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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington
A record 4.5 million American workers quit their jobs in November, a sign of confidence and more evidence that the U.S. job market is bouncing back strongly from last year’s coronavirus recession. The Labor Department also reported Tuesday that employers posted 10.6 million job openings in November, down from 11.1 million in October but still high by historical standards.
An aptitude test Earl Smith took during his time at North Central High School suggested he’d excel in two areas: mechanics and music. The Spokane native can recall how the two, from an occupational perspective, appeared like an odd pairing at first – at least until a test administrator offered an idea. “It was almost jokingly that the interviewer suggested, ‘Well, why not put them together and study up on music instrument repair?’ ” Smith said. That’s exactly what Smith’s done for more than seven decades at Hoffman Music in Spokane. Hoffman Music, located at 1430 N. Monroe St., sells, rents, consigns and repairs band instruments, including guitars and drums. The store also sells, repairs and consigns orchestral instruments. Smith – now president of Hoffman at 89 years old – serves as co-owner alongside his son, Allan, and Kevin McLeish. McLeish is the son of Ernie McLeish, who was president of Hoffman Music until his death in 2014.
Local hospitals are bracing for another surge of COVID-19 patients with Spokane on Tuesday nearly breaking its record for new daily cases. The new omicron variant, which is more transmissible than the delta variant, has been confirmed in Spokane and several other counties statewide. Hospital officials in Spokane County expect COVID hospitalizations to rise this month, following a rise in case counts locally. Spokane County saw its second-highest daily case count of 718 new cases reported on Tuesday. This spike is not due to a backlog, but likely reflects a large amount of people seeking tests on Monday and over the long weekend.
Doctor’s offices and urgent care centers are bracing for impact as they again face high patient demand and more staffers out sick from the super-contagious omicron variant. The number of new COVID-19 cases across the U.S. reached a record-shattering average of 480,000 this week, and some primary care providers fear they will soon be overwhelmed by the surge.
A federal judge in Texas has granted a preliminary injunction stopping the Navy from acting against 35 sailors for refusing on religious grounds to comply with an order to get vaccinated against COVID-19. The injunction is a new challenge to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s decision to make vaccinations mandatory for all members of the military. The vaccination requirement allows for exemptions on religious and other grounds, but none of the thousands of requests for religious waivers so far have been granted.
On any given day, the atmosphere at Idaho abortion clinics is tense. Whether it’s protesters yelling outside the building or clinic staff comforting patients through difficult procedures, the work is often accompanied by a layer of managed stress. But abortion advocates say one fear, in the past few months, has been more stressful than all those factors combined: the possibility of losing abortion access altogether.
The explosive increase in U.S. coronavirus case counts is raising alarm, but some experts believe the focus should instead be on COVID-19 hospital admissions. And those aren’t climbing as fast. Dr. Anthony Fauci, for one, said Sunday on ABC that with many infections causing few or no symptoms, “it is much more relevant to focus on the hospitalizations as opposed to the total number of cases.” Other experts argue that case counts still have value.
For the second time in a decade, Californians will face mandatory restrictions governing their outdoor water use as the state endures another drought and voluntary conservation efforts have fallen short. The rules adopted Tuesday by the State Water Resources Control Board are fairly mild – no watering lawns for 48 hours after a rainstorm or letting sprinklers run onto the sidewalk – and could take effect as soon as the end of the month. Scofflaws could face $500 daily fines, though regulators say they expect such fines will be rare, as they were in the last drought.
Former President Donald Trump has canceled a press conference he had planned to hold in Florida on the anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by his supporters. Trump said in a statement Tuesday evening that he would instead be discussing his grievances at a rally he has planned in Arizona later this month. Trump had been expected to use the press conference to rail against the congressional committee investigating the events of Jan. 6, when a mob of his supporters violently stormed the Capitol in an effort to halt the peaceful transfer of power, and to repeat his lies about the 2020 election.
The House panel investigating the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection on Tuesday requested an interview with Fox News personality Sean Hannity, one of former President Donald Trump’s closest allies in the media, as the committee continues to widen its scope. In a letter to Hannity, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, Democratic chairman of the panel, said the panel wants to question him regarding his communications with former President Donald Trump, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and others in Trump’s orbit in the days surrounding the insurrection.
President Joe Biden urged concern but not alarm Tuesday as the United States set records for daily reported COVID-19 cases and his administration struggled to ease concerns about testing shortages, school closures and other disruptions caused by the omicron variant. In remarks before a meeting with his COVID-19 response team at the White House, Biden aimed to convey his administration’s urgency in addressing omicron and convince wary Americans that the current situation bears little resemblance to the onset of the pandemic or last year’s deadly winter. The president emphasized that vaccines, booster shots and therapeutic drugs have lessened the danger for the overwhelming majority of Americans who are fully vaccinated.
There was no food, water or sleep for Susan Phalen as she spent a frigid night inside her car stopped on Interstate 95 in Virginia. Meera Rao and her husband were only 100 feet past an exit but were unable to move for 16 hours. Sen. Tim Kaine was on his way to Washington when a seemingly simple commute stretched into a 21-hour ordeal that became “a kind of survival project.” They were among hundreds of people who got stranded on the East Coast’s main north-south highway in freezing temperatures after a winter storm snarled traffic and left some drivers stuck in place for as much as a full day. The problems began Monday morning when a truck jackknifed on I-95, triggering a chain reaction as other vehicles lost control, state police said. Eventually lanes in both directions became blocked across a 40-mile stretch of the highway between Richmond and the nation’s capital at a time when snow was falling around 2 inches an hour.
