AP National News

The Latest: LA, San Fran opening business despite infections

By The Associated Press
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by Rayos Syndication User

LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles and San Francisco are reopening for more business under California’s least restrictive coronavirus safety rules, even though these counties have more infections than many others. State data shows nearby Orange and San Bernardino counties have similarly low coronavirus case and positivity rates to Los Angeles but can’t reopen further because they aren’t conducting as much…

Colorado GOP lawmaker who used racist term is reprimanded

By JAMES ANDERSON - Associated Press
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by Rayos Syndication User

A Republican lawmaker in Colorado has been reprimanded after calling a colleague “Buckwheat,” a racist term that provoked outcry from Democrats. It wasn’t clear who state Rep. Richard Holtorf was directing the remarks to Wednesday during debate on a stimulus measure. Holtorf, who is white, quickly said he was using the word as a “term of endearment,” furthering angering Democrats. He then apologized. On Thursday, a chastened Holtorf apologized again to a silent House chamber. House Speaker Alec Garnett told lawmakers that he’d had a long conversation with Holtorf and vowed that “discriminatory remarks, whether intentionally launched or carelessly said, have absolutely no place in this House.”

The Latest: Fiji locks down hospital over coronavirus death

By The Associated Press
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by Rayos Syndication User

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Soldiers and police in the Pacific nation of Fiji have surrounded and locked down a major hospital. Health authorities say they are quarantining 400 patients, doctors, nurses and other staff within the compound until they can determine who had contact with a coronavirus patient who died there. The 53-year-old patient at Lautoka Hospital was only the…