NEWS OF THE DAY
From Across the Nation
Disability access: Fewer than one in five polling places were fully accessible to voters with disabilities during the 2016 general election, a government report shows — a finding that has prompted federal officials to recommend the Justice Department adopt stricter compliance rules. The report released Thursday by the non- partisan Government Accountability Office comes less than a week before mayoral elections in Atlanta and New York, elections for governor in New Jersey and Virginia and a special U. S. House election in Utah, and gives a window of only a year to address problems before the 2018 congressional elections.
Trump’s hotel: A group of House Democrats is suing the head of the General Services Administration for access to documents related to President Trump’s D. C. hotel, the project Trump’s company leases from the agency. On Thursday, 17 Democratic members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, frustrated at the GSA’s repeated unwillingness to provide documents related to the hotel, filed suit in federal court against the agency’s acting administrator, Timothy Horne, whom Trump chose after entering the White House. They seek monthly financial reports the hotel is required to file with the GSA, records of payments from the hotel’s foreign clients and details on how the agency decided to allow the Trump Organization to retain the deal after Trump became president. When he won the election, many legal experts expected the lease would be voided because of a clause barring any “elected official of the government of the United States” from deriving “any benefit” from the deal. Trump and his daughter Ivanka, a senior White House adviser, both retained their stakes in the property.
Chest pain: A procedure used to relieve chest pain in hundreds of thousands of heart patients each year is useless for many of them, according to a study published this week in the Lancet. The study released in New York focused on the insertion of stents, tiny wire cages, to open blocked arteries. The devices are lifesaving when used to open arteries in patients in the throes of a heart attack. But they are most often used in patients who have a blocked artery and chest pain. The new study stunned leading cardiologists by countering decades of clinical experience. The findings raise questions about whether stents should be used so often — or at all — to treat chest pain.
Lottery winner: She knows how to pick a winner. Local media report that Kimberly Morris of Wake Forest scratched off two North Carolina lottery tickets on Monday, winning $ 1 million on one of the tickets and $ 10,000 with another. Morris thought things were going well when she bought a ticket at a grocery store Monday afternoon and scratched off the $ 10,000 prize. She went to the lottery headquarters in Raleigh to claim her prize. On the way home, she stopped and bought another ticket, and bingo! It was worth $ 1 million.
Chronicle News Services