RECOVERING, VIRUS-OUTBREAK-GERMANY-PATIENT-HEROES, RUDOLPH-AUCTION.
----------------——
—————————-
VIRUS OUTBREAK — Joe Biden faces a decision unlike any other incoming president: whether to back a short-term national lockdown to finally arrest a raging pandemic. For now, it’s a question the president-elect would prefer to avoid. But the debate has been livelier among members of Biden’s coronavirus advisory board, and that’s a sign of the tough dynamic Biden will face when he is inaugurated in January. By Alexandra Jaffe. SENT: 860 words, photos.
TRUMP-DEMOCRACY ON TRIAL - It’s been an election without precedent. A sitting American president is trying to convince the people that they should not believe the numbers that clearly demonstrate the other candidate won. President Donald Trump is making unsupported claims of massive voting fraud, demanding recounts and calling for audits. All of this, an effort to discredit the outcome, and in the process, put democracy itself on trial. By Michael Tackett and Calvin Woodward. SENT: 1,280 words, photos.
VIRUS OUTBREAK-WHY WORRY? - The biggest reason coronavirus infections are soaring in the Midwest isn’t because residents don’t understand the dangers of the virus or how to protect themselves. It’s because many of them aren’t that concerned. Local public health officials worry that soaring caseloads will soon overwhelm their hospitals. By Grant Schulte. SENT: 950 words, photos.
VIRUS OUTBREAK-SURVIVING THE SURGE - Experience in how to fight and beat COVID-19 is proving invaluable at the hospital in Paris that recorded the epidemic’s first death in Europe. Critical care doctors have learned not to put patients on ventilators if possible and to keep them awake and bathed in oxygen with face masks. There are steroid treatments that weren’t available to them when the virus first swept across the continent. The sick also are savvier, seeking help earlier for their symptoms and making them easier to treat. By John Leicester. SENT: 870 words, photos. Eds: This story has moved as the Sunday Spotlight.
ARMENIA-AZERBIJAN-BURNING HOUSES — A resident of an ethnic Armenian village that is to be turned over to Azerbaijan has given his home of 21 years a bitter farewell. He wrenched off the metal roof and said he would blow up the stone dwelling or set it on fire “in order not to leave anything to Muslims.” The settlement is set to come under Azerbaijan’s control on Sunday as part of territorial concessions in an agreement to end six weeks of intense fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding regions where Muslim Azeris and Christian Armenians once lived together, however uneasily. SENT: 615 words, photos.
ELECTION 2020-ELECTORS -- Republican leaders in four critical states won by President-elect Joe Biden say they won’t participate in a legally dubious scheme to flip their state’s electors to vote for President Donald Trump. That effectively shuts down a half-baked plot some Republicans floated as a last chance to keep Trump in the White House. By Bob Christie and Nicholas Riccardi. SENT: 910 words, photos.
ELECTION 2020-PROTESTS - President Trump delights supporters gathered near the White House with a slow motorcade drive-by through downtown Washington on the way to his Virginia golf club. A week after the presidential race was called for Democrat Joe Biden, thousands of Trump loyalists converge on the nation’s capital to protest the election results and falsely assert the vote was stolen. By Ashraf Khalil and Kevin Freking. SENT: 570 words, photos.
——————————————————————
WHAT WE’RE TALKING ABOUT
——————————————————————
RUDOLPH-AUCTION — A buyer shouted out with glee that they would pay $368,000 for the Rudolph and Santa Claus figures used in the perennially beloved Christmas special “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.” SENT: 350 words, photos.
EGYPT-ANTIQUITIES — Egyptian antiquities officials announce the discovery of at least 100 ancient coffins, some with mummies inside, and around 40 gilded statues in a vast necropolis south of Cairo. SENT: 325 words, photos.
ROCKEFELLER CENTER TREE — A 75-foot Norway spruce has arrived at New York City’s Rockefeller Center to serve as one of the world’s most famous Christmas trees. SENT: 150 words, photos, video.
VIRUS OUTBREAK-ROMANIA HOSPITAL FIRE — A fire at a hospital treating COVID-19 patients in northeastern Romania has killed 10 people and injured 10 others, seven of them critically, officials said. The blaze spread through the intensive care ward designated for people with COVID-19. SENT: 240 words, photos.
