ALBANY, N.Y. -- Chris Cuomo, CNN news show host and younger brother of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, revealed Tuesday he has been diagnosed as positive for the coronavirus.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Acting with exceptional resolve in an extraordinary time, the House rushed President Donald Trump a $2.2 trillion rescue package Friday, tossing a life preserver to a U.S. economy and health care system left flailing by the coronavirus pandemic.

General Motors announced Friday it is bringing back 1,000 workers at two plants in Indiana to begin making ventilators for critical-care COVID-19 patients struggling to breathe and stay alive.

GREENTOWN, Ind. -- With their vows read and rings exchanged, Henry and Emily Riffles sealed their first moments of married life with a kiss Saturday, the wedding party and family looking on from proper social distance.

ALBANY, N.Y. -- Harvey Weinstein, the Hollywood producer sentenced to 23 years in prison for rape and sexual assault, has tested positive for the novel coronavirus, officials connected with the state prison system said Sunday.

GLASGOW, Ky. – Ronnie Ellis, an accomplished Kentucky political reporter, died Monday at a hospital in his hometown, two weeks before his scheduled induction into the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame. He was 68.

Gov. Kevin Stitt has declared a state of emergency in Oklahoma in all 77 counties after confirming an eighth case of coronavirus.

Did the U.S. Supreme Court go too far in its rationale for free speech and press when ruling for the New York Times in a landmark libel case brought by a public official 56 years ago?

ROME (AP) — Expressing alarm both about mounting infections and slow government responses, the World Health Organization declared Wednesday that the global coronavirus crisis is now a pandemic but also said it's not too late for countries to act.

The coronavirus or Covid-19 is spreading and we are anxious, more so every day.

ROCHESTER, N.Y. – A western New York man who admitted phoning a death threat to Minnesota Congresswoman Ihan Omar has been sentenced to one year and one day in prison by a federal judge.

TULSA — Gov. Kevin Stitt and state health officials assured Oklahomans on Friday the risk of being exposed to the coronavirus remains low in the state but urged them to take precautions after confirming the first known case of COVID-19 in the state.

FRANKFORT – A backdoor addition to a revenue bill that changes the way legal notices for local government audits and bids are brought to the public’s attention has caught Kentucky newspapers off guard.

On learning Russia had staged a massive disinformation campaign in the 2016 presidential election, schools across the country began adding digital literacy classes to their course offerings.

LOCKPORT, N.Y. -- It happened again this morning. Just after dawn my youngest daughter was whisked away in a yellow bus to spend the day at one of the most socialist institutions on our city: Lockport High School. 

For decades, the nation's media have covered, and amplified, the controversies of rap music, from the hype of the East Coast-West Coast rivalry that framed the murders of rappers Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. in the 1990s, to last year's murder of Los Angeles rapper and activist Nipsey Hussle.

The World Health Organization has given the new coronavirus an official name: Covid-19.

PLATTSBURGH, N.Y. – The seamstress employee who played a central role in helping two convicted killers escape from a maximum-security prison in northeast New York in June of 2015 has been released on parole.

Democrat Amy McGrath, a 44-year-old retired Marine combat pilot, has officially filed her candidate papers to challenge Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in November's election.

CHAMPLAIN, N.Y. — Nolan LaValley, blind since birth, does not let his disability keep him from bowling and enjoying a sport he has learned from his high school coach and teammates.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump was impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives Wednesday night, becoming only the third American chief executive to be formally charged under the Constitution’s ultimate remedy for high crimes and misdemeanors.

OLIVE HILL, Ky. -- It had the trappings of a scene from The Natural. A hand-crafted bat made from scratch for Tim Johnson’s son J.T.’s summer season in the North Carolina North State League, showcase for college baseball players with big league dreams.

It wasn’t “Wonderboy” made for Roy Hobbs from a tree split by lightning. But it lickety-split earned the reputation of whim-wham lumber from J.T.’s Piedmont Whitetails’ teammates, including the winner of the league’s 2019 home run derby.

From there, word of mouth spread so fast that Tim Johnson’s woodworking hobby moved to the early stage of a budding bat production company, making customized and model bats for baseball and softball players of all ages.

