David A Johnson

• AP
• New!

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The destruction wrought by a wind-driven wildfire in the mountains northeast of Los Angeles approached 156 square miles (404 square kilometers) Sunday, burning structures, homes and a nature center in a famed Southern California wildlife sanctuary in foothill desert communities.

• AP

BEIRUT — Lebanon registered a record 1,006 cases of COVID-19 over the past 24 hours, the government announced Sunday, amid a sharp increase in infections and deaths due to the new coronavirus.

• AP

NEW YORK (AP) — A judge has approved a request from a group of U.S. WeChat users to delay looming federal government restrictions that could effectively make the popular app nearly impossible to use.

• AP

ATLANTA (AP) — Twice delayed because of the coronavirus pandemic, Georgia’s primary election earlier this year was marred by dysfunction: Hourslong wait times at polling places. Absentee ballots that never arrived. Votes cast after midnight.

• AP
• Updated

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Already burdened by the coronavirus pandemic and a tightened deadline, the Census Bureau must now contend with several natural disasters as wildfires and hurricanes disrupt the final weeks of the nation's once-a-decade headcount.

• AP

WASHINGTON (AP) — As the coronavirus pandemic began bearing down on the United States in March, President Donald Trump set out his expectations.

• AP

JUNIPER HILLS, Calif. (AP) — Strong winds stoked a wildfire burning for nearly two weeks in mountains northeast of Los Angeles, prompting authorities to issue new evacuation orders for desert communities that lost some homes a day earlier.

• AP

Walmart, Amazon and other corporate giants donated money to the reelection campaign of a Tennessee state lawmaker who had used social media to amplify and promote the QAnon conspiracy theory, according to an Associated Press review of campaign finance records and the candidate’s posts.

• AP

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal officials intercepted an envelope addressed to the White House that contained the poison ricin, a U.S. law enforcement official told The Associated Press on Saturday.

• AP

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump said Saturday he's given his “blessing” to a proposed deal that would see the popular video-sharing app TikTok partner with Oracle and Walmart and form a U.S. company.

• AP

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats raised more than $71 million in the hours after Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death, demonstrating how the liberal icon's passing and the contentious nomination fight that lies ahead have already galvanized the party's base.

• AP

NEW YORK (AP) — A statue of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will be built in her native Brooklyn, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Saturday.

• AP

NEW YORK (AP) — A presidential campaign that was already tugging at the nation’s most searing divides has been jolted by the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, potentially reshaping the election at a moment when some Americans were beginning to cast ballots.

• AP

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican senators weighing what to do about the vacancy on the Supreme Court are facing questions about their own past comments amid complaints by Democrats that their views have shifted with changing political reality.

• AP

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Police in the capital of Belarus cracked down sharply Saturday on a women’s protest march demanding the authoritarian president’s resignation, arresting more than 300 including an elderly woman who has become a symbol of the six weeks of protest that have roiled the country.

• AP

WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a towering women’s rights champion who became the court’s second female justice, died Friday at her home in Washington. She was 87.

• AP

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A stretch of a Minneapolis street that includes the place where George Floyd was killed will soon be named in his honor.

• AP

WASHINGTON (AP) — After months of mass death and sickness, what could possibly count as a success story against the pandemic?

• AP

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — President Donald Trump’s homestretch push to repeat his razor thin victory in Pennsylvania four years ago won't happen without white evangelicals, and there are signs that critical component of his coalition hasn't lost the faith.

• AP

WASHINGTON (AP) — Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death Friday, just six weeks before Election Day, is expected to unleash a pitched battle over whether President Donald Trump should nominate — and the Republican-led Senate should confirm — her successor, or whether the seat should remain vacant until the outcome of Trump’s race against Democrat Joe Biden is known.

• AP

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said he is recovering his verbal and physical abilities at the German hospital where he is being treated for suspected nerve agent poisoning but that he at first felt despair over his condition.

• AP

SEPT. 12 - 18, 2020

• AP

WASHINGTON (AP) — Efforts to fashion a temporary spending bill needed to avert a government shutdown at the end of the month ran aground Friday amid a fight over farm bailout funding that's a key priority of President Donald Trump and Capitol Hill Republicans.

• AP

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrat Joe Biden leaves little doubt that if elected he would try to scale back President Donald Trump's buildup in nuclear weapons spending. And although the former vice president has not fully detailed his nuclear priorities, he says he would make the U.S. less reliant on the world's deadliest weapons.

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.