USA

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Pentagon official installed in a top policy job last week has tested positive for COVID-19, the Pentagon said Thursday, just days after he met with the Lithuanian defense minister, who had contracted the virus.

(AP) --- Health officials around the world are clashing over the use of certain drugs for COVID-19, leading to different treatment options for patients depending on where they live.

On Friday, a World Health Organization guidelines panel advised against using the antiviral remdesivir for hospitalized patients, saying there’s no evidence it improves survival or avoids the need for breathing machines.

(AP) --- A few miles south of the namesake tower where Donald Trump began his run for president, New York prosecutors are grinding away at an investigation into his business dealings that could shadow him long after he leaves office in January.

The probe led by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. is one of several legal entanglements likely to intensify when Trump loses power — and immunity from prosecution — upon leaving the White House.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — A Nebraska pharmacist and a Maryland drug dealer could each face a decade or more in prison when they are sentenced for a convoluted plot to firebomb a competing pharmacy so they could divert more prescription narcotics to the black market.

William Burgamy, of Hanover, Maryland, and Hyrum Wilson of Auburn, Nebraska, each pleaded guilty to their respective roles in the conspiracy earlier this year in federal court in Virginia.

DETROIT (AP) — President Donald Trump summoned Michigan’s Republican legislative leaders to the White House for an extraordinary meeting Friday amid a long shot GOP push to subvert the democratic process that handed the battleground state to Democrat Joe Biden.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Thursday he will not extend several emergency loan programs set up with the Federal Reserve, an action that could hamper the ability of the incoming Biden administration to gain important economic support from the central bank to deal with the ongoing pandemic.

The decision drew a terse rebuke from the Fed.

ATLANTA (AP) — A hand tally of ballots cast in Georgia for the presidential race has been completed, and it affirms Democrat Joe Biden’s narrow lead over Republican President Donald Trump, according to results released Thursday by the secretary of state’s office.

The Associated Press declared Biden the winner of Georgia and its 16 Electoral College votes on Thursday, after the hand count confirmed the former vice president leads Trump by roughly 12,000 votes out of nearly 5 million counted.

NEW YORK (AP) — New York’s attorney general has sent a subpoena to the Trump Organization for records related to consulting fees paid to Ivanka Trump as part of a broad civil investigation into the president’s business dealings, a law enforcement official said Thursday.

The New York Times, citing anonymous sources, reported that a similar subpoena was sent to President Donald Trump’s company by the Manhattan district attorney, which is conducting a parallel criminal probe.

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, leaders of the Democratic Party’s left wing, are at risk of being excluded from the senior ranks of President-elect Joe Biden’s administration as the incoming president balances the demands of his party’s progressive base against the political realities of a narrowly divided Senate.

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) — A man convicted of kidnapping and raping a 16-year-old Texas girl before dousing her with gasoline and burying her alive was executed Thursday, the eighth federal inmate put to death this year after a nearly two-decade hiatus.