Located in the northeast Kentucky hamlet of Olive Hill, the informally named Big Johnson Bat Company includes marketing maven Madison, Johnson’s niece and a softball player at Thomas More College in Crestview Hills, Kentucky. She sells Johnson bats like they were hotcakes cooked in pork fat.

“I had to tell her to quit,” said the 54-year-old Johnson. “I couldn’t make them as fast as she sold them.”

With the assistance of his brother Shawn, Johnson fastidiously lathes blank cylindrical billets of ash or maple into sanded, customized bats, each taking three to four hours. Duplicates of non-customized bats take 20 minutes on a duplicator, a machine designed to ensure the legs on a chair are identical.

Customized bats are made to a hitter’s preferred length, weight and sweet spot. A wood-burning pen brands the barrel, then Johnson hand rubs each bat with seven or eight coasts of lacquer, a task performed in the bathroom of the family home because there’s too much humidity and dust in his workshop.

Johnson’s “plant” is his 576-square-foot garage, jammed with various machines, prototypes, raw wood, tool chests and a refrigerator for drinks in one corner. To cross the sawdust blanketed workspace, you carefully set your foot with each step.

Making bats is Johnson’s night job. During the day he’s an administrator for three area vocational schools, meaning he starts his bat-making around 4 p.m. He normally turns out two customized bats before calling it a night, though he’s made as many as five hand-turned bats in one very long night, an experience he doesn’t plan to repeat.

Johnson works on and off during the week, unless “Madison goes back to a selling rampage, then it’ll be every night.”

The Johnson customized bat sells for $125. Madison-designed bats for training, with an enlarged sweet spot, go for $75. One-handed bats cost $50. Johnson also makes long, lightweight fungo bats for hitting practice balls to fielders.

The Johnson brothers learned wood working at a young age, assisting their father, who owned a used furniture store that included refinished antiques. They also played baseball in high school and college before taking up successful high school coaching careers. That background has been helpful in bat production, said Tim Johnson.

“I know what a bat needs to feel like,” he said, “if it needs to be balanced or end-loaded, how thick or thin a handle needs to be, if you need a cupped end, a smaller taper on the barrel or a longer barrel, and what type of wood has the qualities that would be most productive with each particular swing.”

Johnson never thought his bat hobby would go this far. Yet he plans to retire from his school administrator’s position sometime next year, then decide whether to make bats for a living -- with the help of his brother Shawn, son J.T. and niece Madison.

They already have a tee-shirt slogan, “Swinging hard wood.” Now all they need is a natural like Roy Hobbs to popularize the power of the Johnson bat.

Zach Klemme, sports writer for the Ashland, Ky., Daily Independent provided details for this story.  

TV trumps Twitter. At least this election cycle.

Richard Malone, the embattled bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Buffalo, New York, has resigned, the Vatican announced Wednesday.

ENID, Okla. – Air Force officials Friday identified the two airmen killed in a crash landing of a trainer jet at Vance Air Force Base as student pilot Lt. Travis Wilkie, 23, and instructor Lt. Col. John “Matt” Kincade, 47.

Before dying of a methamphetamine overdose early on Aug. 1, 2017, La Salle County, Texas,  prisoner James Dean Davis, aka “Country,” moaned and yelled for most of the night. Sweat dripped off him in a chilly holding cell, as vomit ran red, like Kool-Aid, on the floor. 

ENID, Okla. –Two jet fighter planes used for pilot training at Vance Air Force Base in northern Oklahoma crashed Thursday morning, causing the death of two airmen, base officials announced.

DUNCAN, Okla. – The police clock read 9:55 a.m. Monday when a 911 caller reported an unidentified man and woman, walking calmly from the money center in Walmart to enter their parked car, suddenly were shot to death through the windshield.

“Let’s respect each other versus tearing each other up.”

CNN’s media correspondent Brian Stelter recently unleashed his frustration when a 10-year-old tweet set off a firestorm.

NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. -- Lt. Clyde Doty kept telling the man clinging for his life in river rapids 100 yards from the brink of the American Falls the same thing over and over:  “We got you, we got you.”