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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday praised the only survivor of a military plane crash as the death toll climbed to 26, after another cadet died and three more bodies were found. Zelensky went to the scene of the tragedy near the northeastern city of Kharkiv where an Antonov AN-26 transport plane carrying 20 air force cadets and seven officers crashed during a training flight on Friday evening.

“Ukraine has lost 26 worthy sons,” Zelensky said on Facebook, referring to the cadets and officers of the Kharkiv National Air Force University.

“It is difficult to find words to express the pain of this loss,” he said, declaring Saturday a day of mourning.

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Officials in the city of Lake Jackson, Texas, issued a disaster declaration on Saturday in response to drinking water contaminated with a brain-eating amoeba. The city is under a “do not use water order,” and has requested an emergency declaration from the state.

“The City of Lake Jackson, County of Brazoria, Texas, is facing significant threats to life, health and property due to contaminated drinking water,” the city said in its emergency request to Governor Greg Abbott. “The impact of this threat is severe. The potential damages include: sickness and death.”

Mayor Bob Sipple wrote that the incident “is of such severity and magnitude” that the city cannot control the threat on its own.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality warned the Brazosport Water Authority late Friday of the potential contamination of its water supply by Naegleria fowleri.

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President Donald Trump announced his pick for the Supreme Court Saturday night.

The president nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett to take the seat of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The nomination kicks off an effort to have Barrett quickly confirmed before election day.

If Barrett is confirmed by the Senate, she would become the youngest associate justice on the Supreme Court at just 48 years old.

Barrett’s conservative legal views are a sharp contrast to the late Justice Ginsburg, who was an icon for many liberals.

This nomination is generating a lot of conversation among voters, with some people saying the president acted too quickly.

Nationally, lots of people are arguing whether the president did the right thing by announcing his choice for the Supreme Court this close to Election Day.

Locally, we found less debate. Most likely voters we talked to say they’ve already made up their minds.

Mr. Trump’s choice of Barrett only strengthened people’s support or opposition to his reelection.

For the president’s supporters, they say they may not know much about Barrett, but they trust Trump’s judgment:

“Whatever decision he makes, I’m good with, he’s thinking about us.”

“If he picks it, I’m sure it’s fine.”

“I hope, you know, it does go through, he does get what he wants.”

Others say they worry about Barrett’s pro-life views in opposition to Gisnburg repeated efforts to protect a woman’s right to abortion.

“For whatever reason, let’s say I had a bad experience, I got raped or anything like that, I don’t know I don’t feel like it would be, it should be my choice.”

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The Republican National Committee is putting Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court confirmation fight front and center with voters just weeks before Election Day.

The confirmation battle will be featured in a new $10 million RNC digital ad campaign to encourage battleground state voters to return vote-by-mail ballots or go to the polls. The national party, in concert with President Donald Trump’s campaign, is planning local events and protests across the country to support Barrett’s confirmation as well.

The party is also incorporating Barrett’s nomination into its scripts that staffers and volunteers use when calling or knocking on voters’ doors, with a focus on social conservative Catholic and evangelical voters — particularly in swing states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Florida.

Filling the vacancy created by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been an unexpected political opportunity for Trump, who won the White House in 2016 in large part because conservatives were animated around filling the seat opened by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.

The RNC on Saturday unveiled a website, ConfirmBarrett.com, to allow supporters to contact lawmakers to urge them to put Barrett on the court. It also anticipates trying to fundraise off the confirmation fight, including Democratic vice president nominee Kamala Harris’ position on the Senate Judiciary committee.

“With a full-throttled effort from now until President Trump’s nominee is confirmed, our teams will expose Democrats’ partisanship, aggressively promote the qualifications of Judge Barrett, and use this issue to galvanize voters to the polls in November,” said RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel.

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This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without prior written consent.

Copyright ©2024 Fort Myers Broadcasting. All rights reserved.

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without prior written consent.

