David A Johnson

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The captain of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier facing a growing outbreak of the coronavirus is asking for permission to isolate the bulk of his roughly 5,000 crew members on shore, which would take the warship out of duty in an effort to save lives.

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NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus climbed past 3,800 Tuesday, eclipsing China's official count, as hard-hit New York City rushed to bring in more medical professionals and ambulances and parked refrigerated morgue trucks on the streets to collect the dead.

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Some pregnant women fear giving birth with no loved ones by their side. Others worry about getting sick with COVID-19 and not being able to hold their newborns. The coronavirus pandemic has injected anxiety and uncertainty to an already stressful time and while science about risks is mostly reassuring, doctors want clearer answers too.

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NEW YORK (AP) — It has become a grim ritual outside New York City’s hospitals: workers in protective gear loading the bodies of coronavirus victims into refrigerated trailers.

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BUTTE, Mont. (AP) — At a former open pit copper mine filled with billions of gallons of toxic water, sirens and loud pops from propane cannons echo off the granite walls to scare away birds so they don’t land.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration's rollback of mileage standards Tuesday marks a win for Americans who like their SUVs and pickup trucks, but the government's own estimates show big costs, too — more Americans dying from air pollution, more climate-damaging tailpipe exhaust and more expense for drivers at the gas pumps.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — There are cooking shows hosted by celebrities, some of whom may know a fricassee from a frittata, and shows that feature arrogant chefs and bad cooks. There’s an upcoming digital series in which blindfolded chefs get smacked in the face with a dish and compete to identify and make it.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Facing a grim reality of surging coronavirus cases, President Donald Trump is making premature assertions about relatively low death rates in the U.S. and revising history about how seriously he viewed the threat, including the need for ventilators.

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MIAMI (AP) — The Trump administration is prepared to lift crippling sanctions on Venezuela in support of a new proposal to form a transitional government requiring both Nicolas Maduro and opposition leader Juan Guaidó to step aside in favor of a five-person governing council, U.S. officials said.

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CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Dig. Plant. Breathe.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — The red carpets are rolled up in storage, the A-listers holed up in mansions, multiplex doors are closed. For now, at least, the coronavirus has shut down much of Hollywood. And for the entertainment industry's many one-gig-at-a-time staff and freelance workers — a quarter-million people in Los Angeles County alone — it's an economic disaster.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — For the first time in years, we’ve put our suitcases away. Flights have been canceled. The shared Google calendar where we tracked each other’s travel schedules is empty for the foreseeable future.

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NEW YORK (AP) — In a story March 30, 2020, about small businesses awaiting financial help from the government, The Associated Press misspelled the name of Katie Vlietstra, an executive with the National Association for the self-employed.

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NEW YORK (AP) — Some Instacart and Amazon warehouse workers walked off the job Monday demanding greater safeguards against the coronavirus, even as both companies are speed-hiring hundreds of thousands of new workers to handle a surge in delivery orders.

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LONDON (AP) — Prince Harry and his wife Meghan officially make the transition Tuesday from senior members of Britain’s royal family to — well, it’s unclear. International celebrities, charity patrons, global influencers?

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Like forecasters tracking a megastorm, White House officials are relying on statistical models to help predict the impact of the coronavirus outbreak and try to protect as many people as possible.

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Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about today:

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Within days, Vicktery Zimmerman had figured out how to connect with friends and family even as she and her husband shelter in place at their Chicago home.

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TOKYO (AP) — Asian shares surged Tuesday after a rally in U.S. stocks, mostly spurred by health care companies' announcements of developments that could aid in the coronavirus outbreak.

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The governors of New York and California are moving to rapidly expand the ranks of health care workers, as the death toll from COVID-19 in New York surged past 1,200 while hospitalizations in California doubled in the last four days.

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PHOENIX (AP) — Authorities say a 22-year-old man fatally shot a Phoenix police commander and wounded two other officers as they tried to remove him from a home after his roommates complained he was acting erratically.

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NEW YORK (AP) — A Navy hospital ship with 1,000 beds arrived Monday in New York City as the number of deaths in the state from the coronavirus outbreak climbed quickly. The disease continued to claim the lives of health care workers. Mayor Bill de Blasio said President Donald Trump’s suggestion that thousands of medical masks are disappearing from New York City hospitals is “insulting” to front-line medical workers.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI has reached out to Sen. Richard Burr about his sale of stocks before the coronavirus caused markets to plummet, a person familiar with the matter said Monday.

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DALLAS (AP) — U.S. gasoline prices have dropped to their lowest levels in four years, and they are almost sure to go lower as oil prices plunge.

Today president-elect Barack Obama gets to drop the "elect" and become president-proper. Whether he'll make a proper president, no one knows for sure, but everyone except bigots and professional partisans certainly has to be hoping he will, out of self-interest if not patriotism.

It's only natural when the New Year comes to start to think of all things new and yet to come.

I hate Christmas lights.

I've heard it said that the essence of music is to make people enjoy patterns without realizing it. As far as I can tell, this is true. I can't grasp music, whether I hear it, see a sheet of notes or play Guitar Hero. It's beyond me, but I like to listen.

I apologize in advance for my column this week. I had a very bad weekend, and the worst thing about it is nothing bad actually happened to me.

The other day I sat down to watch all of the old Disney films I have on VHS.

By the time Nov. 4 comes and goes, the 2008 election may prove to be the most popular in American history. Even in Texas where the national races should be safely checked off for the Republicans, there's more excitement than usual.

My friend once told me a story of an ant farm of his. For a while they went around digging, eating and digging some more. You know, typical ant stuff. Then they started to die, one after another. Bacteria in the dirt of a closed container - or some such.

If you have a basic cable package, you probably have C-SPAN and C-SPAN2. And you probably watch them about as much as if you didn't own TV. But you should watch them more (and by that I mean "some") because when you complain that "nothing is on," C-SPAN is, and you can learn a lot.

I don’t know if you noticed (or remember), but the other day the OA published its weekly poll on the subject of offshore oil drilling. Something like 87 percent of our respondents were in favor of doing it while just 13 percent were against. Not a surprising result for this area, really.

I was talking to someone the other day about the Odessa American’s online discussion forum. You may not have been aware the OA had any forums, and that’s what we were talking about.