USA

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. health officials are taking a new tack to encourage Americans to wear masks: They’re emphasizing recent research that a mask protects the person who wears it.

Previously, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised people to wear masks because of evidence that it stops people who are infected with coronavirus — whether they know it or not — from spreading it to others.

But this week the CDC posted a new scientific brief discussing recent studies finding that a wearer gets some protection.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — Just as the remnants of Eta finally blew out to sea on Friday, another storm formed that could follow its path of death and destruction into Central America this weekend.

Hurricane experts were closely watching the Caribbean, where Tropical Storm Iota formed Friday afternoon. Forecasters warned that Iota could power up quickly, to major hurricane strength, as it approaches Central America late Sunday or Monday, and wreak more havoc in a region where people are still grappling with the aftermath of Eta.

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Leading progressives are pressuring President-elect Joe Biden to embrace their policy agenda even as more centrist Democrats argue such proposals prevented the party from retaking full control of Congress.

For now, much of the lobbying centers on who Biden should — or should not — appoint to key posts as he builds out the administration that will take office in January.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Republicans suffered setbacks to court challenges over the presidential election in three battleground states on Friday while a law firm that came under fire for its work for President Donald Trump’s campaign withdrew from a major Pennsylvania case.

The legal blows began when a federal appeals court rejected an effort to block about 9,300 mail-in ballots that arrived after Election Day in Pennsylvania. The judges noted the “vast disruption” and “unprecedented challenges” facing the nation during the COVID-19 pandemic as they upheld the three-day extension.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Gliding over significant challenges still to come, President Donald Trump on Friday offered a rosy update on the race for a vaccine for the resurgent coronavirus as he delivered his first public remarks since his defeat by President-elect Joe Biden. He still did not concede the election.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — The governors of Oregon and New Mexico ordered near-lockdowns Friday in the most aggressive response yet to the latest wave of coronavirus infections shattering records across the U.S., even as many of their counterparts in other states show little appetite for reimposing the hard-line restrictions of last spring.

WASHINGTON, Nov 13 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The mayor of the United States’ third biggest city Chicago issued a new stay-at-home advisory, as the country’s Covid 19 outbreak shattered records in the absence of a national strategy by President Donald Trump.

Lori Lightfoot called on the Midwestern city’s 2.7 million people to go out only for essential tasks or to attend work or school, to scrap Thanksgiving plans and to avoid travel.

WASHINGTON, Nov 113 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Joe Biden has won the state of Arizona, United States television networks said late on Thursday, further cementing his lead in the Electoral College and flipping the state Democratic for the first time since 1996.

NBC, CBS, ABC and CNN declared Biden the winner in the tight race with a lead of more than 11,000 ballots, giving him the state’s 11 electoral votes.

Washington, Nov 13 (PTI) A common mutation in the novel coronavirus that has enabled it to spread quickly around the world may also make it more susceptible to a vaccine, according to a study that proves some of the first concrete findings about how SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, is evolving.

Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US noted that the new strain of coronavirus, called D614G, emerged in Europe and has become the most common in the world.

Washington, Nov 13 (PTI) Outgoing US President Donald Trump's unsubstantiated claims of election fraud is one more step in delegitimising not just the incoming Biden administration, but democracy generally, his predecessor Barack Obama has said.

"I'm more troubled by the fact that other Republican officials who clearly know better are going along with this, are humouring him in this fashion," Obama told CBS News in an interview.