Our weather changes very little early in the workweek, with more daily storms. On Tuesday, a cold front will approach from the north. Ahead of it, scattered showers & storms will break out across the region. The front will arrive sometime on Wednesday. Behind the front, cooler & drier air will filter into Florida.

Tropical moisture remains abundant through mid-week, which will allow scattered showers and thunderstorms to remain in the forecast through Wednesday.

However, the front is expected to stall just south of the area, and any small deviations of where the front stalls will mean the difference between gorgeous Fall weather, or a very wet ending of the week. Stay tuned to the forecast, as the second half of the week is extremely low confidence.

Meanwhile in the tropics, a broad area of low pressure could form over the western Caribbean Sea within the next 5 days. Some slow development is possible late this week while the system moves slowly west-northwestward over the northwestern Caribbean. The National Hurricane Center has given it a 20% of development over the next 5 days.

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This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without prior written consent.

On Saturday afternoon, people from across Southwest Florida gathered in North Fort Myers for what they deemed a “sunset eco-regatta” to show support for Democratic candidates at every level.

About 30 people came together, taping signs to their canoes and kayaks not just in support of the Biden-Harris campaign, but local democrats as well.

“I thought that this would be a great opportunity to mix and mingle a little bit and see where everybody stands and find out who is fighting to represent me,” said Toni Land, who was out on the water Saturday.

Dori Cowan said she wanted to interact with others who have similar ideals. “There is strength in number. We’re here to support like-minded people.”

The group says President Trump has caused division during his presidency. They also disapprove of his handling of the coronavirus.

Closer to home, they dislike how some groups are going about taking care of the waterways, so they’d like some change.

“I think it’s time that we replace some of the older faces and names that we hear on a regular basis and get some of the fresh faces some of the fresh ideas. The people who have a stronger idea of what it’s going to take to fix our economy as well as our ecology,” Land said.

But one woman outside Saturday believes that President Trump deserves another term and is excited to vote for him in November.

“I come out here every day to sit by the river and I saw all these Biden and Harris and everything else going on I said ‘all I need to say something about Donald Trump because he’s the one he’s the person he’s the man,'” said Brenda Silvers.

For the people out on the water today, four years has been long enough.

“It’s important that the working, that somebody gives the working-class people of Florida a voice,” said Ken Clairmont, who also came out to support democrats. “Someone that stands up and says enough is enough and that money isn’t always the answer to everything. Because we all live here, we all make a difference and without the working class of Florida, Florida does not exist.”

While the group says they will continue to hold campaign events like this, the real change comes at the polls in November.

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This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without prior written consent.

Two decades ago, Florida’s hanging chads became an unlikely symbol of a disputed presidential election. This year, the issue could be poorly marked ovals or boxes.

Amid the global coronavirus pandemic, more people than ever are expected to bypass their polling place and cast absentee ballots for the first time. Voters marking ballots from home could lead to an increase in the kinds of mistakes that typically would be caught by a scanner or election worker at the polls.

Experts say that’s likely to mean more ballots with questionable marks requiring review. That’s not necessarily a bad thing under normal circumstances, but President Donald Trump has repeatedly questioned the integrity of mail-in voting, and his campaign has already challenged aspects of it in court.

While ballots subject to review have historically represented a tiny portion of overall ballots, it’s possible disputes could arise and end up as part of a Florida-like fight, especially in battleground states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

“This could be 2000′s hanging chad in Pennsylvania,” said Suzanne Almeida, interim director of the state chapter of the nonpartisan watchdog Common Cause. “Potential challenges, delays in results, questions on which ballots count and who counts them — there are just a lot of questions, and that could open up Pennsylvania to a lot of uncertainty.”

The group is working with election officials statewide, emphasizing clear and consistent guidelines for dealing with questionable marks, such as when a voter circles a name or uses an X or a checkmark rather than filling in the oval — or even crosses out one selection and marks a second.