BRITAIN-PRINCE CHARLES — Britain’s Prince Charles celebrated his 72nd birthday following an eventful year that saw him contract the coronavirus and his son Prince Harry step down from official royal duties. SENT: 280 words, photo.
MOUNT-RAINIER-HIKER-RECOVERING — A hiker who was rescued after being lost overnight in a whiteout in Mount Rainier National Park has been brought back to life after what his medical team is calling an amazing recovery. SENT: 600 words.
CHILDREN SHOT-CONNECTICUT — Police say a woman shot two children in a suburban Connecticut home, killing one child and critically injuring the other. SENT: 250 words.
———————————————————-
MORE ON ELECTION 2020
———————————————————
BIDEN-PENTAGON - Joe Biden is expected to take a historic step and select a woman to head the Pentagon for the first time, shattering one of the few remaining barriers to women in the department and the Cabinet. Michele Flournoy, a politically moderate Pentagon veteran, is regarded by U.S. officials and political insiders as a top choice for the position. By Lolita C. Baldor and Robert Burns. SENT: 930 words, photos.
ELECTION 2020-OHIO BATTLEGROUND — President Trump’s second decisive victory in Ohio while losing the presidency to Democrat Joe Biden has put the state’s role as a bellwether or battleground state in doubt. Biden will become the first president elected without carrying Ohio since John F. Kennedy in 1960. SENT: 860 words, photos.
ELECTION 2020-PHILADELPHIA SUBURBS — Voters in Philadelphia’s suburbs hurled perhaps their biggest rebuke yet this month to President Trump and the Republican Party overall. The four Pennsylvania counties hugging Philadelphia provided a decisive margin for former Vice President Joe Biden and lifted him to the presidency. SENT: 800 words, photos.
ELECTION 2020-BLOOMBERG - After pouring more than $1.2 billion of his personal fortune into presidential politics this election, former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg has little to show for it. His only win during a short-lived bid for the White House was in the territory of American Samoa. And after pledging to spend “whatever it takes” to defeat President Donald Trump, he routed $110 million to Florida, Ohio and Texas — all states that the president carried. SENT: 980 words, photos.
---------------------------------————————-
MORE ON THE VIRUS OUTBREAK
---------------------------------————————
VIRUS OUTBREAK-NORTH DAKOTA — After months of resisting ordering the people of North Dakota to wear masks and limit the size of gatherings, the state’s Republican governor relented in an effort to stem a coronavirus surge that is among the worst in the U.S. and that threatens to overwhelm the state’s hospitals. SENT: 600 words, photos.
VIRUS OUTBREAK-AUSTRIA — Austria announced that it is tightening its partial lockdown, including by closing non-essential stores and shifting schools to online teaching, amid galloping coronavirus infection rates in the Alpine nation. SENT: 390 words, photos.
VIRUS OUTBREAK-MIDEAST — Lebanese police patrolled the streets of the capital Beirut, ordering shops to close as the country began a two-week lockdown to limit the spread of the coronavirus that has killed dozens of people over the past days in the small Mediterranean country. SENT: 400 words, photos.
VIRUS OUTBREAK-NETHERLANDS-SAINT NICHOLAS — Saint Nicholas has arrived in the Netherlands amid a partial coronavirus lockdown that forced the cancellation of celebrations in towns and cities across the country. The Dutch celebrate what they call Sinterklaas on Dec. 5 by giving gifts to children, but legend has it that the gift-bearing patron saint of children arrives in the country weeks earlier in what is usually a nationwide party. SENT: 475 words, photos.
VIRUS OUTBREAK-CZECH-PHOTO GALLERY — With all of Prague’s theaters shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic, the new La Putyka Circus has adapted a practice that restaurants are using to stay in business. SENT: 370 words, photos.
VIRUS-OUTBREAK-GERMANY-PATIENT-HEROES — The German government has released a tongue-in-cheek ad hailing an unlikely hero in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic: the humble couch potato. SENT: 220 words, photo.
Find more coverage on the Virus Outbreak on the featured topic page in AP Newsroom.
