NCAA to start using ‘March Madness’ for women’s tournament
The NCAA women’s basketball tournament will start using “March Madness” in marketing and branding beginning this season.
Author: Associated Press
Fighting wave of misinfo, YouTube bans false vaccine claims
By Amanda Seitz
YouTube is wiping vaccine misinformation and conspiracy theories from its popular video-sharing platform. The ban on vaccine misinformation, announced in a blog post on Wednesday, comes as countries around the world continue to offer free immunizations for COVID-19 to a somewhat hesitant public.
Official: Ruling means S. Carolina schools can require masks
By Jeffrey Collins
School districts in South Carolina now have the authority to require masks and should check with their lawyers on what kind of accommodations they need to make for medically vulnerable students, the state’s education chief said Wednesday.
Biden digs in with fellow Dems seeking deal on $3.5T plan
By Lisa Mascaro and Alan Fram
Pressure mounting but with signs of progress, President Joe Biden is hunkering down at the White House to try to strike a deal and win over two holdout Democratic senators whose support is needed for his potentially historic $3.5 trillion government overhaul.
Braves survive scary ninth inning, hold off Phillies 2-1
A dominant late-September performance by Charlie Morton left the Atlanta Braves hoping it was a preview of October postseason starts to come.
SC senators debate how to spend $525M in plutonium deal
Along with billions of dollars in federal COVID-19 relief money, South Carolina lawmakers have another large bonus pot of money to spend soon — $525 million from the federal government over plutonium still sitting inside the state. The money is part of a 2020 settlement with the federal government which promised a plant at the Savannah River Site near Aiken that would turn plutonium from unneeded nuclear weapons into nuclear reactor fuel but instead left about 21,000 pounds of the highly radioactive material in storage in South Carolina.
Joint Chiefs chairman calls Afghan war a ‘strategic failure’
By Robert Burns and Lolita C. Baldor
In his first congressional testimony on the tumultuous withdrawal from Afghanistan, the top U.S. military officer called the 20-year war a “strategic failure” and said he believes the U.S. should have kept several thousand troops in the country to prevent the Taliban takeover that happened faster than forecast.
Court denies Dylann Roof’s request for new appellate hearing
By Meg Kinnard
Dylann Roof has lost the next phase of his appeal, with a federal court turning down his request for a new hearing to challenge his death sentence and conviction in the 2015 racist slayings of nine members of a Black South Carolina congregation.
The Latest: Pfizer gives vaccine data from kids 5-11 to FDA
Pfizer has submitted research to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on the effectiveness of its COVID-19 vaccine in children as it moves closer to seeking approval for expanded use of the shots.
In Murdaugh family scandal, tiny South Carolina town shaken
By Jeffrey Collins
For the past century, the Murdaughs have steered much of the legal world in this remote corner of South Carolina — north of Savannah, Georgia, and far from the interstate or just about anything else. Running the prosecutor’s office and a large civil law firm allowed the Murdaughs to do it quietly, until recently.