While all states perform ballot reviews and have rules related to voter intent, some have never seen anything like this year’s anticipated absentee ballot volume. In half the states, absentee ballots accounted for less than 10% of votes cast in 2016. Many could see half or more votes cast absentee this fall.

Colorado and Washington, two states accustomed to large volumes of hand-marked ballots, have comprehensive guidelines online detailing how to interpret almost every conceivable way a voter could mark a ballot. Procedures are in place for handling markings that may be disputed by partisan observers.

But when asked for a copy of Pennsylvania’s guidelines, state election officials said it would take time to gather and directed The Associated Press to file an open records request.

Amber McReynolds, who formerly ran Denver’s elections office, said consistency and detailed guidelines are essential. Otherwise, counties might perform reviews differently, leading to further challenges.

“You don’t want to have a situation where you have one type of mark in a county that is processed and counted and in another it isn’t,” said McReynolds, who now leads The National Vote at Home Institute.

Safeguards built into the nation’s myriad election systems to help voters avoid ballot-marking problems are mostly geared toward in-person voting. Touchscreen voting machines — though considered less secure by cybersecurity experts — do a better job than humans in marking ballots and warning voters if they try to vote twice in the same race.

In-person voting by paper ballot typically involves filling in an oval or box next to a candidate’s name. In most places, voters then feed the ballots into a scanner designed to reject so-called overvotes, like attempting to fix a mistake by crossing out a name and filling in the oval next to another candidate.

Such problems during in-person voting are easy to fix. Poll workers invalidate the ballot and give the voter a new one.

“But now, if most people are not voting with machines and are voting at home, they are not going to have that notification,” said Larry Norden, an elections expert with the Brennan Center for Justice.

This fall, as many as three in four voters could be voting on ballots received in the mail. That means following instructions carefully. If voters make a mistake, they should contact their local election office; it may mean requesting a replacement ballot.

Experts point to Georgia’s experience after the June primary as a cautionary tale.

During vote counting, some counties reported what appeared to be valid votes that weren’t flagged for review by the state’s new high-capacity ballot scanners, which process large volumes of absentee ballots at once.

It turned out the scanner software was set to flag ballots with between 12% and 35% of an oval shaded. Anything more was automatically counted. Anything less was not. Setting such parameters for ambiguous marks is a common practice.

What’s not common is the confusion.

Jeanne Dufort, who served as the Democrat on the review panel in Morgan County, east of metro Atlanta, said that in previous years absentee ballots represented a small fraction of votes cast and those reviewed had usually been damaged in some way.

But this time the software flagged about 150 ballots out of roughly 3,000 cast. In one case, a voter had marked ovals using a smiley face. The panel also discovered roughly 20 votes that had gone unrecorded and were not flagged for review, Dufort said.

She noted the stakes will be higher in November.

“A vote review panel’s purpose is to make up for the limits of technology,” Dufort said. “It’s a pretty solemn responsibility.”

Georgia has since revised its software so ballots with between 10% and 20% of an oval shaded will be flagged and reviewed. Training videos were also distributed.

Election officials generally laud the software as a technology aide that reduces ballot reviews and increases the likelihood more votes will be counted.

“The vast majority of real-world voter-marked ovals, even very poorly marked ovals, are tabulated accurately and consistently across voting machines,” said Mark Earley, elections supervisor in Leon County, Florida.

But some experts argue the technology could catch more votes that should be reviewed and ultimately counted if changes were made to scanner settings to improve image quality and resolution.

Harri Hursti, a voting security expert who testified in court cases challenging Georgia’s voting system, said the process should be more forgiving.

“The blame is put to the voter, saying the voter was doing something wrong,” Hursti said. “No, the voter was conducting a constitutional right and every other excuse is wrong. Voters have a right to vote.”

Meanwhile, some election offices use bipartisan teams to review flagged ballots while others rely on staff or a local board. Citizens can observe, although rules vary on whether they can raise objections. Experts say if the process isn’t consistent with clear guidelines, there could be room for political or legal maneuvering.