————————————
WASHINGTON
———————————
FRANCE-US POMPEO — U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo discussed “global challenges” with a handful of members of a Paris think tank Saturday at the start of a seven-country tour of Europe and the Middle East, travels that were certain to be awkward since all the nations on his schedule have congratulated President-elect Joe Biden for winning the White House. SENT: 930 words, photos.
UNITED STATES-EGYPT-HELICOPTER CRASH — The Army has identified the five American soldiers who were killed in a helicopter crash this week while on a peacekeeping mission in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. SENT: 220 words.
FACT CHECK-WEEK - President Trump is rebelling against Joe Biden’s election victory with denial, delay and outright misrepresentation. Trump raged about widespread cases of fake ballots that aren’t so and undertook legal challenges that even state GOP election officials say can’t overcome Biden’s lead. SENT: 2,810 words, photos. Find AP Fact Checks at https://apnews.com/APFactCheck
———————————-
-----------------------—
ETHIOPIA MILITARY CONFRONTATION — Rockets were fired at Eritrea’s capital on Saturday, diplomats said, as the deadly fighting in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region appeared to spill across an international border and bring some of observers’ worst fears to life. SENT: 710 words, photo.
WORLD FOOD PROGRAM-NOBEL -- The head of the World Food Program says the Nobel Peace Prize has given the U.N. agency a spotlight and megaphone to warn world leaders that next year is going to be worse than this year, and without billions of dollars “we are going to have famines of biblical proportions in 2021.” SENT: 920 words, photos.
PERU-POLITICAL CRISIS — The shock vote to oust now ex-President Martín Vizcarra has sparked protests unlike any seen in recent years in Peru. Police have tried to repress the protests with tear gas and rubber bullets and are being criticized for excessive use of force. SENT: 790 words, photos.
TROPICAL WEATHER — Tropical Storm Iota has been brewing in the Caribbean Sea, threatening a second tropical strike for Nicaragua and Honduras, countries recently clobbered by a Category 4 Hurricane Eta. SENT: 320 words, photos.
THAILAND PROTESTS — Pro-democracy protesters in Thailand rallied again, promoting a diversity of causes and taking an opportunity to display their rejection of the country’s power structure directly to the monarch. SENT: 650 words, photos.
INDIA-DIWALI FESTIVAL— More than a billion Indians celebrated Diwali on Saturday amid twin concerns of a resurgence in coronavirus infections and rising air pollution that is enveloping the country’s north in a cloud of thick toxic smog. SENT: 500 words, photos.
———————
NATIONAL
———————
POLICE-CORRUPTION-SETTLEMENTS — Baltimore officials are set to approve a roughly $8 million settlement to two men who went to prison after drugs were planted on them a decade ago during an encounter with members of a rogue police unit that brutalized, robbed and falsely arrested residents. SENT: 340 words.
MARSHALL-PLANE CRASH — Marshall University commemorated the 50th anniversary of one of the worst sports disasters in U.S. history Saturday, a plane crash that killed most of the entire football team. SENT: 490 words, photos.
———————————-
————————————-
TV-ALL SCREWED UP — “All Screwed Up,” labeled as a visual tribute, hopes to celebrate and shed light on the life and legacy of Houston music pioneer DJ Screw. Although Monday will mark 20 years since his death, elements of Screw’s signature slow, pitched-down sound is still heard through some of today’s biggest stars such as Beyoncé, Drake, Kendrick Lamar and Kanye West. SENT: 850 words, photos.
—————-
—————-
GLF-MASTERS — The Masters tries to get on track with Dustin Johnson, Justin Thomas and Jon Rahm -- the top three players in the world -- all in the mix for a green jacket. UPCOMING: 750 words, photos by 7 p.m.
FBC-T-25 AP TOP 25-TAKEAWAYS — No. 2 Notre Dame and No. 6 Florida look to dodge upsets against feisty conference opponents as the college football season lurches forward after 15 games were called off this week because of the virus. UPCOMING: 800 words, with photos, by 9 p.m.
—————————————
HOW TO REACH US
------------------------——-
At the Nerve Center, Rob Jagodzinski can be reached at 800-845-8450 (ext. 1600). For photos, Donald E. King (ext. 1900). For graphics and interactives, (ext. 7636). Expanded AP content can be obtained from http://newsroom.ap.org. For access to AP Newsroom and other technical issues, contact apcustomersupport(at)ap.org or call 877-836-9477.