France reported a record-smashing 271,686 daily virus cases on Tuesday as omicron infections race across the country, burdening hospital staff and threatening to disrupt transport, schools and other services. The French government is straining to avoid a new economically damaging lockdown, and is instead trying to rush a vaccine pass bill through parliament in hopes that it is enough to protect hospitals. ... Britain, which is also seeing a big surge, reported a record 218,274 daily cases Tuesday. Germany reported 30,561 cases Tuesday. ... More than 123,000 people with the virus have died in France, among the world’s higher death tolls.
Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin said Tuesday his opposition to President Joe Biden’s roughly $2 trillion package of social and environmental initiatives remains undimmed as party leaders said work on the stalled measure was on hold until at least later this month. Manchin, D-W.Va., told reporters that he’s not currently negotiating with the White House over the standoff but didn’t rule out continuing talks. Manchin, who was his party’s chief remaining holdout over months of talks, surprised and angered party leaders before Christmas by saying he could not support the legislation as written.
A judge was mostly dismissive Tuesday of oral arguments by a lawyer for Prince Andrew who wants to win fast dismissal of a lawsuit alleging that the prince two decades ago sexually assaulted a 17-year-old American who was trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein. U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan did not immediately rule at the end of a video conference, but he made clear that he was not leaning Andrew’s way as he rejected much of the reasoning offered by the prince’s attorney, Andrew Brettler, who said the case “should absolutely be dismissed.”
Why are so many vaccinated people getting COVID-19 lately? A couple of factors are at play, starting with the emergence of the highly contagious omicron variant. Omicron is more likely to infect people, even if it doesn’t make them very sick, and its surge coincided with the holiday travel season in many places. People might mistakenly think the COVID-19 vaccines will completely block infection, but the shots are mainly designed to prevent severe illness, says Louis Mansky, a virus researcher at the University of Minnesota.
Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo won’t face criminal prosecution over an allegation that he fondled an aide, after a prosecutor said Tuesday he was dropping the case because he couldn’t prove it. Three days before the Democratic ex-governor was due to answer the misdemeanor charge in court, Albany County District Attorney David Soares said he was asking that a criminal complaint that the county sheriff filed in October be dismissed. “While we found the complainant in this case cooperative and credible, after review of all the available evidence, we have concluded that we cannot meet our burden at trial,” Soares said in a statement, adding that he was “deeply troubled” by the allegation.
At least 28,300 people packed into small boats crossed the Channel from France to England’s south coast in 2021, an annual record that was three times the number of crossings a year earlier. The leap in numbers, reported Tuesday by the Press Association news agency based on data from Britain’s Home Office, reflects the soaring number of migrants seeking to cross the world’s busiest shipping lane often in flimsy boats provided by people smugglers.
What students are learning about the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 may depend on where they live. ... With crowds shouting at school board meetings and political action committees investing millions of dollars in races to elect conservative candidates across the country, talking to students about what happened on Jan. 6 is increasingly fraught. Teachers now are left to decide how – or whether – to instruct their students about the events that sit at the heart of the country’s division. And the lessons sometimes vary based on whether they are in a red state or a blue state.
Idaho Power has submitted a 20-year plan to state regulators that phases out coal-fired power plants by 2028 as part of its effort to provide only clean energy by 2045, the company said Tuesday. Idaho Power in a news release said its 2021 Integrated Resource Plan submitted to the Idaho Public Utilities Commission moves the company away from coal and toward renewable energy, battery storage, energy efficiency and additional power that will come with the completion of a transmission line connecting to the Pacific Northwest. The 214-page document spells out how the company will meet energy demands in a 24,000-square-mile area in southern Idaho and eastern Oregon as its number of customers grows to nearly 850,000 from 600,000 by 2040.
The first portion of Spokane’s American Rescue Plan spending will be primarily dedicated to addressing the city’s housing crisis. The Spokane City Council approved the use of $13.7 million from its tranche of $81 million in federal American Rescue Plan funding on Monday, including $6 million to support affordable housing projects. Other targets for funding include child care providers, local artists and city parks.
In one of his first acts as Washington secretary of state, Democrat Steve Hobbs has told his some 300 staff to become vaccinated against COVID-19 by Feb. 25, or face losing their jobs. Under the previous secretary of state, Republican Kim Wyman, her office was the only statewide office that did not impose a vaccine requirement after Gov. Jay Inslee announced his mandate for state employees, health care workers and educators last summer. ... Inslee appointed former longtime lawmaker Hobbs as secretary of state in November after Wyman said she was resigning to take a top election security post with the Biden administration. ... The secretary of state’s office operates 27 locations and is responsible for elections, corporation and nonprofit registrations and operation of the state archives and library.
North Korea fired a suspected ballistic missile into its eastern waters on Wednesday, the South Korean and Japanese militaries said, the first such launch in about two months amid long-dormant international diplomacy on the North’s nuclear program. The latest launch came after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un vowed to further boost his military capability at a high-profile ruling party conference last week.
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