Experts also note other concerns heading into November, primarily that ballots could be rejected for issues such as a missing signature or one that doesn’t match the one on file. In Pennsylvania, there are worries ballots could be rejected because voters don’t put them inside a “secrecy envelope” and then into a second, mailing envelope.

“All this doesn’t matter much, until it does,” said Mark Lindeman, co-director of Verified Voting. “It’s unusual for an election to hinge on ambiguously marked ballots, but it can happen.”

Copyright ©2024 Fort Myers Broadcasting. All rights reserved.

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without prior written consent.

Normally when Better Call Harry helps people with their unemployment claims it takes some time because the cases are complicated.

But not for Jane Pressley.

“Wait!” Harry said to her. “They called you right before you came here to meet us?”

Pressley is a daycare worker who just received the best news since the pandemic began. After a six-month delay, the Georgia Department of Labor is paying her claim.

More than $9,000 after taxes in backdated benefits.

“I’m speechless,” Pressley laughed. “I really don’t know what to say. It’s like a dream. I just don’t know what to say.”

Pressley and her husband Ron have been married 32 years. But she never legally changed her maiden name, so the GDOL put a hold on her claim.

“It went in as Pressley and came up as my maiden name,” she said.

The GDOL says it is working on a fix with its partner ID.me to help people verify their identities.

And there’s more good news for Pressley. When the pandemic started she lost more than half of her hours at work. This month she’s back full time.

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This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without prior written consent.

Persistence pays.

Kevin Kinard was visiting Arkansas’ Crater of Diamonds State Park when he discovered a 9.07 carat diamond.

Kinard, from Maumelle, Arkansas, has been going to park since a second-grade field trip — even though he had always come back empty-handed.

He’s 33 now. And he’s got the second-largest diamond found in the park’s history.

Kinard was at the park with friends on Labor Day.

“Anything that looked like a crystal, I picked it up and put it in my bag,” he said in a news release from the park.

The bank branch manager then came across a marble-sized crystal.

“It kind of looked interesting and shiny, ” Kinard said. “I just thought it might’ve been glass.”

The 9.07 carat diamond found in Crater of Diamonds State Park.

After hours of searching, the friends stopped by the park’s Diamond Discovery Center to have their stones examined.

Moments later, Kinard was called into an office and given the good news.

“I honestly teared up when they told me. I was in complete shock,” he said.
He decided to call his find the Kinard Friendship Diamond.

“It weighs 9.07, and I found it on 9/7. I thought that was so unique.”

More than 75,000 diamonds have been unearthed at the park since the first ones were discovered in 1906.

The park has a “finders keepers” policy, which is pretty generous considering the many large diamonds that have been found there, as regular CNN readers may recall.

Among the finds:
— Teacher Josh Lanik who found a 2.12-carat diamond while on vacation last year — surely a great show-and-tell once the school year began.

Josh Lanik, 36, was vacationing with his family when he discovered a brandy-colored gem at Crater of Diamonds State Park in Murfreesboro, Arkansas.
— Fourteen-year-old Kalel Langford whose dream of finding a diamond came true after just 30 minutes in 2017.

— Dan Frederick and his daughter Lauren, after less than an hour in the park on their first visit, found a 2.03 carat diamond in October 2016.

— In June 2015, park visitor Bobbie Oskarson of Longmont, Colorado, discovered an icicle-shaped 8.52 carat diamond while digging around the Pig Pen, a 37-acre search field.

— Susie Clark, who is from Evening Shade, Arkansas, in April 2015 found a 3.69-carat white, teardrop-shaped diamond in a plowed field in the park. Clark named it the Hallelujah Diamond.

— Dean Filppula, an offshore steward from Shreveport, Louisiana, found a yellow 2.01-carat diamond in February 2015.

— We even went hunting for one in 2015.

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This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without prior written consent.